Arriving at the brand new Starbase 173 near the Romulan Neutral Zone for crew rotation and offloading of experiment modules, the Enterprise-D is visited by Admiral Nakamura, played by Clyde Kusatsu, and Commander Bruce Maddox, played by Brian Brophy. Commander Maddox is an Associate Professor of Robotics Science at the Daystrom Technological Institute (named after Dr. Richard Daystrom of The Original Series episode The Ultimate Computer). He is a student of the work of Dr. Noonien Soong, the eccentric genius inventor of the radically innovative positronic brain essential to the functioning of the android Starfleet officer Data. Since Dr. Soong conducted his research away from established centers of technoscience during the later stages of his career, many crucial details and principles of how Data’s brain works remain unclear. It is not known, for example, how electron resistance across neural filaments, hindering the systematization of neuron impulse activity to simulate a self-directed “biological information network,” is handled.
The roboticist Dr. Maddox has recently devised the methodology for an experimental procedure to lay bare the secret of Data’s positronic brain. But the process would involve disassembling him. Maddox hopes to solve the problem of electron resistance by directly examining the filament links in Data’s taken apart, sliced up anterior cortex. If successful, the Commander’s experiment would lead to the cybernetics breakthrough enabling Starfleet to replicate Data. The exploratory and military Deep Space agency could create an unlimited quantity of highly useful and adaptable androids for purposes of astronautic cyborg deployment on starship missions. With their remarkable capabilities, the Soong-class androids would “act as our hands and eyes in dangerous situations,” as Maddox puts it.
Lt. Commander Data immediately objects to Commander Maddox’s proposed procedure. He is convinced that the micro-engineering trial is too risky, and will likely result in extermination of the life and personality that he has attained through his years of experiences. Data believes that, independent of whether or not the investigative test proves successful, the ineffable qualities of his memories will be lost during their temporary transfer onto an ordinary computer storage medium. Dr. Maddox will have to download Data’s core memory to a standard format prior to the android’s dismantling, and then re-upload it into his positronic brain after reassembly. Data is concerned that the embodied character of his memories, which resists the universal translation of a language machine, will be damaged during the transfer operation. His recollections will be “reduced to mere sterile facts of the events.” “The substance, the flavor of the moment could be lost,” he contends. The strong probability of the degradation of memories is a major component of Data’s overall “fear” that he will no longer be the same individual who he was.
To avoid the reassignment to service under Maddox’s command that the prestigious military computer scientist has formally arranged, Data resigns his Starfleet commission. Maddox contests Data’s voluntary departure on legal grounds, arguing that the highly decorated Bridge officer is not a sentient being. According to Maddox, Data is the property of Starfleet, to do with as it wishes.
A hearing to determine Data’s legal status, and whether he has the same rights as other military personnel and United Federation of Planets citizens is convened under the jurisdiction of the newly established 23rd sector Office of the Judge Advocate General (JAG), headed by legal officer Captain Phillipa Louvois, played by Amanda McBroom. Captain Louvois is a rather sexistly portrayed former lover turned nemesis of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Ten years earlier, Louvois was the assistant prosecutor at the standard fact-finding court-martial that took place after the destruction of the U.S.S. Stargazer by a Ferengi vessel while that starship was under Picard’s command.
Referring to existing statute, Louvois rules summarily that Data is the property of Starfleet, and that he can neither resign nor refuse to undergo Maddox’s procedure. Picard challenges the ruling, forcing Captain Louvois to hold a hearing. Since her legal department is understaffed at the new starbase, Picard, as senior officer aboard the Enterprise-D, is bound by judicial procedure to act as Data’s defense attorney. Commander William Riker, as Second-In-Command, is obliged to serve as prosecuting attorney, in spite of his personal relationship with Data and his belief that the android Second Officer is a sentient life-form.
In the amphitheater-like courtroom, Riker begins the trial by making a brilliant case, based largely on Data’s own deposition, that his dear friend is nothing but a machine. Sitting in the witness chair with his hand over the identification scanner, NFN NMI (no first name, no middle initial) Data testifies that he has a maximum storage capacity of 800 quadrillion bits, and a total linear computational speed of 60 trillion operations per second. He can effortlessly bend a plasteel rod packing a tensile strength of 40 kilobars with his bare hands. Commander Riker dispassionately removes Data’s left hand and forearm from his body to show their internal electro-mechanical composition. With this action, Riker symbolically robs Data of the appearance of human subjectivity. “Its responses are dictated by an elaborate software written by a man, its hardware built by a man, and now a man will shut it off,” the prosecutor proclaims.
Riker flips a switch in Data’s back, just below his right shoulder blade, and the android collapses into unconsciousness. “Pinocchio is broken, its strings have been cut.”
After this devastating presentation, defense advocate Picard asks for a recess. At this conjuncture in the story, the situation for Data looks grim.
During the hearing’s intermission, Picard visits Guinan, played by Whoopi Goldberg, the wise 500-year old Captain’s Counselor and bartender of the Ten-Forward Lounge. Sitting together late at night in the deserted recreation room, Guinan hints to the Captain that the real issue of the trial is slavery. The hearing’s true significance is the imminent danger of long-term subjugation by the United Federation of Planets of a race of expendable creatures who would do society’s “dirty work” and menial tasks. If the arrogant Maddox and his kind have their way, the black-skinned El-Aurian sage suggests, the harrowing outcome will be “an army of Datas, all disposable. You don’t have to think about their welfare. You don’t have to think about how they feel — whole generations of disposable people.”
Captain Picard suddenly recognizes that Guinan is talking about the rebirth of slavery. If he loses, the decision made at this hearing will establish the precedent of all future Soong-class androids being regarded as nothing but property. It is not just about Commander Maddox being granted authorization to carry out his disassembly procedure. It is about the fate of all the future Datas that Starfleet will build should Maddox or some other robotics scientist succeed. It is about the act of humanity degrading itself by treating its humanoid technological creation in such an instrumental way. Slavery, says Picard, is “not a word we want back in our vocabulary.”
Picard returns to the courtroom and his place next to Data. Inspired by Guinan’s insight, he magnificently turns around the basic issues of the trial. He opens up searching questions about the nature of the Federation and ourselves. What would declaring Data to be property say about us? What kind of beings would we be if we define androids in this condescending manner? How will we be “judged as a species” if we behave towards our creation in this way? “If they’re expendable, disposable, aren’t we?”
Picard calls Dr. Maddox to the stand as a hostile witness. “Do you know what he is?” the Captain rhetorically asks the Commander several times in setting forth his turnabout reasoning. “I do not know,” says Picard. “I do not know what I am.”
“Commander, prove to the court that I am sentient!” Picard coaxes Maddox into admitting that the eminent cognitive scientist does not know how to define his own self-awareness. He can only manage the circular, self-referential tautology that “I am conscious of my existence and actions, aware of myself and my own ego.” Data, on the other hand, is “a piece of outstanding engineering and programming.” In a classic metaphysical binary opposition, it is as if this “technical status” assigned to Data excluded him from taking part in human and cultural life. But, Picard points out, Data seems “pragmatically” just as self-aware as Maddox. “Am I property or person?” Data responds when Picard asks him to describe what is at stake in the legal hearing in which Data is currently participating. “My rights. My status. My right to choose. My life.”
Maddox finally admits that he does not know what Data is. Picard has made clear that what we think about Data will “reveal the kind of a people we are.”
Data Measures Us
As the latter part of the episode unfolds, Data goes from being on trial or “under suspicion” to being a provocative, transforming mirror who causes our knowledge and certainty of ourselves to be placed into question. Data is radical alienation incarnate, as in the words of the Shakespeare sonnet printed on the dog-eared page of the cherished antique book given him as a gift by Captain Picard: “When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state.”
Data is Picard’s undermining double, pushing him in this iconoclastic episode to doubt his usual, self-confident liberal humanism. How will we, as beings merged with technologies, no longer sure of our boundaries, be judged if we sit in judgment of him and possibly strip him of his rights? How will we and our humanity be measured?
The episode’s title hints at an impassioned statement made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The ultimate Measure of a Man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” In one important sense, The Measure of a Man is a transformative allegory or “setting straight of the historical record” of the infamous case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856-7. The case considered the question of the status of slavery in the federal territories, such as Wisconsin, which had not yet achieved statehood. The Court’s southern majority tragically ruled against Scott, an African American who had sued for his freedom. It outrageously pronounced that blacks could never become citizens and had no rights.
The Measure of a Man as episode title does not refer to the pragmatically unanswerable question of who Data is. It rather addresses the question of how to take the measure of those present in the Starfleet JAG courtroom whom Data’s being politically, morally, and existentially challenges: Picard, Riker, Louvois, and Maddox. It is a Shakespearean swapping of measure for measure. A telling comment by the episode’s writer Melinda Snodgrass confirms this: “Everyone seems to view it as a Data script, but it’s really a Picard script. Data is the catalyst, but the stress is all on Picard.” (Gross and Altman, Captains’ Logs Supplemental: The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages)
The android Data is a synthetically made automaton becoming more and more like a human being. Humanoids, whether in our century or Star Trek’s, are moving in the opposite direction. We are becoming increasingly blended with technologies and electronic media. Somewhere in the middle of this double process is a meeting ground where challenging and controversial questions about cyborgs and posthumans will get asked. The convergence of these two movements is an event to be anticipated and embraced.
Like Picard, Captain Phillipa Louvois is intensely affected by the shivering android reflection which Data comes to be while on trial. The congenitally unhappy Louvois was always a zealous prosecutor and stickler for the letter of the law. Picard reproaches her early in the episode by remarking that she “always enjoyed the adversarial process more than getting at the truth.” Presiding over the android’s destiny, Captain Louvois at first summarily bases her ruling on the juridical fine print. She concludes that Data is strictly the material possession of Starfleet, as settled by the precedent of the early twenty-first century Acts of Cumberland property rights statute.
But in the moment of lived experience as she reformulates her final decision, Louvois is moved by the exemplary acts of Data and Captain Picard. She unexpectedly begins to think on her feet, and significantly alters both the style and content of her views. She wonders out loud if, from the standpoint of the law, a clear-cut definition of what it is to be human is even possible. “I don’t know that I have a soul,” Louvois states. I observe that Data appears to be at least reasonably self-aware. We must doubt that we know with certainty what Data is, and we must acknowledge the pertinence of exactly the same doubt about ourselves.
On the basis of these new assessments, Captain Louvois rules that condemning the android to the status of a piece of property would be ethically and legally wrong.
Lt. Commander Data becomes an altering reflective surface even for Commander Maddox, beaming back a scrutinizing spotlight onto the imperious robotics expert. Slipping uninvited into the android’s private rooms, Maddox picks up the hardbound copy of Shakespeare from a table and reads the bookmarked twenty-ninth sonnet aloud. “Are these just words to you,” the academic scientist asks nearly without addressee, “or do you fathom the meaning?” Wholly unfazed, Data answers the question with a question: “Is it not customary to request permission before entering an individual’s quarters?” Who Watches the Watchers? From all available evidence, it is clear that Data does indeed fathom the chain of associations between the sonnet’s linguistic signifiers (about being an “outsider”) and their meaning. It is the patrician Maddox who does not comprehend. With Data as his specular other, the artificial intelligence maven is in effect asking the question about semantic understanding to himself.
The android is ironically in a role with respect to Maddox that is a surprising twist on that of “technical guide to positronics” which the higher-ranking Starfleet officer originally demanded that he play. Professor Maddox first examined Data when the eventual honors graduate with a triple major in probability mechanics, exobiology, and auxiliary space vessel operation applied to Starfleet Academy in 2341. Maddox was the sole member of the admissions committee to oppose the entrance of Dr. Noonien Soong’s “Offspring” to the renowned institute of higher learning, on the grounds that “it” was not sentient. During the trial at Starbase 173, Commander Maddox behaves in a consistently bigoted manner towards Data, treating him as a subhuman thing, like a Nazi towards a Jew or a white racist towards an African American. After Data resigns from Starfleet to avoid his possible death, Maddox cruelly suggests that the android join the carnival as a “walking encyclopedia” freak. But by the end of the trial, Data’s courage arouses a humbling change in Maddox. In the episode’s coda, he refers to the android as “he” instead of “it” for the very first time.