Datalore

Writing in 2021, it is great to see that I am not the only person taking a retrospective look at Star Trek, the Next Generation. When this series was first released in 1987, a little less than twenty years after the end of the Original Series, many people thought that, without Captain Kirk and his crew, it couldn't really be Star Trek. However, original creator Gene Roddenberry, was fully invested in the casting, writing and overall look of the new series, so let's see how it shaped up:

This is the Evil Twin episode which gives Brent Spiner the chance to show off as two contrasting characters: Data, the serving android crew member and Lore, his creator's discarded prototype. Surprisingly cunning for a reject, the counterfeit manages to deactivate his twin and deceive to the entire senior staff...............except for clever teen, Wesley.

We get to hear the immortal lines: "shut up Wesley" uttered more than once, suggesting that the writing team (which at this stage still gave a credit to Gene Roddenberry himself) already had an inkling of how unpopular the child-genius character was becoming. The Soong-Data backstory, of which we will hear so much more in the future, is laid down here and the concept of the crystalline entity is interesting. So, we do get some decent Sci-Fi here, after all.

Despite the resounding silliness of the main plot.

(Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5)