Review

This episode was a clever, fascinating character piece for Data, a character who up until now has been quite mysterious and unusual. Data was apparently constructed by a famous scientist known as Dr. Noonian Soong who had long promised the invention of a viable positronic brain, a concept originally conceived by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who Yar references directly. His work had apparently been long regarded as fruitless because word of the invention of Lore then later Data had not spread beyond his home colony. Dr. Soong had apparently disassembled Lore and began work on replacing him with Data after Lore's behavior turned out to be disruptive, but not before Lore had managed to summon the crystalline entity to wipe out the colonists. Data was left out in the open to be found by Starfleet (specifically the starship Tripoli) some time later while Lore was hidden away so as to do no further harm. At least until Geordi discovered Dr. Soong's secret lab...

In addition to the episode being loaded with wonderful tidbits and details about Data's construction and history, it is simply a pleasure to watch Brent Spiner play both Data and Lore. This take on the evil twin story compares quite favorably with William Shatner's performance in TOS: The Enemy Within, but not everything in the story is as well done. They could've stood to tone down Lore's overwhelming malevolence a bit. Good villains give us compelling reasons to believe why they're the heroes of their own stories, but we don't ever get a clear reason why Lore wanted to please the crystalline entity so much. There may be no reason other than sadistically wanting to destroy the community that rejected him.

Another curious plot point was the obsession with Lore using contractions and Data not using them when in fact we've seen Data use contractions many times before. He said "can't" in Encounter at Farpoint, "that's" in The Naked Now, and "I'm" in several episodes like The Last Outpost and Justice. Data also quite conspicuously uses "I'm" at the end of the episode, perhaps a deliberate choice on the part of the writers to show that Data has become more human as a result of this experience. Regardless of the intent of the writers, the presentation of this plot point is clumsy. It would've been better to simply say that Lore had a stronger, more informal command of language than Data. Not say that Data doesn't use contractions, but that he uses them infrequently because his language is frequently overly formal making him appear more artificial and less human.

Lastly, Picard's treatment of Wesley in this episode was strangely inappropriate, particularly after The Traveler had told Picard that Wesley is unusually smart and perceptive in Where No One Has Gone Before. You'd think people would put more stock in Wesley's intuitions after that or at least hear him out before barking at him to shut up. Overall though this is one of the strongest and most memorable episodes of the season so far.