As a fan, I'm especially fond of Star Trek: The Next Generation, because it was the first series that I watched in real time. It was far from perfect, and it struggled early on as it strove to find its own identity apart from Star Trek: The Original Series. Still, it was Lieutenant Commander Data who kept me watching during that shaky first season. He appealed to me, and I related to him as someone wildly out of step with my peers.
When "The Measure of a Man" premiered in TNG season 2, I found myself glued to the TV in a way I'd rarely been in the past. The episode highlights Data's validity, his existence as a sentient being, and whether he served Starfleet or was its property.
The episode stayed with me for years, and when I talked to other fans about it, I discovered that we agreed on two points: the episode remains incredibly valid today, but the guest-starring characters are more annoying than a tribe of space hippies that won't stop singing and insist on showing you their homemade musical instruments.
Characters you love to hate, but for the wrong reasons
Actors Brian Brophy (Bruce Maddox) and Amanda McBroom (Phillipa Louvois) guest star in this episode as foils for Data and Captain Picard, both of whom become embroiled in the question of Data's sentience and whether he has the same rights as the humans he serves with. Maddox wants to take Data off the Enterprise-D, store his memory in the computer core of Starbase 173, and disassemble him like a Tinker Toy.
As a neurodivergent person watching this episode in 1989, Maddox both frightened and irritated me. Maddox assumed that Data would comply with his request without knowing how his experiments (let's be honest, that's exactly what they were) would affect the beloved TNG character.
Imagine realizing from a young age that you aren't at all like your peers, and then some amateur psychologist wants to take you away and run tests on you? Terrifying! While Star Trek is the undisputed champ of creating antagonists you love to hate, Maddox didn't fit the bill. He was simply too annoying, but the episode didn't stop there.
Captain Phillipa Louvois is like the "pick me" girl who passed the bar. I suppose for the time, she was meant to be one of the many bright, successful women who served in the Federation. Unfortunately, as a lawyer who raked Picard over the coals during the court-martial that investigated the loss of the Stargazer, she comes off as smug, shrill, and dismissive of Picard's objections regarding Data.
My favorite moment is when she says to Picard, condescendingly, "All this passion over a machine?" Picard scowls and snaps, "Don't start!" He won't tolerate any Janice Lester vibes on his Enterprise! (Continued...)