Star Trek: Data's Love Life (A Retrospective)

It isn't easy being a machine in love as Data, the android on the television series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" could tell you. If his predecessor Spock had women throwing themselves as his unemotional Vulcan feet usually to no avail, Data never could never claim to possess that kind of magnetic appeal. Where Spock was the brooding charismatic type, Data might be said to be the nerdy engineer with a pocket protector over his heart. Spock appealed to the tormented loners and the emotionally unavailable, Data was simply the nerdy nice guy and like his archetype never had much luck with women.

Data's Great Love

There was Lieutenant Tasha Yar. On the series, Tasha was the closest thing to an enduring relationship and even took the role of Data's great lost love. But it took a love virus to make them actually act on their feelings. In the episode "The Naked Now" when a virus contaminates the crew causing them to lose their inhibitions, Tasha Yar and Data have a sexual encounter, only to have Tasha deny it afterward. After her death Tasha Yar leaves Data a special farewell message before her death which he keeps and treasures.

Yet Tasha Yar's ghost continues haunting Data. In "Legacy" the crew encounter Ishara Yar, Tasha's sister. Ishara plays on Data's feelings for her dead sister to help her carry out her attack against a rival gang. This forces Data, as well as the rest of the crew to realize that while Ishara may be a biological relation of Tasha, she lacks her loyalty and humanity. And Data experiences the first of several betrayals from women that he will undergo through the series and accompanying films.

Old loves don't remain dead forever, at least not in Science Fiction and so Tasha Yar herself briefly returns to life in an alternate timeline in "Yesterday's Enterprise." Her return however does not bring her any closer to a relationship with Data. Instead she falls in love with an officer from the Enterprise NCC-1701-C (The Enterprise NCC-1701-D's predecessor) and goes off together with him on a doomed mission against the Romulans. This suggests that had Tasha lived, no relationship would have continued between Data and her. However this is open to interpretation.

The haunting continues as we learn that Tasha did not actually die but wound up in Romulan captivity where she gave birth to a daughter. That daughter is her exact spitting image but holds an allegiance to the Romulans and repeatedly plots against the Federation. Her hostility ensures that like their previous encounters, Data is doomed to disappointment. But nevertheless when in "The Measure of a Man," Captain Picard seeks to prove Data's humanity, he employs the farewell message Tasha left him and his feelings for her as a testament to his depth as a sentient being.

While Data may never have achieved a lasting relationship with Tasha, the emotional impact of it did indeed make him more human.

Failed Relationships

In "In Theory" Data pursues his only other relationship with Lieutenant Junior Grade Jenna D'Sora. While their relationship develops due to shared common interests, it is ultimate aborted because of Data's fundamentally mechanical nature and the revelation that D'Sora's pursuit of Data was itself a neurotic pattern.

Data's romancing of Jenna D'Sora did not emerge from an authentic desire or need, but from experimentation, as the title suggests. Data experienced neither love nor lust. As before Data's essentially mechanical nature frustrates any true intimacy. For romance to exist Data has to experience real feelings and yet paradoxically Data can only achieve real feeling by experimenting with situations that bring out emotional responses from him, until theory finally becomes practice.

In "The Ensigns of Command" Data goes on a lone mission to an unlivable radiation poisoned world where he allies with Ard'rian McKenzie, a dissatisfied colonist who develops some romantic feelings for Data, only to realize that he cannot return them in kind.

In "Star Trek: First Contact" the Borg Queen attempts to seduce Data, sexually as well as intellectually, but her ploy ultimately fails and Data aids in her destruction. The Borg Queen's seduction of Data is primarily physical rather than emotional. The Borg Queen offers Data sensation through grafted on skin, but she cannot offer him true emotional intimacy. Her means of seduction is as mechanical as her own nature and grafting the biological on to the mechanical cannot give Data what he wants, which is true humanity.

Data's Prospects for Love

The key obstacle to Spock's relationships was that he repressed his emotions. The key obstacle to Data's relationships was that he generally had no emotions. Romance without feeling quickly leads nowhere except a mechanical exercise. Real love can only come for Data when he achieves real emotion.

Data achieved true emotion using the emotion chip that Data's creator, Dr. Soong had designed and intended for him. However this chip was stolen by Data's brother, Lore. Even after recovering the chip from Lore, Data was hesitant to make use of it because of the crimes Lore and his renegade Borg followers had committed under the influence of emotion.

In "Star Trek Generations" when Data finally employs Dr. Soong's emotion chip, he becomes unstable and useless to the crew. The unregulated emotions he experiences drives him to extremes of feeling that leave him terrified or hysterical with laughter. Without learning emotional control, Data is unable to continue using the emotion chip.