"Brothers" TNG Episode Deep Dive
Always loved this one - especially when Data takes over the ship. Did a bunch of research and found some interesting things about this episode's production. Enjoy!
Comments (16)
Soong asks Data why humans are fascinated with old things... while Data is sitting on an antique Chinese chair which Soong owns. (8:53 here, 8:32 on the YT version) There's interesting storytelling even in the lighting - Data is often lit from the front, making his face flat and less-expressive, while Lore gets lights from two sides, highlighting facial expressions. Data often has raised eyebrows, and Lore often speaks out of the side of his mouth... I had thought that the makeup was different between the characters, but now I think that is not correct.
Oh interesting. For sure that would have been a deliberate decision to light Lore "dramatically" and distinguish him. You can even see the difference in my thumbnail lol
One of Spiner’s more impressive moments in this episode is when he mimics Picard’s voice, lip syncing Patrick Stewart’s lines perfectly. For me, the build up to finding Soong is probably even more interesting than the familial encounter. Also, I never did quite understand why Lore would need an emotion chip if he already has emotions. Anyone have thoughts on that?
It's a good question – it's almost framed in a way that he just "feels good" getting more emotions, like it just dials up the intensity or something. But yeah kind of unexplained.
You've made my day. Brilliant. Thank you
Hey Andrew hope you're having a great summer! Thanks for another great one... Deep Dives are always welcome and supported. If it piques your interest I would love to know more about the stylistic differences between the different regular directors including Berman but also Landau, Bole, etc. and what each of them brought to the series. It might be fun to compare and contrast what themes they tackled and how and then what happened when members of the cast would get in the director's chair as well.
I agree that would be interesting. Tricky part is finding information about the "behind the scenes" of the show. I recently bought a book that has some pretty cool info, which is how I learned about the SFX in this video. So it's something I should look at
I loved the episode the first time I watched it, and only recently have come to appreciate the depth (as in turtles all the way down) of the conundrum posed by the difference between Data and Lore. While I don't necessarily think the (genuine, objective) difference between Data-like vs. Lore-like human beings is a matter of "emotional depth", it does capture a real "trait," where neither extreme seems remotely optimal. On the one hand is some sort of "lack-of-conniving-imagination" naivety, where by following rules and moral duty leaves people vulnerable to game theoretic attacks, and on the other hand is absolute depravity, with zero concern for other agents and the consequences they incur. Human morality has seemingly evolved to find some middle ground between dutiful naivety and conniving lack of concern, and it always is at the risk of defaulting to veering too far off one way or the other. Also interesting is the character of Soong, whose (in my mind rather immature) status seeking makes me feel it was a very natural order for Lore to appear first, and that it may have been only very grudgingly that he "learned the hard lesson" that giving an intelligence the ability to "cheat" (find immorally judged shortcuts, symbolized by having emotions, although LLMs these days cheat without my seeing evidence for "having feelings" of any kind) really means it is inevitable that it will happen.
You're right – in a way what we're seeing with Lore is the "alignment problem", which is of course a classic theme of any AI-related sci-fi. Just really interesting that it's conceptualized here as an android who can't control his emotions.
Do Unification! It's the first time they broke the "don't say Spock" rule or whatever.
Wasn't aware of that rule – gonna look into it
A Berman deep dive would be great. It'd be interesting to see individual writers' influence on the show. The bigger one might be Ronald D. Moore: his TNG/DS9 work vs. Battlestar Galactica is the same writer under franchise oversight versus running his own show. Still hoping for a video on Star Trek's presentation of a utopian Earth (possible with technology, or a pipe dream?). Carthago delenda est.
I'd be interested in both Berman's roles as writer and showrunner
Watching Spiner portraying Lore always has me in awe: it makes me appreciate more all the acting choices he made for Data.
I especially love how his portrayal of Data kind of evolves in the first few seasons
"Brothers" is a very good episode—especially those of us with complicated relationships with our brothers and/or fathers!