The Most Toys

Didn't Data already go solo? Sure, but this time he's kidnapped!

It’s excitement all around when a shuttlepod carrying Data explodes! Well, more for the Bridge Crew than for us the audience, because we kind of already saw that the bad guys were up to no good, but it’s a great teaser all the same! After the credits, we discover that Data has been kidnapped by the absurdly wealthy ne’er-do-well Kivas Fajo, who is delighted to add the android to his collection of rarities and oddities. But Data refuses to play along, and Fajo becomes so irate that he threatens to murder some of his minions, just to force the android to comply (those darn one percenters, always acting mean to the staff)! Meanwhile, LaForge has eventually realised that Data’s exploding shuttle was more than a little suspect, and so the Enterprise is off on a rescue mission - arriving just in time to stop Data from murdering Fajo. Or was he...? It’s supposed to be ambiguous, but it’s actually rather hard to see it that way.

Words

This is the first screenplay written by Shari Goodhartz, who returns in the next two seasons with more rather distinctive episodes, “Night Terrors” and “Violations”. She was just an intern when she wrote this wonderful story for TNG, having earned the internship via the Writers Guild of America, and I remain enormously impressed with what she achieves here. Of course, TNG screenplays are always a team effort, and she undoubtedly had great mentors, but this is still quite the achievement for a new writer.

There’s a scene in the script that didn’t make it into the final episode, one that would have added further weight to Varria's decision to defect:

VARRIA: How human are you?

DATA: Physically, I am capable of performing many human functions. However, I have no emotional responses.

VARRIA: You're not the first man I’ve known like that.

A beat.

VARRIA: Have you ever made love, Data?

DATA: I have had one sexual encounter. But I am incapable of making love as you describe it since I cannot feel love.

She looks hard at him... with a dramatic motion, she removes her safety belt. It drops to the floor.

VARRIA: Would you... do it with me?

Another beat.

DATA: Why?

VARRIA (embarrassed): Why not?

DATA: It is an act that symbolizes the highest level of intimacy between beings. I have told you that I am unable to feel intimacy. I find it difficult to accept that you could have intimate feelings toward me under these conditions. Therefore you are either simply curious. Or you have been sent by Kivas Fajo to test my sexual abilities.

FAJO’S COM VOICE: You are just too smart for your own good, android.

They react.

FAJO’S COM VOICE: I was hoping to see a little spontaneity but obviously neither one of you is capable of it. This mating dance is really quite dull. We’ll try it again tomorrow. You may leave, Varria.

Varria is completely humiliated. She exchanges a look with Data. A tear rolls down her cheek. She EXITS.

Of course, Fajo was willing to vaporise Varria just to bully Data into compliance, so we really didn’t need this scene to underline how awful he is. Still, I include the extract from the screenplay as one of those interesting oddities that ended up on the cutting room floor.

One strange aspect of the story is worth discussing. Goodhartz makes Data the paragon of non-violent resistance in this story, so it’s a little surprising that at the end he seems to have accepted the necessity of murdering Fajo. But there’s more to this than meets the eye, as Goodhartz herself explained:

I asked Brent Spiner whether he thought Data purposefully pulled the trigger or not, and he was adamant that Data did fire the weapon, which was my intent as well, but the powers-that-be wanted that kept ambiguous, so it was. If I had a chance to do it over, with all the experience I have behind me now, I would argue passionately for Data’s actions and their consequences to have been clearer, and hopefully more provocative.

It makes me curious as to how this would have gone down in this alternate timeline... But either way, despite the claim that it was to be kept ambiguous, it does not quite seem to play out that way. We’re expressly told the weapon was discharged, and are given no other explanation for it being in that state. If there is an ambiguity here, it’s really that killing Fajo isn’t obviously necessary for Data to escape at the point that it happens, as he’s already made it to the shuttle and neutralised everyone else present. This for me is a rather significant ethical problem - you cannot justify evil deeds by supposedly good outcomes - but it doesn’t dint my love of this episode.

Acting Roles

It seems like an odd thing to say that I’m a fan of Saul Rubinek, as I suspect almost nobody had seen him in anything before this performance. However, I had already seen him hamming it up in the wonderfully dreadful 1980 horror movie Death Ship, where he was the first to die, and as the loathsome Jason Masur in The Equaliser. However, its his performance here as Kivas Fajo that brought him to many people’s attention, and anyone who missed it may have caught him as the disreputable film producer Lee Donowitz in True Romance a few years later.

Rubinek cut a path for himself in acting by playing terrible human beings, and in that respect he’s perfectly cast as the selfish and self-obsessed Fajo. He was added in at last minute by the director, Timothy Bond, when the original actor, David Rappaport, tragically committed suicide.

David Rappaport playing Kivas Fajo prior to his tragic suicide

I’m sure everyone reading this cannot quite imagine anyone else in Fajo’s role except Rubinek, such is the degree to which he makes it his own. Paired with Brent Spiner’s Data here he is scintillating, one of the greatest pairings of villain and hero anywhere in Trek. Spiner is essential to the success of the role, but Rubinek’s performance is incredible nonetheless. I should mention that this character is named after pre-production coordinator Lolita Fatjo… apparently she was quite happy to have a villain named after her!

Jane Daly's Varria has the misfortune of being upstaged by Rubinek, of course, but she’s still rather good in her small role. In another episode, she might have been more noticeable, but even so she really sells her desperate lunge for the Varon-T disrupter!

Although he gets only one scene, Nehemiah Persoff’s Palor Toff is quite delightful, and the make-up team do an outstanding job with his unique prosthetics.

And we get a bit of Colm Meaney's O’Brien doing what he does best in the early seasons - pretending to push buttons and reacting grimly. Always a pleasure!

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

Is this a new ship model...? Actually, no, the Jovis is a heavily modified reappearance of the Husnock ship from “The Survivors”, but you'd be hard pressed to tell!

Make-up and wardrobe are on fine form this week, and if Varria’s prosthetics are relatively unimpressive I’ll put that down to the fact she has to appear in many scenes and emote a great deal. The ultimate rubber face of the week is Persoff’s Palor Toff, whose make-up and clothing is just magnificently elaborate.

Less impressive is the reuse of the Sound Stage 16 square rock formations. This looked fine in the dim lighting of “Conspiracy”, was used with great care in “The Enemy”, and was only starting to look a little dodgy in “Captain's Holiday”. Here, however, the fact they flood the lower layer makes the whole set look more like a swimming pool than a cave, which is a rare misstep in an episode that otherwise has marvellous sets.

A tip of the hat is required for the props used to fill out Fajo’s collection, which includes among other thing a repainted version of the radio transmitter from “Pen Pals”, the Anubis mask from Young Sherlock Holmes, Giuseppe Terragni’s 1934 Follia chair, and erm, a very silly alien that’s right up there with the terrifying Drashigs from the Doctor Who serial “Carnival of Monsters” in its preposterous sock puppetry!

Battle of the Sock Puppets: 1990’s Lapling (left) and 1973’s Drashig (right)

It just about worked for Doctor Who in 1973, but here in 1990 the lapling is an absolutely silly prop. Still, nobody really cares because we’re all spellbound by Data vs Fajo, and everything else is merely window dressing in an episode that remains as brilliant today as when it first aired.