32 – The Schizoid Man

Grade: C

Summary

Dr. Ira Graves, perhaps the “greatest human mind in the universe” (according to Dr. Pulaski – yes, the same Dr. Pulaski who thinks Data is nothing more than a collection of nuts and bolts), has sent out a distress signal which the Enterprise has received. Starfleet believes that Dr. Graves is coming close to a breakthrough on cybernetics, so they have made his health a high priority. Meanwhile, Data has “grown” a beard.

Commentary

This is a decent episode, though I don’t like the character of Dr. Graves. I found him to be an arrogant and unprincipled jerk. Still, he knew what he needed to do in the end of the episode, so he wasn’t all that bad, I guess.

Brent Spiner does a very good job playing two roles here – one of the emotionless Data, and the other of Dr. Graves inside Data. Good job by the actor and the writer. However, though it was pretty easy for the viewer to tell that something was different about Data, it takes the clueless crew a lot longer. Because it’s in the script, I guess.

Though it has some good points, this is not an episode that I’d be in a hurry to see again. There are too many great episodes in this series to waste any time with this one.

Of Note

There are some interesting viewpoints when we can see the ship move into warp from the front window of Ten-Forward. Also, it was interesting to see Picard beam Dr. Graves’ casket out into space.