The Quality of Life

Exobots are great for helping out around the workplace: they can float, they make their own tools, they can be programmed for a variety of tasks. They also learn. In fact, they’re learning so much that they might actually be alive. Data sizes up the measure of a ‘bot when we put The Quality of Life into the Mission Log. Thank you for putting an actual word to what was troubling me about Dr. Farallon in this episode. She came across as “too earnest” —-yes, that’s it! You have solved a decades long issue that has troubled me about this episode by providing that description. I have been troubled off and on about Dr. Farallon whenever I watched this episdoe. Now this is not about the acting skills of Ellen Bry, but every time the character she portrayed spoke, I winced. She would be one of the coworkers you saw coming and then suddenly you needed to take a phone call or head into a meeting. “Dr. Farallon, I know you’re really into this new mining technology but sometimes I just want to look at YouTube videos, okay.” On another note, I appreciate the outstanding work you do and discovering this podcast has breathed new life into my love for the Star Trek Franchise. Keep up the great work! With regard to Farallon’s fixation on the conclusion she wants to be able to reach without having to do all the pesky leg work in backing that up with cold hard numbers, it seems like there’s a question this episode never bothers to ask: does she have any credibility as a scientist or engineer once this has been revealed about her? Indeed, by leaving her where she is, Exocomps in hand, it’s almost as if the episode is saying that’s not important. But then let’s rewind to the scientist who destroyed the Crystalline Entity: she also arrived at her conclusion (the thing’s gotta die!) without paying attention to any of the steps along the way (hey, it’s alive and we can communicate with it!). What separates those two characters? One heinously destructive act, and probably some PTSD. Not saying that Farallon can’t see the error of her ways or can’t be redeemed, but there seems to be a credibility gap that’s hard to overcome now. And yet we not only overcome it, but we hand her robo-gerbils back to her – the ones she planned to lobotomize – at the end of the show. We gotta scoot, places to be next week! Hey, please remember not to lobotomize your robo-gerbils, yeah? Speaking of which: “Data endangers Picard to save machine!” I think Exocomps wrote this week’s log line. I have to agree with you and John and Ken regarding the Exocomps being sent back to toil under the supervision of the all-too-earnest Dr. Farallon without some sort of conversation about their ongoing treatment. The casual nature of the ending was in sharp contrast with Data risking court martial and the death of his colleagues. I mean La Forge and Picard almost lost their lives over this. Now that they’re back aboard everyone’s like, Meh – they’ll be okay. Ensign take us out, warp 6! Ro got like 8 people killed and she’s fine. For Picard and La Forge, Data would’ve got community service at worst… for saving the Oxogoodcomps, probably a commendation. Plus, remember they blew the remote control right out of Dr. Farrahfowler’s hands. I think they can defend themselves ok. The Exocomps are just the worst sentient robots on a series rife with sentient robots. Swiss Army bots who are secretly trying to unionize mess up and nearly get folks killed. Yay! Kumbaya! Shards of duranium, twisted, burned and melted plastics and many other varieties of detritus: That’s what those “rocks” are, in case you were wondering. I find Naren has difficulty with characterization of the main characters in his scripts. He does improve, somewhat, later on in things like Farscape, but the characters never quite act like themselves in his stuff. They are just consistently a little bit off, in my estimation. In this episode Data discovers life again… “Hey Crusher what is the definition of life?” “Data, you k