Data (Star Trek)

Data is a fictional character in the Star Trek franchise. He appears in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), the first and third seasons of Star Trek: Picard, and the fifth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and the feature films Star Trek Generations (1994), First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998), and Nemesis (2002). Data is portrayed by actor Brent Spiner.

Data is a self-aware, sapient, sentient and anatomically fully functional male android who serves as the second officer and chief operations officer aboard the Federation starship USS Enterprise-D and later the USS Enterprise-E.

Data is in many ways a successor to the original Star Trek's Spock, in that the character has superior mental skills and offers an "outsider's" perspective on humanity.

Development

Gene Roddenberry told Brent Spiner that over the course of the series, Data was to become "more and more like a human until the end of the show, when he would be very close, but still not quite there. That was the idea and that's the way that the writers took it." Spiner felt that Data exhibited the Chaplinesque characteristics of a sad, tragic clown. To get into his role as Data, Spiner used the character of Robby the Robot from the film Forbidden Planet as a role model. Before Spiner was cast, Eric Menyuk, Mark Lindsay Chapman, Kevin Peter Hall, and Kelvin Han Yee were considered for the role.

Commenting on Data's perpetual albino-like appearance, he said: "I spent more hours of the day in make-up than out of make-up", so much so that he even called it a way of method acting. Spiner also portrayed Data's manipulative and malevolent brother Lore (a role he found much easier to play, because the character was "more like me"), and Data's creator, Dr.