Why was Data so naive on the Ent-D?

[Solarbaby]

He's obviously been around for a while and attended the academy and interacted with humans. In fact wasn't he found 26 years before Encounter at Farpoint? Thats enough time for a human to be up to speed with the culture. So why was Data so baby like in his take on the universe?

Surely someone at the Academy would have told him to shut the f*** up when he went into useless fact overkill. Cadets can be very mean. Yet Picard has to cut him short many times. Even the computer does on one occasion.

I know the reasons from the writers point of view. But it doesn't make sense. He'd been around long enough to have ironed out his naivety to a lesser degree than in EaF.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Yeah, I never understood why he was that way considering he was in Starfleet for a while before then; maybe I'm recalling wrongly, but didn't the U.S.S. Tripoli find him 30 years ago (TNG timeline)? And he was amongst the colonists before then, too. That's far too much contact with humans to be as baby-brained as he was in early seasons of TNG.

 

[Trekker4747]

It's simply possible that no one before his time on the Ent-D had really seen Data as an "equal enough" to try and relate to him as anything more than "just a machine."

Since the Enterprise is staffed with the "best and brightest" it could be, quite simply, they were the first to treat Data as an equal and to relate to him enough that his programing could grow and become more "human."

Spoilers for the book "The Buried Age"

(It's not "canon" but poster Christopher wrote a book about Picard's time between the Stargazer and the Enterprise. In it Picard enlists Data for a research mission, meeting Data before they work together on the Enterprise, and in it Data says something to the effect that when he first encounters a new crew he 'acts as human as possible' to ease transition with a new crew into how he "really" is. I think Christopher did this to explain how Data acted so "human like" in Seasons 1 and 2 compared to the rest of the series.)

 

[Shatnertage]

Yeah, if him reading the thesaurus and not getting colloquialisms gets on our nerves, and we only see him for 45 minutes a week, imagine how the rest of the bridge crew feels.

What about the possibility that he knows his behavior is un-human-like and off-putting, but does it anyway, just to see if he can get a rise out of people? Maybe it's a long-running experiment in social interaction, like the time he dated that woman.

All I can say, is I'm really thankful that he didn't sit on the bridge with that smile from the scene in "Data's Day" where Beverly taught him to dance. That was intensely creepy, but in a funny way.

I found a screencap online, but it doesn't do it justice.

 

[Locutus of Board]

You all are looking into too deeply. He was the Ent-D's Pinocchio.

 

[Solarbaby]

Perhaps. But they could have made him be found a lot sooner. 26 years is a long time to adapt to humans. Look how far data came by season 7.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

The above mentioned 'The Buried Age' also states that after leaving the Academy, Data was mainly relegated to areas that didn't involve a lot of interaction with other officers. Because he didn't quite get that just because you're ordered to do something doesn't mean you can't voice dissatisfaction with the job you're given, and he stayed quiet about it. And when he tried to interact with the other officers he worked with, they weren't entirely comfortable around him because of his android nature. So Data's time on the Enterprise was close to the first time he was treated as an equal and not a walking talking piece of equipment.

 

[Finn]

The above mentioned 'The Buried Age' also states that after leaving the Academy, Data was mainly relegated to areas that didn't involve a lot of interaction with other officers. Because he didn't quite get that just because you're ordered to do something doesn't mean you can't voice dissatisfaction with the job you're given, and he stayed quiet about it. And when he tried to interact with the other officers he worked with, they weren't entirely comfortable around him because of his android nature. So Data's time on the Enterprise was close to the first time he was treated as an equal and not a walking talking piece of equipment.

Except he was familiar with academy events as if they were a factor in his routine like the sadie hawkins dance.

 

[SchwEnt]

I agree. Many things about Data do not add up.
He's been up and running for 20+ years, but in EaF he might as well have been turned on last week.

He doesn't know about "snoop" and "eager beaver" (which is simple reference file data) but he DOES know about Joe DiMaggio, Joltin' Joe, the Yankee Clipper
and Buck Bokai of the London Kings. Right.

And yeah, if his progress from Season One to Season Seven is any indication,
what the hell was going on for DECADES prior to EaF??

Wait...I'm not done.

Starfleet was so unsure of what to do with him, and relegated him to some backwater assignments, and considered him property.
Then how did he attain the rank of Lt. Cmdr?

And if Data was considered property, why would Starfleet allow him to be third in command of a Galaxy class starship? Shades of M-5, allowing a machine to command a starship. They trust him with that much, or he is merely a tool?

If he is a senior officer in the chain of command, he should be considered a sentient lifeform as any other Starfleet officer.
If he was property and a machine and assigned with uncertainty by Starfleet,
he should not have held high rank or been second officer.

Yeah, a lot about Data doesn't seem to add up well, to me.

 

[pieboi66]

I believe it was stated that Data suffered a memory loss or something, so that he did not remember his time with the colonists, and he probably spent most of his academy years alone or in silence, preferring not to interact with us humans. He was probably on a fast-track through the academy, and so didn't have time to establish any relationships, and even if someone tried to approach him, well it's hard to make friends who don't have emotions. Anyways, starfleet still realized that he was "prodigious" student, and, not wanting to show discrimination towards what was essentially a form of life, assigned him to Enterprise as a liutenenant, where he was quickly promoted to Lt. Commander. He has since served in that capacity. The neglect of the tv producers to focus on Data's academy years leads me to believe they were uneventful, and well, robotic, because of the fact that they focused a lot on his interesting past with the crystalline entity. The rank of Liutenant Commander is not based on that of him being an android, but being recognized as a form of life, he was clearly able to perform the duties required. Given his unique abilities, he may have also been requested by Captain Picard to join the Enterprise crew, when we first meet them in the episode that Picard goes back in time to stop the temeperal anomaly.

That's my theory

 

[Finn]

^That is not consistent what was established on the show. Some of Data's remarks, including the one I mentioned upthread, and his conversation with Lore early on implied he was on a normal track or he wouldn't have told Lore it would take years for him to attain the rank of Lt. Commander (He had no reason to lie at the time).

 

[Smellincoffee]

For the same reason that Spock was so needlessly smug: it's a way for the writers or producers to make clear to the audience that Data has a different perspective on everything. While we use image-rich language and figures of speech with obscure origins rather fluently, Data is engineered to interpret things more...mechanically.

"In universe", though, it doesn't make sense. Data is a lieutenant commander by the time TNG starts, indicating he's had plenty of experience interacting with people in productive ways. I wish I could remember the way Michael Jan Friedman handled Data when writing that Starfleet Academy series for middle-schoolers.

 

[Timo]

Why should we assume that Data would "adapt to humans"?

I mean, what would his motivation for this be? A human might feel pressure to get socially accepted, to conform, to learn the ropes. Why would an android?

Data learns things when he gets the spontaneous urge to do so. He got all excited about sneezing in "Datalore", not before, not after. He attempted painting in "11001001", not before. There's no sign that he would have been making steady progress towards imitating humans perfectly - quite to the contrary, he could turn on a perfect imitation whenever he wanted (such as "In Theory"), but had no desire to leave the mimicry on for any length of time.

Data may aspire to be more human, but that never manifests as him trying to blend in. He always approaches his goal by being a curious android, in both senses of the word: he is inquisitive about the world around him, and he radiates strangeness, often because of his inquisitiveness. Sometimes strangeness is a tool he uses for learning more, even.

I don't buy the "Picard was the first one to care" argument. In order to reach the position on the Federation Flagship and the rank of LtCmdr, Data would already have to be a pet project or close friend of a number of influential people - in either case getting plenty of attention and exposure. Even hanging around with Commander Maddox would have exposed him to the facts of life. No, Data probably learned perfect human mimicry during his first year of awareness already, unless Soong had built it into him from the get-go.

Data isn't babylike because he's undeveloped. He's babylike because he's alien. Unlike an abnormal human such as an autist, he's alien not because he'd be incapable of being normal human, but because he's disinterested in settling for mere normal human when that's neither his natural state of existence nor the limit of his abilities.

He doesn't know about "snoop" and "eager beaver" (which is simple reference file data) but he DOES know about Joe DiMaggio, Joltin' Joe, the Yankee Clipper
and Buck Bokai of the London Kings. Right.

That feels very true. The things you list him as knowing about are facts one can easily assimilate today by googling the keywords - most of the hits will be relevant, as the items in question are simple facts, classic encyclopedia material. The things you list him as not knowing are related to the use of language, and an attempt to google them will yield very little solid data or grammatical or etymological advice - you'll mostly get garbage.

"Snoop" isn't something Data would have to face in everyday life. He'll get it if he's interested in it, but his interest is not systematical by a long shot. Yet "snoop" is a phenomenon to be comprehended, while Joe DiMaggio is a dull, context-free fact to be quoted.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

I still say it's the 60 trillion operations per second. He's just kinda stupid.

I'm amazed you can get mostly Turing-passing speech out of a 60 trillion ops computer. Hell, I'm surprised he can walk.

 

[tau136]

Apart from on a starship people could run away from DataSpeak / DataStyle. If you can't dodge, then you've gotta put up or shut him up by changing him.

 

[Alrik]

This is my take on the subject from a similar thread a little while back. Here... http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=123062

Other things to consider are that perhaps the Enterprise crew was the first to fully accept Data as an equal and be willing to interact with him as such. Maddox viewed Data as nothing more than a machine in Measure of A Man and Hobson showed outright prejudice towards him when he took command of the Sutherland in Redemption (II). Maybe their attitudes were more common than was presented. Perhaps it was a case that the crew of the Flag Ship was an exceptional group.

Also, we don't really know where Data spent his time in Starfleet prior to being posted to the Enterprise. Maybe because he was so literal and logical, Starfleet felt it best to assign him to Vulcan crewed ships early on. They never really went into that part of his back story, so who knows?

 

[Archaeologist]

You all are looking into too deeply. He was the Ent-D's Pinocchio.

Yeah, that's kind of the way I see Data, as being somewhat like (as well as inspired by) Pinocchio. He's definitely got that personality.

 

[Johnny]

data came into his own for me when i noticed he starts flicking his phaser round with his left hand into his left holder. not seen anyone else do that since. didnt see him do it from the start?

 

[Clare]

Yes I agree with Locutus of Board..........I think people forget that Star Trek is at the end of the day a TV programme (along with movies, books etc...lol) and the writers want to make it fun and interesting to please the fans.........that's why sometimes things don't always make sense or they don't fit.

If Data didn't act naive then what would be the point of his character? I mean it would make the show very boring if everybody acted as they should logically......

 

[Solarbaby]

Yes I agree with Locutus of Board..........I think people forget that Star Trek is at the end of the day a TV programme (along with movies, books etc...lol) and the writers want to make it fun and interesting to please the fans.........that's why sometimes things don't always make sense or they don't fit.

If Data didn't act naive then what would be the point of his character? I mean it would make the show very boring if everybody acted as they should logically......

I agree.

All the writers had to do to make it more believable was to make him be found a lot sooner than 26 years earlier. It really is absurd to think that after all those years interacting with humans he would be so childlike. Data progressed pretty well over the 7 years. So add another 19 and he should have been indistinguishable from humans (with a nice tan emulsion coat, and contacts)