From: rem@btr.BTR.COM (Robert E. Maas  rem@btr.com)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current
Subject: Re: I liked Fistful of Datas *** Major Spoilers ***
Date: 12 Nov 92 13:04:02 GMT
Organization: BTR Public Access UNIX, MtnView CA. For info contact: info@BTR.COM

Hey, I'm not kidding. If you haven't see "A Fistful of Datas" yet, or
even if you got in on the middle and didn't see the first part yet,
mark this as un-read and come back another day after you've seen it.
I'm not only going to reveal stuff near the end, but some really juicy
stuff right at the start. It's a reasonably good episode and I don't
want to spoil your fun seeing it the first time, so don't read any more
unless you've seen the whole show already!!

judson@watserv.ucr.edu (Michael Judson) said: <<I liked the fact that
Data's experiment didn't lead to a ship wide disaster near an exploding
star which was going to destroy the Enterprise.>>

Yeah, just some partial breakdown, which nearly had deadly effects in
the holodeck due in part to the nature of the fantasy going on there,
not the exploding ship or whatever that got too typical for my taste. I
too was glad the problem wasn't another ship-destroying emergency.

This episode tonight was a LOT better than I though it would be. I
thought it would be nearly trash, but it turned out to have some very
good parts and on the average be moderately good. They turned a really
bad plot idea (remake of WestWorld and FutureWorld; WestWorld was a
good movie, but FutureWorld was a cruddy sequel; I expected Fistful of
Datas to be even worse than FutureWorld) into a decent episode (it was
more like The Trouble with Tribbles, a real fun episode, not like
WestWorld et al in style even though the plot was similar).

I loved when Picard was trying to practice music and getting constant
interruptions from crewmembers trying to get permission to do various
maintenance tasks during the lull in major duty due to 48-hour delay in
arrival of the other ship. I know how he feels, just like when I'm on
the computer trying to check job ads or read a StarTrek newsgroup and
my wife and children are over and over and over having one disaster or
another in the other room interrupting me to go out see what the
disaster was, so I can never concentrate on my task for more than a
minute at a time. This scene was slightly similar also to the one where
Picard was in the holodeck trying to escape Lawaxana Troi, trying to
find a nice relaxing Dixon Hill mystery but getting more and more
immediately violent action with each attempt to adjust the computer
parameters. I loved that scene from that episode too!

I loved the way it turned out the only reason Worf was so urgently
trying to get Picard to approve extra duty for him was to find an
excuse to avoid the wild west adventure his son had planned.

I liked the way Data's cat kept getting on the keyboard, just like my
son did for a few months last Spring around the age of two (trashing
the name of my hard disk many times, dragging folders into other
folders where I had to try to find them, guess guess what kind of
computer I have, haha). Fortunately Data's computer console was a
little more robust against such random key presses, or else
unfortunately the writer was too stupid to recognize the chance to show
how Data reacts when he loses all his work due to that cat (Out, dammed
spot!! No, that's another play, sorry I couldn't resist. :-)

I felt sorry for poor Dr. Crusher when all copies of her stageplay were
obliterated from the computer databanks (we never found out whether
they were able to find a backup copy somewhere, or she completely lost
her work; Presumably she didn't have a backup on floppies. :-). She was
obviously very upset at the prospect of losing all her work, but her
personality prevented her from going bonkers and cussing, but she was
obviously on the verge of losing her cool a little. I think they did a
good job of fitting her role-personality into that situation. (Same
when she was trapped in the warp bubble and despite being just seconds
from death she kept her cool and figured a way out. Good consistency in
character personality between the two.)

Deanna Troi showed a completely different side of her (fictional)
personality when she showed up as the mysterious sidekick. I've never
liked her, wished she was going to be the one eliminated by the Skin of
Evil and was upset when Yar died instead, but this role was fun, I
liked her this way for a change. The only other time I ever liked her
was when she was absorbing all the bad feelings from that human vampire
that tricked her into establishing a mind link with him, and in that
state she told off her wimpy patient during therapy and really shocked
that patient into reforming.

I didn't figure out what the title "Fistful ..." meant even when there
were two data roles, only later at the shootout when there were a half
dozen extra Datas around. Then suddenly I knew.

I loved the exactly appropriate line Worf used to get rid of the bad
guy and his friends: "Don't show your face in this town ...", so
appropriate because it applied not just to him but everyone else with
the same Data face, a really neat hack. But that was spoiled when the
woman with Data's face showed up, apparently the face-in-town didn't
apply to her for some reason I don't understand. I'd almost call that a
flaw in the episode.

It was neat that Barclay was responsible in large measure for helping
set up the holodeck program. He did have a VIVID imagination back when
he was so busy cowering in the holodeck he didn't have time for real
life and his duties. Sure enough, that sexual-romance imagination
turned up several places in this fantasy!

I liked the way the holodeck program was pre-configured for various
levels of difficulty, and Worf's son knew enough about programming it
and running it to not only help with the setup but immediately do the
right commands to backtrack the program and switch to difficulty level
four when Worf found the initial level much too easy and boring and not
fun. I liked the way Worf started to really like it once it was a real
challange, sort of like the Klingon calisthenics program that he and
his late wife used to enjoy. Even after it went astray, at the end he
really did think back and remember it fondly and dream of doing it
again. That's his Klingon blood in action, loving battle or similar
activities. Worf got to play his usual role again (sheriff is the same
in principle as security chief, prevent the bad guys from getting their
way), as well as enjoy a new form of battle.

I was rather surprized that Worf was able to out-draw Data's character.
Anybody have a good explanation? Was it because the link between Data
and the gunfighter was weak (not enough program had been transferred),
or because the purge of the program mixup was nearly done so the
gunfighter was being emasculated at the time, or just the scriptwriter
letting the good guy win for no good reason?

One minor quibble, how come when the crew realized that Data's software
had intruded in the entertainment system, nobody ran down to the
holodeck to make sure nobody was trapped in there? Several past
episodes somebody has been trapped in the holodeck during malfunction
or deliberate tampering, and some times people were injured and nearly
killed in the holodeck at such times, so didn't they think to check for
that kind of thing happening again? At least ask the computer who is in
the holodecks at the time.

In summary, this was a real fun episode, the first part really great
fun and to a lesser extent the rest of it with good stuff here and
there. The nearest I can compare it to was The Trouble with Tribbles,
which was nearly everyone's favorite TOS episode including mine. This
isn't my favorite TNG episode, but it's probably going to be included
in my top fourty (yes, there are about fourty TNG episodes I really
liked, and this too may be one; Picard reliving 40 years of a man's
life from 1000 years previously from extinct civilization is one of my
VERY favorites, probably top ten, by the way; Fistful of Datas probably
won't be in my top ten, only somewhere from 11th to 40th).

The science in this episode was more believable to me than a lot of the
episodes. Both Data and the holodeck (and the food synthesizer, and the
information bank) are run by computers, so a screwup of software could
easily make all those malfunctions happen at the same time. Also it was
consistent, that Data's stuff got into the main computer (poetry,
music, and his superhuman abilities) and the holodeck program got into
him (strange talk, spinning his tricorder or whatever and holstering it
like a Western pistol, spitting in the potted plant). I suppose Data's
problem making catfood his cat would like was just a red herring, but
it too made sense since Data never could quite figure out how living
beings would react to stimuli.

Oh yes, before I close: First we had a boxfull of puppies (both in
Dinosaurs, and in True Q), then a schoolroom full of children
(Rascals), and now a half dozen Data faces. Do I see a pattern? Maybe
that stuff on Dinosaurs about viewers really liking a half dozen cute
things, whether they are puppies or what, is true, and the Startrek
producers have decided to play it to the limit??
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