Star Trek: The Next Generation — 7x10 — Inheritance

Aired 1993-11-22

SpaceOpera.com rating:5

Average reader rating:5.04

Synopsis

Data meets a woman who claims to be his mother.

Remarkable scenes

Data describing Lal to Juliana. Good continuity there.
I like the music scenes in this episode.
Seeing Juliana an android.
Data describing the reasons he suspected Juliana was an android before.

Review

This is one of the better "Data's past" episodes. Juliana was essentially the perfect android Soong set out to create, despite the ironic circumstances surrounding her creation. She fooled everybody, even herself. But the episode is severely lacking in overall plot. It's nice to get info about Data's past, but it literally dominated this episode. In the end it feels like a big stretched out waste of time, even if a nicely done one.

6 reader comments

Season 7 seems to concentrate on fully developing the background of the TNG crew. Inheritance accomplishes by filling in more detailed information about his past.
But that is all this episode is, a chronicle of Data. It is only average when compared to the other Data episodes. I give it a 5.
by Orion Pimpdaddy | 06/18/2006 at 1:43 am

Problem: How can Juliana live her whole life without knowing she was an android? You would think she would set off metal detectors, get an X-ray done, or accidentally open up the maintenance hatch that is on her head.
by Orion Pimpdaddy | 06/18/2006 at 1:46 am

Geordi would be unable to detect her as an android since she was designed to give off human vital signs etc.
by Paul | 08/17/2010 at 9:16 pm

This episode is ok, though to be honest I've found myself skipping it when re-watching the series. I enjoyed when I saw it for the first time but, like others have said, it really doesn't have much of a plot.
It fits into a sort of sub-category of trek episodes that I find generally annoying: the "charming woman with a secret" episodes. Typically these episodes feature a talented guest actress as a woman who charms one or more of the crew, but who has some hidden agenda or other secret thing about them which eventually becomes the focus of the plot. In many cases, this gets old quick. In the case where the audience actually likes the mystery woman it's just as bad, because they are never referred to again.
I give this one a 4 myself, because it's nothing new, and not all that interesting either.
by John DC | 02/05/2011 at 5:02 pm

I rated this episode a 5. I found it quite interesting and definitely a good Data episode. The story was fairly well done although there are always those plot lines that are written to carry the story as ridiculous as always. Whenever there is something questionable happening or to explain there is either a well it happened this way or a new technology is involved, not something logical. However my biggest gripe is that it would be ridiculous to think an android, no matter how advanced, would not realize it wasn't flesh and blood. That is totally absurd. It never got sick, it never cut itself, it never figured out that the food it ate was not normally processed as a biological being would be, and on and on. Soong could simply not have made everything so human that a thinking machine would not determine it was a machine.
by Robert Koenn | 07/05/2011 at 6:59 pm

I love how the holographic Dr. Soong tells Data that he designed the android Juliana to shut down in the event that she learns she's an android, yet in the next scene, they are discussing whether or not Data should tell her and this fact is never even mentioned. It seems like an important consideration?
by Mike Chambers | 10/16/2021 at 4:25 am