“The Quality of Life” (6×09)
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While evaluating an innovative new mining technology, Data begins to suspect that the repair drones in the facility, which have the ability to learn from experience and self-optimize, have achieved a form of sentience and qualify as life. His beliefs are put to the test when he is asked to sacrifice them to save Picard and LaForge.
The opening poker scene with the men all very proud of their beards and Crusher not at all impressed was fun. Especially when they flip the tables and threaten her beloved ginger locks.
The fascinating thing about the exocomps is that they were deliberately conceptualized to be as uncharismatic and impersonal as possible, to revisit “The Measure of a Man” debate without the audience’s emotional investment in Data or his many human-like qualities. But, much like R2D2, because they have sentience some personality naturally follows. And the decision to sacrifice one of their number to save Picard, LaForge, and the others is an incredibly noble act.
Data makes an incredibly principled stand in this episode, but at the same time I understood Riker’s exasperation at his insubordination.
I do think the waters got muddied a bit because of Starfleet’s absolutist stance when it comes to life: Even microbes that may in billions of years evolve into sentient life are given extensive protections under the Prime Directive. If the question had been not whether the exocomps were alive, but whether they had attained consciousness, that would have been a much cleaner approach.
As Dr. Falloran, the Tyran inventor behind both the mining technology and exocomps, Ellen Bry did better than most guest stars when it came to the technobabble. I believed that Falloran understood what she was saying and what it meant, which isn’t always the case with these one-off performances.
My favorite beat in the episode was the scene between Data and Picard at the end. It was Picard’s life that Data had risked in defense of the exocomps, so he would have had every reason to be the most upset by Data’s insubordination. But, no, he wholeheartedly agreed with Data’s moral stance. Picard genuinely doesn’t believe his life is worth more than the exocomps’, if they are sentient beings like he is. That’s Picard at his finest, in my opinion, and showing the same qualities that would later drive him to sacrifice his entire career and reputation to save the Romulans, one of his most intractable enemies.
Impacts on Star Trek Continuity:
This episode, which I don’t believe I’d ever seen before, filled in a couple blanks for me. I now know where Peanut Hamper, the asshole drone recurring character from “Lower Decks”, originated. And I now know where the Geordi screenshots for this meme came from:
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