Originally published at: Brent Spiner talks about his early days as Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation | Boing Boing
…
7 Likes
S1 is bad but also pleasingly nuts in places, not least Data’s over the top efforts to fake humanity. The first scene he appears in, as I recall, he’s smirking creepily at Riker. In retrospect (especially after watching 8 TNG seasons, four movies and the Picard denouement of what became an extremely precise and measured performance) it’s quite weird.
My pick for the Data-focused TNG reboot: Janelle Monae.
17 Likes
Second!
8 Likes
9 Likes
Around the time the first season ended a friend of mine got a videotape of ST:TNG bloopers. Spiner’s were not only the funniest–especially when he did his Jimmy Stewart impersonation–but it added an extra layer that he was playing the android with no sense of humor.
He always has nice things to say about the people he’s worked with but he also must be so much fun to work with too.
9 Likes
…some recollection of his prior character work. He did his western rube several times on the original “Night Court”:
21 Likes
One thing Mr. Spiner always says in these interviews is that to this day he never touches his face. Apparently he had to be so careful with that makeup that it’s given him life-long little weirdsies about touching his own skin in certain places. 
22 Likes
I remember reading an interview with Ol’ Yellow Eyes around the First Contact release. He talked about his scenes with Alice Krieg at length but when asked about the main plot line with James Cromwell he was like “yeah, I don’t know anything about that.” Because he never reads the whole script! He explained to the flabbergasted interviewer that he only reads the scenes that his character is in, because his character wouldn’t have experience and knowledge of scenes he’s not in, so he doesn’t, either!
16 Likes
“Is he that much fun to work with? Patrick Stewart?”
“He can be, yes, he can be.”
Ha.
9 Likes
10 Likes
TNT used to have a weekend broadcast called “Our Favorite Movies”. Each movie was introduced and had segments done by a celebrity host. In 1996 Spiner, with one leg in a cast, introduced Rear Window. In the segments he talked about Hitchcock’s process and focused on details a casual viewer might miss. Then in the final segment he said the next week’s movie would be La Cage Aux Folles hosted by Nathan Lane, but he did it in Jimmy Stewart’s voice and as a poem I’m pretty sure he made up on the spot. I still remember it:
“There once was a man named Nathan Lane.
He reminded me of Margery Maine.
He’ll be here next week with La Cage Aux Folles,
Everybody’s favorite movie. Except Bob Dole.”
Damn, he is talented and funny.
11 Likes
and as someone who possibly murdered his wife on Cheers.
4 Likes
Yup, Encounter at Farpoint when he’s trying to whistle in a tree on the holodeck. Very odd watching that first series now, much like Spock in the pilot episode showing a lot more emotion than the nuanced Vulcan he would become. I have to say though i’m really digging the new Data on Picard, it’s still the Data i remember, but Spiner gets to play with the role in some lovely ways.
9 Likes
picard ( ive only seen one season ) really changed my whole interpretation of data’s character. in tng, i read him as earnestly trying to become more human. in picard, it seemed he was knowingly faking his empathy in order to pass.
it seemed almost sinister, or at least creepy. don’t know if that was spiner or the writing or me…
3 Likes
I zoned out for a lot of the first season, but Data only existed in dream sequences and the copy of his conciousness that served as a template for other synths. What showed he was faking his empathy? I hated the emotion chip that got installed in Generations, just seemed to make him infantile compared to the version we have now in season three.
3 Likes
i think he may have said something to that effect in his parting conversation, and maybe there were some things said about him by the other androids? i don’t remember for sure, but it was something i was left with feeling. a subtle, but meaningful shift
i’ll probably watch the season again at some point. some day. i tried a couple episodes of season 2 but it seemed too much like a remake of galactica 1980 ( plus the borg queen, ugh ) - season 3 sounds like it could be fun though
3 Likes
I hope Spiner’s enjoying the heck out of his character in Picard. 
3 Likes
… in S04E25, “In Theory,” Data’s sense of humor is finally visible, but IIRC it’s very odd and Andy Kaufman-esque
3 Likes
… we can see him in this scene trying to decide if it’s OK to smile at people when he’s off duty
1 Like
Honestly, the less said about Encounter At Farpoint, the better. I’m a huge TNG fan, but the pilot is goddamn unwatchably bad. Thank goodness that show was made in the ‘90s when you could have 1.5 bad seasons and not get cancelled. Netflix would have killed it after that episode.
I’ve been rewatching a lot of Treks, and seen this “mistake” a lot. A character’s first episode seems to deviate a lot from who they should be or they will settle into. All shows have some amount of actors figuring out the character, of course, but Treks seem to have a much stronger gradient here. Not sure why.
Another small example- when Seven of Nine is introduced on Voyager, her first line post-Borg is “I can’t hear them”. It’s established canon via Hugh in TNG that Borg don’t grasp the concept of individuality until they are taught it, so hearing her come right out of the gate with an “I” statement was really jarring. The following few episodes they got back on track and she started saying We again, but it reminds me of the inconsistencies in the first episodes of Spock and Data.
6 Likes
