Certain unanswered questions in Star Trek lore have plagued fans for decades – but now we can at least put one franchise debate to bed: Commander Data didn’t die in Star Trek: Nemesis. The debate started all the way back in 2002 with the release of Star Trek: Nemesis, the final installment of the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies. It was an infamous early breakout for Tom Hardy, who played the film’s villain, Praetor Shinzon, an “imperfect” clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) created by the Romulans to be their doppleganger agent.
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In the final showdown, Picard was forced to ram the USS Enterprise into Shinzon’s ship, the Scimitar, and the mad villain tries to blow both vessels up. Commander Data seemingly sacrifices himself by leaping through open space and fitting Picard with an emergency transporter that takes him back to the Enterprise. Data destroys the Scimitar to save his crewmates and is mourned as a hero.
Nemesis Told Us That Data Wasn’t Really Dead
The epilogue of Star Trek: Nemesis saw Picard speaking with B-4, a prototype android who preceded Data and his brother Lore in the experiments of Doctor Noonien Soong. Unlike Data, B-4 didn’t have the miracle of a positronic brain that allowed him to learn and “evolve” into more human traits and behaviors; Data used him as a backup hard drive for his memories, but the emotional connection to those friends and memories was seemingly lost. Picard is trying in vain to explain just how “human” Data was, but B-4 can’t grasp the notion. However, when Picard goes to leave the room, B-4 starts singing the song “Blue Skies”, a favorite of Data’s. The scene was meant to be a window of hope for fans that Data was still “alive” somewhere inside of B-4.
Star Trek: Nemesis screenwriter John Logan has since admitted that he intended for a Nemesis sequel film to address the subplot of Data being fully restored inside of B-4’s body. Now he’s going so far as to kill any further talk that Nemesis was the official “death” of Data.
John Logan was a guest on the Dropping Names… And Other Things podcast run by Star Trek: The Next Generation stars Brent Spiner (Data) and Jonathan Frakes (Will Riker). Frakes took the opportunity of the three being together again to finally settle the matter of what happened in Nemesis.
“Now let me ask you a question that I’ve answered a hundred times: Do you believe that Data died in Nemesis?” Frakes asked the room.
“No!” Logan responded.
“Thank you very much! That’s the author right there,” Frakes confirmed. “That’s my answer.”
“I never thought so,” Spiner said. He also added that surprising take that “I wanted him to. But I didn’t think it was happening, really.”
How Data Got His Star Trek Resurrection (Eventually)
Because Nemesis never got a sequel, and the entire Star Trek movie line was rebooted in 2009 with J.J. Abrams, Data’s “death” was confirmed to be canon for many years, regardless of what was implied about B-4. Star Trek: Picard Season 1 had to acknowledge that by having Data appear at the end of the season, when Picard’s consciousness is transferred from his human body into a device containing a backup of Data’s consciousness. This confirmed that Data had died, but also opened a new window of possibility for his return.
Picard Season 3 made good on that promise by revealing that Doctor Noonien Soong’s son, Altan Inigo Soong (also Brent Spiner), left behind a next-gen synthetic body that contained the combined memories of himself and each of his “sons,” B-4, Data, Lore, and Lal. With help from Picard and his former Enterprise crewmates, Data’s consciousness is put in the control seat, effectively resurrecting him from the dead.
So, either way you look at it, the debate about whether or not Data dies in Star Trek: Nemesis is now invalid. You can stream Star Trek: Nemesis and Star Trek: Picard on Paramount+.
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Image courtesy of Tor Books/Macmillan -
Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme
