[image credit: Memory Alpha (a Star Trek fan wiki); https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Data?file=Data%252C_2366.jpg]
Casey Broughton
BCL/JD III,
Faculty of Law, McGill University
30 August 2022
Representations of autistic people in the media often portray us as monstrous.11 Autistic and autistic-coded characters typically display grossly exaggerated, stereotypical traits, with common tropes including the idiot savant (as in Rain Man), the dismissive and unempathetic egotist (as in Sherlock), or the fussy and irritating snowflake (as in The Big Bang Theory). These caricatures render autistic people as mere objects of comedy, drama, or both instead of fully developed and well-rounded human beings. Perhaps this is because an invisible but significant cognitive difference is seen as inherently insidious and must therefore be represented by the wider neurotypical society as a more obvious monster as a form of defense. In this probe, I examine the character of Data, as played by Brent Spiner in Star Trek: The Next Generation, several Star Trek films, and Star Trek: Picard, as a monstrous portrayal of autism. Though Data was allegedly not originally intended to be autism-adjacent, I am not alone in considering him this way (Soper 2013; Porter 2013: 65; Ford 2015: 56; Oderwald 2013: 1): indeed, published reports of autistic people seeing themselves in Data go back to at least 1995, the year after Star Trek: The Next Generation ended (Kakutani 1995). In this probe, I build on the work of several other scholars to consider three areas in which Data’s persona parallels the autistic experience. First, I analyze Data’s fight for recognition of his legal rights, drawing heavily from Star Trek: The Next Generation’s episode “Measure of a Man,” and how this manifests as an extreme version of real-world battles over autistic autonomy. Second, I explore how Data’s character arc of self-discovery and evolution is a deeply familiar autistic experience, drawing heavily from Next Generationepisodes “The Offspring” and “In Theory.” Third, I discuss the metaphor of Data’s emotion chip and how in many ways it epitomizes the core dilemma of both android and autistic experience: how can we seek to deepen our relationships and better ourselves without losing sight of who we are? Finally, I consider Data’s death and surviving legacy.
Data is quite unabashedly a machine, to the point that his frequent quip “I am an android” is a well-known reference in Star Trek fan circles (LeRoy 2020). While this causes some confusion in interactions between Data and his crewmates, this peculiarity is not considered in detail until the episode “Measure of a Man,” (season 2, episode 9) wherein Data’s right to withhold consent from an invasive and investigative medical procedure (or to resign his post in order to avoid the issue entirely) is questioned on the basis that he may be property rather than possessing the rights of a legal person (i.e., a subject). In the buildup to the legal hearing this occasions, Data repeatedly experiences something familiar to autistic people: he is spoken of as an object, often without acknowledgement that he is even there. The earliest confrontation is not between Data and Dr. Bruce Maddox, the researcher who seeks to disassemble him, but rather between Maddox and Data’s commanding officer Captain Picard, who does not even ask for Data’s input. In fact, Picard initially tries to convince Data that it may be worth acceding to Maddox’s research until Data points out how any parallel biological experiment would be massively unethical. When the trial begins, the primary argument for why it is acceptable to experiment on Data largely revolves around how inhuman Data is, how strange he is: he is an automaton, he has a fixed and measurable storage capacity and processing speed, he can bend an incredibly strong steel rod, his hand is removable, he can be switched off. Much like many evaluations of autistic people, Data’s existence is assumed to be a particular way due to his physical manifestation and presentation, neglecting his internal feelings and cognition. Maddox claims Data is not sentient merely because he thinks differently (using programmed software on computer hardware, rather than evolved systems in biological wetware), just as many assume that autistic people are less “human” and/or not empathetic simply because we think differently.
Picard, leading Data’s defense, freely admits all this. He could even be seen as making reference to Cohen’s Seventh Thesis in acknowledging that Data being assembled by a man is no different than a child being produced by their parents.22 He argues that Data “has the right to exist despite his difference,” (Ford 2015: 59) and that these differences are immaterial to whether or not Data should be considered to have personhood. However, in doing so he reifies a very specific version of personhood: as Porter puts it, Data desires a very “normative … heteronormative, ablebodied whiteness.” (Porter 2013: 89) Picard points out the medals Data has earned, the friendships he has developed, and the (hetero-33)sexual relationship he had with a former crewmate as proof of personhood, largely sidestepping the question of sentience except to question whether such a thing is possible to prove in the first place. (Indeed, whether or not “Data has a soul” is something the judge specifically says Data should explore himself.) I see this as very much in line with both monstrosity and the autistic experience. Data’s trial is the literal “category crisis” described by Cohen (1996: 6) as he questions the binary of man/machine. However, rather than truly disestablishing this hard boundary, the possible trial results are equally binary: either assimilating Data into the category of person, “curing” him of his monstrosity, or else defining him purely as machine and leaving him vulnerable to institutionalization and death. Ford (2015: 2) points out that these are directly parallel to autistic experiences: in many cases, autistic people are “cured” enough to conceal our monstrosity and move in society, or we are kept out of society even if it means our death. Where on this line we fall depends, as did Data’s fate, on how useful we are and how well we perform the roles assigned to us. The right to personhood is tied to productivity, skill, social life, and other trivialities rather than inherent worth as a sentient being.
The questioning of Data’s person and position is not confined to this single incident; Data grows and changes over time, albeit in the limited ways permitted by late twentieth-century episodic television. This continuous exploration of humanity and his performance of it (or lack thereof) is akin to autistic learning of neurotypicality in how it is partially forced and partially out of interest: he seeks to learn what is necessary and admirable while questioning what is neither. Both autistic people and Data find themselves rendered monstrous by this process not merely because of the strangeness of our atypical behaviours but also the fact that we simultaneously perform and criticize typical ones; as Cohen (1996: 12-16) indicates, we question the bounds of the possible. Consider the example of the episode “In Theory,” (season 4, episode 25) where Data begins a romantic relationship with a colleague and close friend as she grapples with leaving her former partner. Data attempts to perform what he feels is expected of a relationship with chaotic results. He becomes a caricature of the suave male romantic developed from studying love through the advice of friends and textbooks, something made even more bizarre by his usual quirks of diction and timing (for example, stating “you remain as aesthetically pleasing as the first day we met” barely a few days into the relationship). His partner notices that this behaviour is far outside Data’s usual comportment, though she struggles to point out what exactly is wrong with it in the context of a relationship. It is tempting to claim that this is uncomfortable because Data is an android and thus there is no “true” feeling behind his actions and words, but despite Data’s professed lack of emotions he clearly shows care for his friends and by extension his partner, and she acknowledges this. Perhaps, then, Data’s actions are inherently unsettling, but are they truly so distant from standard performances of masculinity? In other words, as Porter argues, Data’s literally-robotic portrayal “demonstrates the mask of heterosexual” (and, I would add, neurotypical) “masculinity; that it is nothing more or less than a performance.” (Porter 2013: 84)
The use of the term mask is not insignificant: “masking” is a term commonly used by autistic people to refer to acting neurotypical to avoid the harms of being visibly autistic (Pearson and Rose 2021). Data is explicitly described as having certain masking behaviours innately programmed—such as hair growth (“Hero Worship”, season 5, episode 11; “Birthright, Part I”, season 6, episode 16), aging (“Inheritance”, season 7, episode 10), and randomized blinking (“Inheritance”, season 7, episode 10)—but he has also learned some, most especially in how he socializes. For example, he is shown developing a small-talk program in “Starship Mine,” season 6, episode 18) and he ceases quoting years-long time estimates down to the second when he “discover[s]… [the] level of impatience” this causes (“The Loss”, season 4, episode 10). Autistic people obviously do not differ from others in our basic biology, but just like Data we are required to learn how to socialize with neurotypicals in order to function in a world fundamentally designed for someone else. When we have engaged in this for an extended length of time, it can become difficult to separate the elements of the mask from the elements of the person or to disengage the mask voluntarily. Data and autistic people are both faced with the difficult choice of how much to alter or conceal to fit into broader society, balancing the difficulties inherent in existing against the grain with the benefits this outside perspective grants. As much as Data insists he wishes to become human, when given the option to do so thanks to the intervention of omnipotent trickster god Q, he refuses not because he would lose the desirable qualities of being an android (hyperintelligence, immortality, etc.) but because it would “rob him of the ability to learn and grow as a person [and] fundamentally change who he is” (Gellis 2018: 57) even if it might resolve some of his ongoing struggles and questions regarding experience and identity. I suspect many autistic people would give similar answers and reasoning if offered the chance of a “cure” to become neurotypical. I certainly would.
Star Trek does, however, offer a different “cure.” While Data chooses not to become human, his creator/“father” offers him an emotion chip that would unlock new memories and experiences for him when installed. The chip is initially stolen, but even after being recovered Data is reluctant to use it. While part of this likely stems from the trauma surrounding its recovery—it was used to manipulate him into acts of violence—it may also stem from the aforementioned concern for balancing social priorities with his own growth and unique nature of being. While autistic people do not have “neurotypicality chips,” we do have to make similar decisions with regards to our behaviour and in some cases make use of pharmaceutical or other interventions. In Star Trek: Generations, an incredibly unfortunate misreading of a humorous situation leads Data to conclude that he must install the chip to progress further as a sentient being, claiming he has never mastered humour or experienced any other emotion. I would argue that this is absolutely not the case: just as many autistic people experience emotional empathy but have trouble “reading” people, Data has experiences that he cannot acknowledge due to his own obsession with “real” emotion. As Gellis (2018: 51) puts it, “even if whatever Data experiences does not resemble ‘emotion’ as we as humans understand it, it still constitutes a valid (emotional) experience for Data.” Nonetheless, he installs the chip and begins exploring emotion. Interestingly, his behaviour post-emotion-chip in the film is just as autistic as before, though no longer as robotic. This is largely neglected by the (very limited) scholarly study of Data as autistic, which focuses on the much larger body of texts of the television series rather than the films. Emotion-chipped-Data’s discovery that he hates a beverage’s strong taste and his subsequent choice to continue drinking it anyway could be considered sensation-seeking behaviour. His inability to “read the room” and resulting inappropriate level of humour, including laughing at years-old remembered jokes, is quite familiar to me as an autistic person. The emotional “malfunctions” and struggles that Data experiences when dealing with the power of his new emotions definitely bear a strong resemblance to autistic emotional and sensory overloads. Finally, his “searching for life forms” song is vocal stimming and a singing expression of mood without considering others’ responses, something I (and other autistic people) do on occasion. In later films, his emotion chip continues to play a role but his behaviour is more muted and neurotypical, perhaps because the monstrous forms of “autistic” traits came partially from malfunctions or perhaps because he has simply learned to mask better. This continues until his death in Star Trek: Nemesis when he replaces Captain Picard in detonating a radioactive weapon before it can be used to kill the rest of the crew. Some have claimed that this was a consequence of his emotion chip and symbolic of his finally becoming human (e.g. Oderwald 2013: 2); while I do not disagree that it was a deeply meaningful and human act, I believe such a claim undermines Data’s 15 years of character growth. His life is shown to be “both full and celebrated” (Porter 2013: 93) and his personhood well-established.44 His death is the ultimate reinforcement of the idea that friendship and self-sacrifice cross the boundaries of biology.
These themes are continued in the series Star Trek: Picard. Data remains dead, but he continues to play a role through Picard’s memories of him, his “descendants,” and a brief appearance in Picard’s “afterlife.” At least some small parts of Data were able to be salvaged and are used by scientists to create a planet entirely populated by androids. Some take after Data’s artificial look, while others (most notably the series’ protagonist Soji Asha) are designed to look and function identically to humans. I find this notable in my exploration of Data as autistic in that it portrays a spectrum of identities and existences from the obvious outsider to the perfectly masked. They are equally functional and valued amongst themselves, but are both socially and legally sanctioned in the wider galaxy, meaning the only ones that venture outwards are those who can make themselves identical to humans. Even more strikingly autistic is the way in which Dahj and Soji Asha are unaware of their being androids until events cause them to begin to realize their differences from those around them, and furthermore how they only truly learn to accept themselves when surrounded by supportive friends and knowing they are not alone.
Data himself appears in a sort of virtual reality experienced by Picard as he is transferred into an android body to prevent his death. This form of Data was created through a record of Data’s memories and demonstrates the strength of feeling Data had for Picard and by extension the rest of his crewmates and his awareness of their feelings for him. Their reunion is incredibly emotional for both, as is Data’s (completed) final request that the computers maintaining his consciousness be shut down so he can experience human mortality, as he feels that death is an important part of making meaning in life. In eulogizing him, Picard says that Data “look[ed] at the human race, with all its violence and corruption and willful ignorance,” but could still see and chose to embrace its “kindness, immense curiosity, and greatness of spirit.” (“Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2”, season 1, episode 10) He sought to bring out the best parts of humanity in himself.
Both in-universe characters and real-life Star Trek fans have noted that “for an android with no feelings, [Data] sure managed to evoke them in others.” (“The Most Toys”, season 3, episode 22) While it is not entirely reasonable for anyone to claim that a fictional character is a friend and it is difficult to see how a science-fictional android could be considered a role model, I think it is fair to say that Data has been both for autistic people. It is ironic that in spite of—or perhaps because of—the fact that the show never intended to create an autistic character (cws837 and Spiner 2012), Data became one of the most positive examples of non-neurotypical behaviour onscreen, especially in the 1980s and ‘90s but even into the present day. While his behaviours are exaggerated, his life was nonetheless portrayed as having meaning and his monstrous Other was not only accepted but embraced and defended by his fellow characters and by extension the show itself. In analyzing Data’s struggles for acceptance through “Measure of a Man,” his evolving personhood throughout The Next Generation, the effect of his emotion chip in Star Trek: Generations, and his continuing legacy on Star Trek: Picard, I hope I have given a decent primer on how this occurred and exactly why it was and is so important to autistic people like myself.
Data stands on the threshold of person and non-person. He causes us to question the boundary and in so doing perhaps encourages us to criticize the way we draw lines of personhood and acceptability with regards to unambiguously human examples like autistic people. He may have been initially created as a monstrous representation of fears of artificial intelligence and computers driven by the technological revolution of the 1980s (Gellis 2018: 48), but he moved beyond that. To paraphrase Cohen, Data “returns in slightly different clothing, each time to be read against contemporary social movements.” (Cohen 1996: 5) A character that started as an embodiment of concern over computing in the 1980s was rewritten to reflect a manifestation of fears of the alternate-thinking other in the 1990s, and then used in the 2020s as progenitor of an entire class of characters representing fears of a persecuted group sneaking into and transforming the wider world. Yet through these shifts in both culture and writing, Data continues to be considered by many a positive symbol of autism. Perhaps this stems from how he is valued and well-liked not only despite but because of his differences, and he is willing to resist oppression, stand up for rights, and make sacrifices for those he cares for.
Endnotes
1. My use of the term monstrous is informed by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s analysis in “1. Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 7. He examines the concept of the monster as a representation (etymologically, a demonstration) “of a certain cultural moment — of a time, a feeling, and a place.” In particular, it is often a representation of something that a society hates and/or fears.
2. Cohen, “1. Monster,” 20: “Monsters are our children. They can be pushed to the farthest margins of geography and discourse, hidden away at the edges of the world and in the forbidden recesses of our mind, but they always return. And when they come back, they bring not just a fuller knowledge of our place in history and the history of knowing our place, but they bear self-knowledge, human knowledge — and a discourse all the more sacred as it arises from the Outside. These monsters ask us how we perceive the world, and how we have misrepresented what we have attempted to place. They ask us to reevaluate our cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference, our tolerance toward its expression. They ask us why we have created them.”
3. Porter does discuss the possible “queering” of Yar and Data’s relationship, but I believe this is not relevant to its role as a point of persuasion in the trial; for more see Porter, “‘Engaging’ in Gender,” 82-83.
4. “Data desired to be a person. But I would argue such a complex desire indicates that he already was one—and indeed one capable of experiencing (even feeling) something beyond pure computational logic.” Gellis, “Refiguring Hybridity,” 52.
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Posted by Rick LeRoy, August 31, 2020. Accessed April 11, 2021. https://youtu.be/TPXwYzRgi2c.
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