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Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard lie ahead!
The Season 1 finale of Star Trek: Picard no doubt left a lasting impact to both the story and longtime fans of the franchise. For starters, it literally killed off a central character and brought him back to life in the same episode. But more importantly, it saw the franchise’s final farewell to Lt. Commander Data.
After the airing of the finale of Season 1, Brent Spiner, who plays Data, went on record to declare that he will no longer be playing the character ever again. After William Shatner’s retirement as Captain Kirk, Spiner walking away from the role will be another blow to Star Trek fans.
“…I wouldn’t really entertain the idea of [playing Data] again because I just don’t think it would be realistic,” said Spiner in a recent interview with TV Guide. “So it seemed right for me to give him this more gentle sendoff… So it seemed like the right thing to do.”
Just to add a brief bit of context, the Episode 10 of Picard Season 1 saw Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard succumbing to his deteriorating brain, after saving the planet Coppelius from the Romulan army with his team. Picard’s consciousness, however, was transferred to a simulation, in which the android Data presided after his death in Star Trek: Nemesis.
The reunion of the two old friends was cut short as Picard’s crew was in the process of reviving him. As such, Data offered a solution to Picard, stating that he could be revived in a synthetic body, but at the cost of his own virtual life. After a touching farewell, Data was gone for good, while Picard was reborn in a new body.
While Data will never be seen again in Star Trek: Picard Season 2 or any future Star Trek show, it does echo Spiner’s words of giving a fitting sendoff to the iconic android, who wanted nothing more than to be human. This was certainly one of the more human deaths in the series.
And come Season 2, there will definitely be new and familiar faces joining Picard’s journey. One of them, much to the delight of fans, will be Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan, though the extent of her character’s involvement remains to be seen.
Marion has a serious RPG addiction. Sometimes it bleeds into real life; he forgets to sleep because he thinks he has a Witcher’s body clock. Forgive him in advance if he suddenly blurts out terms such as “Mind Flayer” and “Magic Missile”, because never once does he stop thinking about his next Dungeons & Dragons game.