Data

"I chose to believe that I was a person, that I had the potential to become more than a collection of circuits and subprocessors."

- Data

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Lieutenant Commander Data was a Soong-type android, the first and only such being to ever enter Starfleet. Data was created sometime during the 2330s and died in 2379, sacrificing his own life for the 800 men and women aboard the Enterprise.

Data was composed of 24.6 kilograms of tripolymer composites, 11.8 kilograms of molybdenum-cobalt alloys and 1.3 kilograms of bioplast sheeting. All told, he weighed approximately 100 kilograms. Data's upper spinal support was a polyalloy designed for extreme stress. His skull was composed of cortenide and duranium. Data was built with an ultimate storage capacity of eight hundred quadrillion bits (approximately 100 petabytes) and a total linear computational speed rated at sixty trillion operations per second.

Soong-type androids were incapable of alcohol intoxication, yet components in its processing systems are susceptible to disruption by polywater intoxication.

In 2369, Dr. Julian Bashir expressed his fascination for all the trouble Dr. Soong took to make Data seem "Human." He was especially surprised on how "personable" Data was. He also questioned Data about whether his hair grew, and observed that Data was "breathing" and had a "pulse." Together, Bashir and Data investigated an alien device. The device emitted a plasma shock that overloaded Data's positronic net, activating a series of previously dormant circuits that subsequently gave Data the ability to dream.

Data appears to be left-handed, or at least, he seems to favor his left hand for tasks such as painting.

Data always sought to become more human in his behavior, often with unfortunate results. His attempts at humor were not successful, nor were his attempts at romance and love. He maintained a relationship with Jenna D'Sora but it did not last long. Besides humor and romance, Data also had trouble using contractions in regular speech although this was part of his programming by Dr. Soong.

In an alternate timeline, Data appeared to have mastered contractions by the 2390s.

During his stay aboard the Enterprise-D, Data kept a cat as his pet, whom he named Spot. Spot was quite fickle in her relationships: besides Data she only enjoyed the company of Reginald Barclay. In 2371, Spot survived the destruction of the Enterprise. Data, newly with emotions as a result of his emotion chip, cried tears of joy over Spot's survival.

He began using this emotion chip in 2371, one year after he acquired it from his brother Lore. At first, he had some difficulties adjusting to the onslaught of emotions, as simple things as scanning for lifeforms on a planet caused him great pleasure. He eventually learned to control the feelings. After the initial adjustment period, he was able to turn the chip on and off, and later to remove it completely.

Data was the third of six known androids designed by Dr. Noonien Soong. He was built on the planet Omicron Theta in ca. 2336, after Lore was deactivated, and over the protests of Soong's wife Juliana.

In his earliest existence, Data was much like a baby, struggling with motor control and sensory input. Over time, he learned about himself and his world, and his programming was refined by Dr. Soong, who attempted to eliminate certain undesirable behaviors. Problems included a disregard for social niceties (courtesies like "please" and "thank you"), and a lack of appreciation for clothing (Data did not see any necessity since he "didn't suffer from the elements"). In regards to the latter issue, the Soongs had to write a "modesty subroutine", because the colonists objected to an anatomically accurate android being unclothed.

Eventually they decided to program Data with the logs and journals of the colonists, while simultaneously wiping his memory of his early existence. Unfortunately, the Crystalline Entity attacked before Data was reactivated.

Juliana had come to view Data as her beloved son, but always feared that he would fail like the early androids, or become dangerous, like Lore, and would have to be dismantled. This fear motivated her to lie to her husband when they fled, forcing him to leave Data behind, inactive.

Data was found and reactivated on the planet Omicron Theta by the USS Tripoli on February 2nd, 2338, after the Crystalline Entity destroyed the entire colony on the planet. His connection with Starfleet resulted in his choice to enter Starfleet Academy. He was permitted to enter the Academy in 2341, and spent four years there.

During this time Data did extremely well scholastically, but his lack of understanding often created social obstacles. He fell victim to several practical jokes and had difficulty with social gatherings. Nonetheless, in 2345, Data graduated with honors in exobiology and probability mechanics.

One of Data's first assignments out of Starfleet Academy was aboard the USS Trieste. He spent three years as an ensign and twelve as a lieutenant before being promoted to lieutenant commander in 2360. In 2364 he was assigned to the USS Enterprise-D as its second officer.

By 2365, Data had earned the Starfleet Command Decoration for Gallantry, Medal of Honor with clusters, Legion of Honor, and the Star Cross. By early 2368, Data had encountered 1,754 non-Human races during his tenure with Starfleet.

Data served as operations manager and second officer on board the USS Enterprise-D from 2364 until the vessel's destruction in 2371. Since he did not require sleep, he routinely stood night watch on the bridge. His quarters were located on deck 2, room 3653. He frequently participated in many of the away missions undertaken. His speed of thought and great strength made him an important asset to the ship, and the fact that he was unaffected by disease, radiation or mind control was vital on more than one occasion.

Data was a major influence in the quest to recognize the sentience of androids. In 2365, Data was ordered by Commander Bruce Maddox to submit to an untested procedure that Maddox believed would grant him a greater understanding of the technology behind Data's positronic brain. Data studied Maddox's proposal and found it to be flawed, prompting Maddox to assert his authority and order Data to submit. Data refused and resigned from Starfleet, but Maddox challenged his right to do so, claiming that Data was property, not a sentient lifeform, a position supported by Captain Phillipa Louvois of the Judge Advocate General's office. Captain Jean-Luc Picard challenged this position, stating that Data currently represented an entire race and duplicating him for the purposes of enforced labor constituted slavery. Louvois ultimately ruled that Data was not the property of Starfleet and could choose whether to acquiesce to Maddox's requests. Data, however, continued to communicate with Commander Maddox, assisting him in his work. Many agreed with Data that he was sentient, so much so that as of 2372, Data was considered the only sentient artificial lifeform in Federation society.

In 2371, at the ceremony honoring Worf's promotion to Lieutenant Commander, Data witnessed an incident where Worf was accidentally sent into the water in a holographic simulation of a ship at sea. Misinterpreting the laughter it evoked, he then spontaneously pushed Dr. Beverly Crusher overboard. He was disheartened to find out that it wasn't quite as funny. The incident led him to believe that his development had reached an impasse. He decided to install the emotion chip he had taken from Lore at the beginning of the year.

The results were unpredictable, later attributed to the overload of new data on emotion. During an away mission with Geordi La Forge on board the Amargosa observatory, his recall of previous funny incidents led to the emotion chip overloading, fusing into his neural net and rendering Data helpless as Tolian Soran sneaked on board and kidnapped La Forge. Unable to deal with the sudden onset of fear as a result, Data curled up in a corner as Soran beamed away with La Forge. As the Enterprise investigated, Data was overcome by yet another emotion: regret, over getting La Forge captured. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, himself trying to get over news of the death of his brother and nephew, helped Data get through his anguish, and the two managed to figure out where Soran was headed, and why.

Upon arrival at planet Veridian III, where Soran was planning to implode the Veridian sun with a trilithium missile so he could get to the Nexus, Data was finally able to experience relief as Geordi La Forge was returned to Enterprise unharmed. Data continued to work on controlling his emotions throughout the mission, Enterprise's battle with the Duras sisters, and the crash landing of the saucer section on Veridian III. By the end of the mission, when Starfleet came to recover the Enterprise crew and anything that could be salvaged from the saucer section, Data reckoned to have experienced 261 distinct emotional states. He learned one more emotion before leaving Veridian III: tears of joy, after finding Spot alive in an empty barrel.

Data transferred to the new USS Enterprise-E in 2372, along with most of the senior staff of the Enterprise-D. In 2373, the Enterprise took part in the Battle of Sector 001 against Starfleet orders. Thanks to the ship's intervention, the Borg cube was destroyed, but not before it launched a sphere which generated a temporal vortex and traveled to the year 2063. The Enterprise pursued, and destroyed the sphere before it was able to prevent the first flight of Zefram Cochrane aboard the Phoenix warp ship. Along with Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher, Data beamed down to the surface, to inspect any damage to the Phoenix. Upon suspecting Borg presence aboard the Enterprise, however, Picard and Data transported back to the ship. While fighting off the Borg near Main Engineering, Data was captured and brought before the Borg Queen. Instead of attempting to assimilate Data, she had him made more Human by attaching Human skin onto his android skeleton.

When it appeared impossible to hold off the Borg any longer, Picard was convinced to initiate the self-destruct of the Enterprise and ordered all remaining crew to evacuate. He himself went on to Engineering to find Data and to convince the Queen, whom he had encountered several years previously when he was Locutus, to release Data. Picard was even prepared to take Data's place at the Queen's side and become her equal. Data, however, claimed he did not wish to go, even after the Queen ordered him away. Thus, the Queen ordered Picard's assimilation, but not before witnessing the destruction of the Phoenix by Data.

The quantum torpedoes fired by Data missed by the smallest of margins, and quickly thereafter he ruptured a plasma coolant tank, releasing plasma coolant which would dissolve organic material on contact. The Queen (or at least one version of her) was killed, but Picard managed to survive. Helping Data standing up, Picard asked him if he was ever tempted to join the Borg's cause. Data replied that, for a fraction of a second, he was. He added that, for an android, that is almost like an eternity.

By 2379, Data was expected to replace Commander Riker as first officer following Riker's promotion to Captain of the USS Titan. But before Data could take the role, the Enterprise was ordered to Romulus where a new praetor had come to power. Shinzon's good intentions, however, were soon found to be false. In reality, he was discovered to be a clone of Captain Picard and, due to genetic degenerations, he was in need of the captain's DNA in order to restore his own. After Shinzon's vessel, the Scimitar, had almost destroyed the Enterprise, Picard was able to eliminate Shinzon aboard his own vessel. Data boarded the Scimitar just in time to prevent activation of its thalaron radiation weapon and the death of Picard. Firing at the weapon with a phaser, he sacrificed his own life to save the Enterprise from destruction. However, prior to his destruction, Data's memory banks had been transferred to the android B-4, and although the memory transfer did not appear to take, Picard's interactions with B-4 after Data's death hint at the possibility of a Spock-like rebirth.

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From: Memory Alpha

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