November 22nd, 1993, "Inheritance"
Fiver by Wade
The Episode
JULIANA: Captain, our situation has worsened since my husband and I first contacted you. The molten core of our planet is not just cooling, it's begun to solidify.
One thing that bugs me is that this doesn't seem like a natural disaster that "just happens". Couldn't this be a side effect of overmining like Praxis?
PRAN: Our gravitational field has been affected. Seismic activity has increased by a factor of three.
I can buy increased seismic activity, but not gravitational effects. That's just dumb. Magma doesn't change density just because the temperature changes.
JULIANA: If the cooling continues at this rate Atrea will become uninhabitable in thirteen months.
I also don't buy that this is happening this fast. This whole scenario seems like a Q prank. I especially refer you to the Q Continuum novels where the reason the Iconians could move stars is because they HAD to. Their sun was artificially aged, so the entire civilization dedicated centuries to setting up transporter cages around their own sun and a donor sun to be beamed in as the old sun was beamed out.
LAFORGE: Data, do you think that's close enough for ferro-plasmic infusion?
DATA: The procedure will involve using the ship's phasers to drill down through the planet's surface into the pockets, where we would set up a series of plasma infusion units.
That's not the question Geordi asked, Data! I also don't buy ship's phasers being this precise. Just travelling through the atmosphere would diffuse the beams enough to prevent this kind of focus!
LAFORGE: We'll trigger the units by firing modulated energy bursts down through the shafts.
Modulated energy bursts...i.e. more phaser blasts. Some technobabble is just unforgivable.
JULIANA: I see. Injecting sufficient plasma directly into the core should trigger a chain reaction, and that will reliquify the magma.
A chain reaction of what? The radioactive isotopes in the magma?
DATA: You were a colleague of Doctor Soong?
JULIANA: Yes, I certainly was. And I was also his wife.
With all of the messages that Soong programmed into him you'd think he'd have spared one for Juliana.
DATA: Doctor, I have no memory of you.
JULIANA: Oh, there's a reason for that. We wiped your processors after we finished refining your programming.
Why?
DATA: Yes. All of the inhabitants of the colony were killed. However, I discovered that my memory banks contained the contents of their journals and logs.
JULIANA: We hoped their experiences would be useful.
I'm confused at that one. I prefer the interpretation that the Crystalline Entity was going to wipe all of the conventional computer systems and Data was a convenient place to archive them.
JULIANA: You had trouble learning your motor skills, learning how to process sensory information.
I'm surprised at this one, you'd think motor skills could be programmed in. After all, Data wasn't the first Soong-type android. Why aren't they talking about Lore and the other prototypes?
DATA: I encountered him once in the Terlina system.
JULIANA: That's where we went to after we left the outpost. I had no idea that you'd even met him.
DATA: It was shortly before his death.
JULIANA: He's dead?
I get it, the Internet didn't really exist yet when this episode aired, but even so, I would imagine that Data would've reported on his death back in "Brothers" and it would've made the local newspapers. Wouldn't Juliana also be subscribed to the science magazines that would mention it?
JULIANA: There we were, stuck on this planet in the middle of the jungle with no one else to talk to. No life. It just wasn't enough. That's why I left.
Did they officially divorce? Wouldn't there be a record of that?
LAFORGE: You know, Data, it almost seems to me like you're trying to prove that Doctor Tainer wasn't telling the truth.
...
LAFORGE: When you think about it, why would she want to lie? Why would anybody want to pretend to be your mother?
DATA: I can think of no motive for such a pretense.
Exactly. Data's autonomy has been established for years, he's not going to allow anyone to profit off of him.
JULIANA: Noonian walked in with your head in his hand and, innocent as you please, said it was up to me. He knew perfectly well what he was doing. Once again he had made it in his own image. What could I possibly say? (reads door name plate) Deanna Troi, is that who you're going to visit?
DATA: Yes.
JULIANA: Your father would be so pleased.
DATA: Pleased?
JULIANA: He was worried that the sexuality programme he designed for you wouldn't work.
Wouldn't she have read the transcript of his autonomy hearing, including the Tasha reference?
LAFORGE: Data, I reconfigured the phasers to create the most highly focused particle beam possible.
I don't like the implication that they have to modify the phaser to emit a particle beam. It didn't seem this complicated back in "Galaxy's Child".
PRAN: Someone's checked his calculations, of course.
RIKER: No, but I'm sure Mister Data knows what he's doing.
PRAN: Even so, he is a machine. Someone should check up on him.
Ugh. This is not the place to imply that Data is "lesser", we already have enough to talk about without throwing a bigot into the mix.
JULIANA: I'll have to practice. You don't have a viola?
DATA: I could replicate one for you. Computer, please replicate one viola.
It occurs to me that wooden instruments would be one thing that it might be hard to replicate perfectly. There are even more variables to consider than a lot of foods. I dabbled with the piano myself as a child, and I find the idea of trusting a computer to tune one somehow...heretical.