A day in the life of Lt. Commander Data.
Narrated by Lt.Commander Data, the episode is all about him, he is telling a Commander Maddox about his day at Maddox’s request, he is interested in how Data interacts with the rest of the crew.
The day is special, it is the day of Chief Miles O’Brien and Keiko Ishikawa, Data will be the one to give Keiko away.
The episode starts with Keiko telling Data that she wants to call of the wedding and that Data should tell Miles, when he does Miles is not happy and Data can’t understand why, because she said it would make her happy so to Data that should be ok for Miles, but it’s not.
Brent Spiner’s performance as Data is genius, especially in this episode because we see Data go through situations that would, if he were human, provoke strong emotions. Seeing Data try to deal with the situations added the complexity to the character. I liked that in this episode.
Meanwhile the Enterprise is on a dangerous diplomatic misson to deliver Vulcan ambassador T’Pel to the Romulans in the Neutral Zone.
When the O’Brien, Ishikawa wedding is back on, data wants to learn how to dance, he asks Dr Beverly Crusher as he has seen in records that she used to be a dancer, she reveals that people used to call her ‘The Dancing Doctor’.
I love that they let Gates McFadden dance on the show as she is a dancer/choreogrpher. The scene is charming and comical. ‘The Dancing Doctor’ shows Data some tap moves he recreates the performance perfectly thnks to his memory subroutines.
I’m not 100% sure how much of the dance Brent did but I’m sure Gates did it all and choreographed it, she’s great, and when I met her she was lovely and chatty.
A good twist in the episode was the reveal that the Vulcan Ambassador was really a Romulan spy that was taken aboard the romulan ship and made to look like the Enterprise transporter had malfunctioned and she had been killed, picard found this out a war nearly insues but Picard withdraws to federationspace, a good thing i think. Can you imagine if that had been the start of a war, it would have been a very different TNG wouldn’t it.
So then to the Wedding, I liked the setting of the wedding, in ten forward, the tapestries on either side of the ceremony space are appropriate to Kaiko’s culture, it was lovely.
Picard’s speech was reflective and is similar to what Captain Janeway later says at B’elanna Torres and Tom Paris’ wedding in the Voyager episode Courese:Oblivian.
Data’s Day is in my opinion a brilliant episode, Data was such an interesting character in TNG and i loved him 🙂
Brent Spiner as I’ve said is a genius.
One of my favourite episodes of TNG.
janeway931 