In Theory

Data's in love... or is he?

Data is blowing up a nebula with his co-worker, Jenna D’Sora, while lecturing her on why she broke up with her ex. Then they’re performing a chamber concert together along with Keiko O’Brien and some randos we’ve never met before, and soon after hanging out with the O’Briens in Ten Forward. The next thing we know, she’s kissing him in the torpedo bay (ooh err missus), and soon after they’re in a relationship, if you can call it that.

Meanwhile, there’s a B-plot about a subspace anomaly that literally nobody cares about. Eventually, Picard has to pilot a shuttlecraft to guide the Enterprise out of the nebula for no obvious reason other than there has to be an exciting moment somewhere in the story, and our conn officer is apparently so bad at piloting that even the captain would be a better choice.

Words

This is the Data episode that a great many Data fans single out as their favourite, and it’s easy to understand why. As long as you get along with character stories, this has the goods. But amusingly, it has its origin in co-writer Ronald D. Moore’s fascination with the phenomenon of women who confessed their love for Spock in classic Trek:

So much of Leonard Nimoy’s fan mail was from women, women who were falling in love with this remote, inaccessible character, with the idea that ‘I could touch his heart – I could get to Spock like no one else.’ I was fascinated by that aspect of fandom.

This is the first collaboration between Moore and co-writer Joe Menosky (pictured below), setting out to explore the situation when the man in question entirely lacks emotions, rather than just having them under tight control like the famous Vulcan science officer.

A young Joe Menosky behind-the-scenes on the bridge set

The two writers split the scenes between them and then stitched them together later, but neither liked having to break away from Data’s story to deal with the B-story. As Moore lamented:

We had to come up with some stupid subspace anomaly that the Enterprise had to be battling at the same time... It was annoying storytelling, but that was built in to the structure of that show. While you were downstairs with Data, you always kind of wondered what the ship would be doing.

Meanwhile, guess who has his directorial debut with this episode? It’s none other than Patrick Stewart, who seems to have been encouraged to try his hand after Jonathan Frakes took the plunge. He even turned to Frakes for advice during the process. Episodes are allocated to director by drawing lots, and Stewart was pleased with the screenplay he got:

I was very lucky to get a simple little love story to direct. I was lucky to have Brent Spiner as my leading man and indeed Brent was to be my leading man in the first three of the five episodes I directed. I had a fabulous guest star performance by Michele Scarabelli. I had no big sets or Klingon Great Halls or shoot ‘em ups; there were no epic scenes. I had to simply concentrate on the basics of camera movement and structure and, more than anything else, work with the actors on the scenes.

Stewart does a great job with the material, turning a charming screenplay into a wonderful character study on screen.

Acting Roles

The episode hangs entirely on the chemistry between Brent Spiner’s Data and Michele Scarabelli’s Jenna D’Sora.

The two are great together... there’s a sense of impending doom to the romance, which as the behind-the-scenes notes above make clear was always the purpose of this story. Throughout, it’s impossible not to dread the inevitable. Sooner or later, we’re sure, the slowly descending boot of reality is going to strike the floor and this phantasmal relationship is going to implode.

Scarabelli’s big break came a few years earlier, as she was cast as the key supporting role of Jo Santini in Airwolf (she played the niece of Ernest Borgnine’s character, Dom).

On the back of that, she got a recurring role in Dallas, and soon after was cast as Susan Francisco in Alien Nation.

On top of an enormous run of guest roles, she also voiced Six in Seven Little Monsters across its four year run. It’s quite the career - and yet this one performance in TNG still stands out as a career highlight, not least because its one of very few instances of her landing a leading role.

Even though this is primarily about these two performers, the story does provide something for all the regulars to do though, and even Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan crops up. The most surprising thing about all of the supporting scenes is that essentially nobody thinks to tell Data what a terrible idea this relationship is, which you’d think would be a no brainer.

Oh, and Pamela Winslow’s McKnight returns with yet more thrilling lines like “Sixteen million kilometres.”

The Bridge Crew hate McKnight so much, they’re all leaving

She gets nine lines in this episode, and I’ll bet you didn’t even notice her.

And Spot is back, but played by a different cat.

A Tale of Two Cats: Spot in In Theory (left) and in Data’s Day (right)

Spot, it seems, is no longer a Somali cat but is now an orange short-hair tabby. Clearly, the Enterprise has a very unusual alien masquerading an as an Earth cat in Data’s quarters.

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

Despite this being mostly a character story, it still kept the special effects team busy. Welcome back to the nebula from “The Best of Both Worlds”, with some new footage of the four-foot Enterprise shot against it. It’s not the most exciting of material, but it works.

There’s a nice effect as the dark matter intersects with the shuttlepod’s starboard nacelle, though.

And there is also an entirely new alien species playing the bassoon.

There’s no name for this species given anywhere, and we will never see it again.

But the great SFX shot for this week is when LaForge is checking for structural damage and Georgina Shore’s uncredited lieutenant gets embedded in the floor.

This is a straight up practical effect, I don’t even think it was touched up after the fact (such interventions being far more difficult in 1991 than they would be even ten years later). There's even a slight dribble of blood dripping down her nose gruesomely!

All in all, this is an episode that evokes either an abiding love, or an endless parade of cringe. Personally, I’m a fan, but as ever with character stories, your warp speed may vary.