As a lifelong Trekkie who has been following the Star Trek universe for over four decades, I must say that the latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, “Fully Dilated,” was an absolute delight! The inclusion of Brent Spiner reprising his role as Data, albeit a slightly quirky version from a different universe, was simply magnificent.
Warning: SPOILERS for the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode “Fully Dilated” are ahead!
Over the next few weeks, “Star Trek: Lower Decks” will draw to a close on the 2024 TV schedule following a five-season journey. Yet, there are still thrilling moments ahead before the final curtain call, such as the encounter between Voyager’s Harry Kim and the crew of the USS Cerritos. Today’s episode brought an unexpected delight in the form of Brent Spiner reprising his beloved Next Generation character, Data, but from a universe where the color purple plays a more significant role. In anticipation of the episode’s release to Paramount+ subscribers, I had the opportunity to talk with supervising producer Barry Kelly about the rationale behind introducing Data in “Fully Dilated”, as well as how this installment paid tribute to the Next Generation episode “The Inner Light”.
Why Data Was A Good Fit For This Lower Decks Episode
On the completely expanded state of the “Fully Expanded” warp, Mariner, Tendi, and T’Lyn found themselves on planet Dilmer III – reminiscent of the Voyager episode “Blink of an Eye”. This planet experiences time at a much faster pace. In the midst of a conflict involving a purple Enterprise-D and replicas of Tasha Yar’s evil clones, they inadvertently left a Starfleet artifact behind – which turned out to be the head of the purple universe’s Data counterpart. Later, Tendi managed to construct an electric generator to restore Data, who became her trusted ally throughout their stay on Dilmer III. During our discussion, Kelly shared insights about Data’s integration into the storyline.
I think it’s such a classic, perfect trick set-up. They’re on another planet in disguise, there’s a guy on the planet who knows that they’re not supposed to be there. It’s such a perfect track set-up that you need that one wow moment, like, ‘Holy crap, there’s a big surprise on there and it’s Data.’ It’s a way that we can have fun with this whole multiverse throughline, subverted a little bit and have a Data that we make fun with, we don’t really make fun of Data but it’s not canon Data. It’s one that maybe Generations hasn’t happened yet, so we have the Data that has all the experience that we all know from TNG. He can call back to things that we know, and then our characters already know what happened because it’s in logs and the Enterprise has already moved on to the E. So it’s all their history that they’re their own Star Trek nerds and they can all fan out about.
Despite Barry Kelly’s dream of teaming up Data and Geordi LaForge on Lower Decks not materializing, he still managed to be part of the show. Notably, the producer pointed out that Purple Data hails from his universe’s Enterprise-D, which means he originates from the past and hasn’t undergone the same experiences as the main universe’s Data starting from Generations. This is clearly reflected in Purple Data not having an emotion chip, but this also provides a sort of reunion with the classic Data from Star Trek days.
How Lower Decks Played With The Premise Of “The Inner Light”
Due to Boimler and Rutherford carelessly spilling their micheladas onto the transporter console and cleaning up the mess afterwards, taking approximately a minute in reality, Mariner, Tendi, and T’Lyn found themselves stranded on Dilmer III for what seemed like a year to them. At first, Mariner was annoyed by this unexpected detour, but she eventually decided to recreate an episode of “The Inner Light” from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” where Captain Jean-Luc Picard lived 40 years as an alien within just 25 minutes in the real world. Regarding Lower Decks’ unique take on this classic episode, Barry Kelly explained this to me:
What’s good is like I just said, it’s all in logs. So our lower deckers, just like we do, know what happens to Picard… They know the tropes, it’s kind of like rigmarole to them that they’re going to a planet, they’re gonna be undercover, and that they’re gonna be stuck there for a long time, and Mariner… she wants to do her own “Inner Light”. The Lower Decks version is it all goes terribly wrong. She gets imprisoned multiple times, knows the jailers, they’re all friends. What does she say? ‘Any good rats while I was away?’ But it’s a great subversion on it because she’s trying to do all the things Picard did and just failing at it miserably. And then at the same time, Tendi and T’Lyn are just having a good competition between each other to be science officer. Tendi learns and goes all crazy and batshit with Data before even we’re learning that T’Lyn isn’t even the competition with her anymore.
Mariner strove diligently to recreate Picard’s journey in a shorter time span, but every effort to bond with the community ended up landing her behind bars instead. This was a humorous take on “The Inner Light,” and much like Picard, Mariner emerged from the ordeal with a flute – albeit one crafted from soap and lacking any musical prowess… whatsoever. Typical mischief from Lower Decks.
Lower Decks” airs every Thursday on Paramount+. Coming up in the world of Star Trek TV shows are Season 3 of “Strange New Worlds” and “Starfleet Academy”, while a streaming-only film titled “Section 31” will debut on January 24.
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2024-11-28 19:37