Synopsis: A day in the life of Lt. Commander Data is recorded in a correspondence to Commander Maddox.
In “Data’s Day” viewers observe human interaction through the perspective of the android second officer of the USS Enterprise, Lt. Commander Data. And what is amazing is how much emotional material he comes in contact with on a scientific vessel for exploration. It is as if the scientific mission which requires gathering of empirical information and then interpreting it through rational mental – or thinking states, is balanced, or sometimes overwhelmed by the feelings that are repressed when one is trying to be scientific.
Data notes that although in one respect it is a special day, his friends Keiko Ishikawa and Chief Miles O’Brien are getting married and he is to give the bride away, but other than that there are a number of birthdays, births, and other personal milestones occurring for the crew aboard the Enterprise this day.
There are a number of ways to interpret this situation from a depth psychological perspective, depth psychology being the name for that branch of psychology that studies the human unconscious, but what occurs to be at the moment is the idea of Data, who is a thinking type, he is after all a thinking machine, examining the human members of the crew who display other types, and emotions that he is not able to feel or know himself. He is most puzzled by Ship’s Counselor Deanna Troi because her job requires understanding the feelings of individuals. But this just shows that if we see the vessel of the Enterprise as a psyche, then all these different types are at work inside it. Thinking may be its superior function, but it also needs its inferior feeling function in order to be complete.
Original post created 3 September 2021
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