Lore in "Brothers"

[SurfingtheInterweb]

I think Lore in that episode is not only his best episode, of course, but demonstrates his multi faceted personality in a way all other episodes fail as we see him express what I believe to be true genuine emotion.

Firstly, Lore is not evil in that episode, at first. He shows up, realizes that he was not called for on purpose, and, because he's hurt and insecure he decides to dip ! He's more upset than vengeful. And he almost does leave, until Soong says he's dying .... And this is I think when we get to see genuine emotion from Lore in the whole series. When he stops and turns and he looks crushed. Above all, Lore is sad and maybe even scared sad to lose Soong.

Later in the episode, however, after the reveal of the emotion chip, he is obviously bitter, as he feels that Soong does not care for him as he does for Data (middle child syndrome), and that's why he takes the chip. "You don't fill Data with substandard parts." That's what causes his 180, that, after all this time, Soong still doesn't love him like he loves Data. In his eyes, he deserves that chip! He was broken, and instead of fixing him, accepting him, Soong shut him off and built Data. I'd be mad, too.

Unfortunately, because Soong did program his android with mental illness, he lashes out far worse than he should. Yada yada.
I guess its my fave episode because Lore is so unabashedly genuine for most of it. Its great insight into his character, and his weird little idiosyncrasies! His ticks! Drumming his fingers on his arms, smacking random things around in the room because he's peeved, putting his tongue in his cheek. Singing because he's just quirky like that. It's delicious.
You can also see exactly when he decides to trick them both, to take the chip. Riiiiiight here.

 

[SurfingtheInterweb]

Butterfingers. Forgot to attach an image. Moment when he decides to trick them:

Overall, I wish we'd gotten to see more sides of Lore's character like how we did here.

 

[Mojochi]

This episode more clearly demonstrates, better than any other, that Lore's problem was actually that he had been given heightened emotional awareness, just like his heightened speed, strength & processing ability. It was made to make him more than human as well. (Think Vulcan or Romulan levels of maddening emotion) He is shown to be almost immediately stricken with a wash of each emotion as they happen. His emotions are stronger, faster acting & more overwhelming than a human's, to the neglect of anything preceding it.

Find out he'd been summoned mistakenly? Immediately be spurned about it. Find out Soong is dying? Immediately grief stricken or in denial. Find out Data will now have emotions & be more like him? Immediately compassionate & empathetic to what that represents, & even a bit remorseful about his own nature. Realize Data gets all the good graces of his creator, despite his own injustices? Immediately embittered & vengeful.

I have no reason to doubt these reactions are anything but genuine, in real time. He is a victim to his own emotional instability. It's really shown as a malfunction, instead of a choice to be a wild acting, dangerous personality. Lore has pseudobulbar affect.

This is why the next step was to design a new model absent the thing altogether. As we see with Data in Generations, once it's active, it's part of him & much harder to correct. This is a sentience after all. Simply trying to reset Lore back to some Data type of factory settings might be more problem than solution, in itself.

And this also explains why Data would think he had no emotions. He was told that, & for all intents & purposes, it's true enough, & that he tells that to others sets him into a feedback loop where he's expected to be emotionless by himself & everyone, but possibly his emotional awareness has been deliberately polarized from Lore's. He was designed to be a feeling entity, but has had that dialed back to almost nothing, to effect a more controlled introduction of the emotion dynamic, in hopes that he'll be more comported from experience when exposed to it.

Data too has been shown tapping his fingers nervously in Data's Day. He's shown having legit concern for a comrade with Geordi in Interface, & ultimately chooses to support his obsession. He's shown looking legitimately relieved when Geordi returns alive in The Next Phase. Data does have emotions, already, & more over, he's meant to have them just like anybody else, like a table set for diners with one still yet to show up. His nature is to be emotional, but because his design is experimental, his has been willfully curtailed

 

[somebuddyX]

I've wondered what the ethical thing to do with Lore was, not including throwing him in the box like what actually happened. Is it ethical to reprogram him? Or chuck him in prison? Hand him over to Daystrom to study? Does he have rights? Or legally would he have had any recourse if Data or Maddox or someone had just done it? I've wondered about Lore being picked up by the Federation and held in a prison and being like Data's Lector a bit, in the most general sense of it though.

 

[carcinoGeneticist]

middle child syndrome

Lol

This episode more clearly demonstrates, better than any other, that Lore's problem was actually that he had been given heightened emotional awareness, just like his heightened speed, strength & processing ability. It was made to make him more than human as well. (Think Vulcan or Romulan levels of maddening emotion) He is shown to be almost immediately stricken with a wash of each emotion as they happen. His emotions are stronger, faster acting & more overwhelming than a human's, to the neglect of anything preceding it.

Find out he'd been summoned mistakenly? Immediately be spurned about it. Find out Soong is dying? Immediately grief stricken or in denial. Find out Data will now have emotions & be more like him? Immediately compassionate & empathetic to what that represents, & even a bit remorseful about his own nature. Realize Data gets all the good graces of his creator, despite his own injustices? Immediately embittered & vengeful.

I ha ve no reason to doubt these reactions are anything but genuine, in real time. He is a victim to his own emotional instability. It's really shown as a malfunction, instead of a choice to be a wild acting, dangerous personality. Lore has pseudobulbar affect.

I haven't watched the Lore episodes in quite a bit, and either I missed this, forgot this, or it went over my head. I never really realised this or saw Lore in this way before reading this and that actually makes so much sense. It also at least gives an explanation as to why he's... like that. It seemed quite arbitrary to me why he would end up the way that he did beyond just "he's a faulty prototype of Data".

I've wondered what the ethical thing to do with Lore was, not including throwing him in the box like what actually happened. Is it ethical to reprogram him? Or chuck him in prison? Hand him over to Daystrom to study? Does he have rights? Or legally would he have had any recourse if Data or Maddox or someone had just done it? I've wondered about Lore being picked up by the Federation and held in a prison and being like Data's Lector a bit, in the most general sense of it though.

Oh no, I never thought of that! Now it's going to bother me forever! Lol
I'm not that good with this kind of thought question. I feel like the most ethical thing to do would be to emprison him. The 'does he have rights' thing would depend really on when we're doing this hypothetical thing to do with Lore, because if it's pre-Season Two then the answer to that would be up in the air. Post-Season Two would mean post-Measure Of a Man and if Data has rights then you would only assume that Lore does too.

 

[SurfingtheInterweb]

This episode more clearly demonstrates, better than any other, that Lore's problem was actually that he had been given heightened emotional awareness, just like his heightened speed, strength & processing ability. It was made to make him more than human as well. (Think Vulcan or Romulan levels of maddening emotion) He is shown to be almost immediately stricken with a wash of each emotion as they happen. His emotions are stronger, faster acting & more overwhelming than a human's, to the neglect of anything preceding it.

Find out he'd been summoned mistakenly? Immediately be spurned about it. Find out Soong is dying? Immediately grief stricken or in denial. Find out Data will now have emotions & be more like him? Immediately compassionate & empathetic to what that represents, & even a bit remorseful about his own nature. Realize Data gets all the good graces of his creator, despite his own injustices? Immediately embittered & vengeful.

I have no reason to doubt these reactions are anything but genuine, in real time. He is a victim to his own emotional instability. It's really shown as a malfunction, instead of a choice to be a wild acting, dangerous personality. Lore has pseudobulbar affect.

This is why the next step was to design a new model absent the thing altogether. As we see with Data in Generations, once it's active, it's part of him & much harder to correct. This is a sentience after all. Simply trying to reset Lore back to some Data type of factory settings might be more problem than solution, in itself.

And this also explains why Data would think he had no emotions. He was told that, & for all intents & purposes, it's true enough, & that he tells that to others sets him into a feedback loop where he's expected to be emotionless by himself & everyone, but possibly his emotional awareness has been deliberately polarized from Lore's. He was designed to be a feeling entity, but has had that dialed back to almost nothing, to effect a more controlled introduction of the emotion dynamic, in hopes that he'll be more comported from experience when exposed to it.

Data too has been shown tapping his fingers nervously in Data's Day. He's shown having legit concern for a comrade with Geordi in Interface, & ultimately chooses to support his obsession. He's shown looking legitimately relieved when Geordi returns alive in The Next Phase. Data does have emotions, already, & more over, he's meant to have them just like anybody else, like a table set for diners with one still yet to show up. His nature is to be emotional, but because his design is experimental, his has been willfully curtailed

Such a great analysis, totally agree.

 

[SurfingtheInterweb]

I've wondered what the ethical thing to do with Lore was, not including throwing him in the box like what actually happened. Is it ethical to reprogram him? Or chuck him in prison? Hand him over to Daystrom to study? Does he have rights? Or legally would he have had any recourse if Data or Maddox or someone had just done it? I've wondered about Lore being picked up by the Federation and held in a prison and being like Data's Lector a bit, in the most general sense of it though.

Prison seems an obvious choice, but not the ethical one, in my opinion. People with neurological disorders are incarcerated to a large degree, but I believe it is generally thought they need help, not prison. And so does Lore.

Lore seemed to want to be fixed. He asks Soong himself, why can't you just fix me? I believe its just like if a human was emotionally or psychologically unstable-- you can medicate. For humans, this is through pills or therapy, but Lore is an android. For Lore, his medication is a repair, and he seems like he wanted one in this episode. Of course, this changes over time as he becomes more and more embittered, but that happens in humans, too. It doesn't mean they should just be locked up.

 

[somebuddyX]

Prison seems an obvious choice, but not the ethical one, in my opinion. People with neurological disorders are incarcerated to a large degree, but I believe it is generally thought they need help, not prison. And so does Lore.

Lore seemed to want to be fixed. He asks Soong himself, why can't you just fix me? I believe its just like if a human was emotionally or psychologically unstable-- you can medicate. For humans, this is through pills or therapy, but Lore is an android. For Lore, his medication is a repair, and he seems like he wanted one in this episode. Of course, this changes over time as he becomes more and more embittered, but that happens in humans, too. It doesn't mean they should just be locked up.

I like that. I had envisioned Lore being in prison more as a temporary thing while they figure out what to do with him. I had imagined Data and Lore corresponding by subspace and every time I imagined Lore getting "fixed" it just felt really creepy, like he'd had his personality "corrected" like in some 70s horror film. I could never wrap my head around that being a good thing, even if it leads to a less murderous robot. Now I think I understand it better.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

This episode more clearly demonstrates, better than any other, that Lore's problem was actually that he had been given heightened emotional awareness, just like his heightened speed, strength & processing ability. It was made to make him more than human as well. (Think Vulcan or Romulan levels of maddening emotion) He is shown to be almost immediately stricken with a wash of each emotion as they happen. His emotions are stronger, faster acting & more overwhelming than a human's, to the neglect of anything preceding it.

Find out he'd been summoned mistakenly? Immediately be spurned about it. Find out Soong is dying? Immediately grief stricken or in denial. Find out Data will now have emotions & be more like him? Immediately compassionate & empathetic to what that represents, & even a bit remorseful about his own nature. Realize Data gets all the good graces of his creator, despite his own injustices? Immediately embittered & vengeful.

I have no reason to doubt these reactions are anything but genuine, in real time. He is a victim to his own emotional instability. It's really shown as a malfunction, instead of a choice to be a wild acting, dangerous personality. Lore has pseudobulbar affect.

This is why the next step was to design a new model absent the thing altogether. As we see with Data in Generations, once it's active, it's part of him & much harder to correct. This is a sentience after all. Simply trying to reset Lore back to some Data type of factory settings might be more problem than solution, in itself.

And this also explains why Data would think he had no emotions. He was told that, & for all intents & purposes, it's true enough, & that he tells that to others sets him into a feedback loop where he's expected to be emotionless by himself & everyone, but possibly his emotional awareness has been deliberately polarized from Lore's. He was designed to be a feeling entity, but has had that dialed back to almost nothing, to effect a more controlled introduction of the emotion dynamic, in hopes that he'll be more comported from experience when exposed to it.

Data too has been shown tapping his fingers nervously in Data's Day. He's shown having legit concern for a comrade with Geordi in Interface, & ultimately chooses to support his obsession. He's shown looking legitimately relieved when Geordi returns alive in The Next Phase. Data does have emotions, already, & more over, he's meant to have them just like anybody else, like a table set for diners with one still yet to show up. His nature is to be emotional, but because his design is experimental, his has been willfully curtailed

I’d love to reply to this in detail a bit more later if I remember. I’m just a bit stoned right now.

As a place holder, I’d just like to remark that it’s a really insightful post and made for very interesting and convincing arguments:

It actually makes me appreciate Lore a bit more and now I wanna watch a Lore episode. Maybe this one. It’s been years.

Over and out!

 

[Mojochi]

I’d love to reply to this in detail a bit more later if I remember. I’m just a bit stoned right now.

As a place holder, I’d just like to remark that it’s a really insightful post and made for very interesting and convincing arguments:

It actually makes me appreciate Lore a bit more and now I wanna watch a Lore episode. Maybe this one. It’s been years.

Over and out!

Definitely this is the Lore episode to watch for insight into his character. It's Spiner's best portrayals of each character. Albeit, because of its implications, it also makes watching all the Lore episodes better, by giving new perspective... kind of the way The Pegasus gives us a whole new way to look at Riker's story.

A lot of people don't like Descent, but deep diving on the nuances of Brothers makes Descent somewhat weightier too. Datalore is still a bit cheesy, but this outlook is still helpful to it as well imho

 

[Mojochi]

Prison seems an obvious choice, but not the ethical one, in my opinion. People with neurological disorders are incarcerated to a large degree, but I believe it is generally thought they need help, not prison. And so does Lore.

Lore seemed to want to be fixed. He asks Soong himself, why can't you just fix me? I believe its just like if a human was emotionally or psychologically unstable-- you can medicate. For humans, this is through pills or therapy, but Lore is an android. For Lore, his medication is a repair, and he seems like he wanted one in this episode. Of course, this changes over time as he becomes more and more embittered, but that happens in humans, too. It doesn't mean they should just be locked up.

Well said. The ethical debate about what should happen to Lore is one of the toughest in the whole show, more so than even Hugh, or the Up The Long Ladder Clones IMHO. As villainous as he becomes, he is still in essence a victim here, and everything wrong he's done can be traced to having an inability to master a faulty emotional design, & unlike Data, who seeks to improve himself, as an unfinished prospect, Lore's very emotional faults could be contributing to him thinking he wouldn't need to do similarly

At least that might be the case until we see him with Soong, lamenting that his creator should be able to fix him. Once that's not an option, he's abandoned to cope with himself as only he is capable, which is why I like the Borg messiah plotline. Someone struggling to find how he fits in the universe, coming across those lost mechanical beings would really feel he'd found a miraculous purpose. His deterioration into vengeance by then though makes it maybe the most potentially perilous turn of events in the whole show

A lot of people understandably don't like Data's final choice to deactivate Lore, but ultimately they are a culture of 2. There really is no one more appropriately qualified to be his judge & sentencer... & possibly executioner, even though I don't think he did permanently execute him. He just shut him down again, which is still a rights issue, but one specific to their culture, just like there was nothing anybody could do about Worf killing Duras.

An imprisoned Lore still represents a huge potential danger. An inert one does not. I like to think that had Data lived, one of his life goals would've been to perfect Soong's work enough to help cure Lore, & Lal, & B4 & maybe even Julianna.

Because let's be honest, Soong's actions have been wholly unethical. He's the bloody space age Dr. Frankenstein. He abandoned 4 different consciousnesses, he'd endowed with sentience, before he placed Data into a handicapped one, in some cases, leaving them to be forgotten or haphazardly found & put back into a life of suffering. Then, he stole a woman's consciousness & repurposed it for his own desires, designing her to be forcibly clueless to her own nature.

Frankly, WTF that guy wants is irrelevant. It should be left up to the folks he brought into the world to determine their (& each other's) lives' definitions, and nobody in Starfleet really has any authority to interject at all, least of all Maddox who's own work isn't even reliable. Data made the right choice with Lore IMHO, because his choice is categorically the only one that matters, whatever that choice was going to be.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Post-Season Two would mean post-Measure Of a Man and if Data has rights then you would only assume that Lore does too.

Some rights. Picard threatened Data with disassembled in Clues, and Data agreed that would happen.
Measure of a man didn’t say data was alive, just that this specific instance should be allowed ti find out for himself. There’s no guarentee that applies to Lore.

 

[korblborp]

every time I imagined Lore getting "fixed" it just felt really creepy, like he'd had his personality "corrected" like in some 70s horror film

IIRC, actually a thing in TOS, and they just sort of... sidestepped it. there's mention of it with Mudd, but that could have just been some kind of therapy. but then there's the episode where they go to a penal colony where it gets done and they only adress the fact that the guy in charge of doing it was making prisoners into personal assasssins or whatever

 

[SurfingtheInterweb]

Data made the right choice with Lore IMHO, because his choice is categorically the only one that matters, whatever that choice was going to be.

i never thought of it that way before. I suppose that would be correct and, since there's no legal precedents (unlike where we see other cultures challenged by the laws of the areas the practitioners are inhabiting), no one can do anything about it (and it is also an easy option that starfleet probably does not want to dispute).

one of his life goals would've been to perfect Soong's work

I've always imagined that if things had worked out a little neater with Lore, Data could have been his... sponsor. Reapired, and helped him integrate into life. The problem is, Data does not seem to like Lore very much, and insists on turning him off whenever possible. He tells Soong to not reactivate him when he is summoned, either. So, while it's nice to imagine Data would attempt this, he really might not. He may believe there is no hope and no fix, and doesn't view an emotional repair as an option.

There's also the option to simply remove the additional emotional chip. We have no idea what Lore was doing before he was summoned, but he dressed in different clothes and had access to a ship. He could have been anywhere, and had no intentions of performing ill will against Soong or Data. He just wants to leave, and he almost does. Maybe he was finally learning how to manage himself. Maybe without the additional chip, therapy could have been effective.