Spock vs. Data vs. Tuvok vs. the EMH vs. Odo vs. T'Pol

Who learned the most about humanity in their neverending quest?

Is Odo unemotional?

He acts like it sometimes. At the very least, he tries hard to keep emotions in check and underwraps. Besides, for DS9, he was the best one I could find to parallel all the others.

Shouldn't Seven of Nine be included in this group? In my opinion she was a better Vulcan than T'Pol.

Include whomever you want -- that was just to get this topic started.

At first I thought Voyager went a little overboard having two different quasi-human characters exploring the nature of identity, but there were enough differences that made it interesting. Seven was more reluctant to "explore her humanity". It felt like Janeway was pushing her to do something that she didn't really care to. The Doctor, on the other hand, seemed more like his quest was to be a better hologram, not so much that he wanted to be human. His quest seemed to be regarded as an equal member of the crew.



If Seven had been held to the standard of emotionalism that T'Pol had been, she would have been as criticized as T'Pol. She had her CRACK WHORE moments as well, but they wouldn't have been considered as such because she's allowed to have emotions.

One weird thing though, is that I always catch contractions coming from T'Pol, Seven or Spock and I want to criticize them for it, but then I remember that it's only Data that's not allowed to say contractions.

Who learned the most about humanity? Hmmmm. I guess I'd say Seven of Nine. I like how her frequent rebellion/anger/contempt for Janeway is very adolescent but it's so wrapped up in her cold Borgishness that it doesn't feel like a cliche.

I saw an episode recently where she'd caught secretly practicing smiling into a mirror - it was a Data-esque move, but the added layer of her being mildly embarrased by the whole thing made it more poignant.

Tuvok, bless him, never learned nor wanted to learn anything about becoming more human.

Well, Tuvok is really the one who might have had least reason to do so. Seven was human, Spock half so. The EMH and Data were modelled after humans. Odo really lacked a personal identity, so he emulated the closest sentients. Tuvok, by contrast, was a 100%, USDA pure-bred Vulcan. Why would he need to learn about being human?

T'Pol... can we just blame the Trellium-D or something? Seriously. The passed up the opportunity to have a Great Vulcan with her.

To be fair, T'Pol doesn't seem to have any desire to be more human. All she wants is to be a good Vulcan, but starts to have a hard time when she starts to enjoy the challenge of spending all her time with a ship full of humans plus one Denoubulan. First the Pa'nar, then the Trellium. The writers never gave her a chance, did they?

Not that the Pa'nar was ever used for anything. It was never mentioned again until the episode where it was cured.

I find Seven's journey most interesting of all. She's trying to reclaim her humanity, but she's very reluctant about it. Sometimes she doesn't get a choice, and some aspect of humanity forces itself upon her. I think it's an interesting story.

This one is hard because I love most of them. The Doc seems to be an emotional gyzer (sp all kinds of wrong) He annoyed me the most. I loved 7 because she had the ability to make me feel for her even though she only showed emotion very subtly. I loved Tuvok (don't think he was used enough) for his minor annoyancee with all known phenomena, but he was nowhere near as grumpy as ... Odo. I liked Odo because he was so damn persnikity and bristly but he still reached out for connection. He had a tendency like lots of superior feeling people to get maddest when he was hurt. DATA is adorable and.... okay I'm not exactly choosing a favorite am I?

Of all the outside looking in characters I have to go with

Wooooooorf[/Chancellor Gowron]

He made me laugh out loud all the time. I'm not talking about TNG Worf because they hardly listened to him on the Enterprise. I could not for the life of me figure why Worf pined away for them so much seeing as they never really seemed to take him all that seriously then in the movies he became a butt for all the jokes... anyway, DS9 Worf had some of the best lines.

"Death to the opposition!"
"Do not hug me!"
"Nice hat."
"If I sense any treachery, I will kill him."

All of these lines are so much meh unless you know them in context.

Yes, but the best Worf line is from TNG: "I am not a merry man."

Another great line from TNG Worf.


Data (re: Spot): "You must feed him. You must provide him with a sandbox. And you must talk to him. Tell him he is a pretty cat. And a good cat."

Worf: "I will feed him."

Doesn't work so well as a transcript, but Spiner and Dorn really pulled off the delivery.

I wish the writing had been there for Seven. I really think Ryan could have pulled it off. She was the only one that was fully human. Her return to humanity should have been compelling. I thought one of Seven/Ryan's best episode was the one where there was that transporter accident and the Doctor's emitter and her nanobots merged to form that blue looking Borg. At the end of the ep she's with him in sickbay and he put up this force field so the Doc can't treat him and Seven get all emotional but not in a hammy way. At least not for me. I also like that she felt so much ambiguity about who she was. It seemed to me she thought of herself as much Borg as Human. She never refered to herself as Anaka, right?

This is not a "best lines" thread.

I wouldn't say Worf is really in the running on this topic at all -- he wasn't what I would call unemotional.

The episode "Drone" with the 29th-Century Borg was definitely my favorite Seven episode, and I also loved it when the drone literally defined the work "joke" and the Doctor quipped, "And I see you have your mother's sense of humor."

It was a great episode since it featured two of my favorite "Humans-in-progress."

Each series has one or two "outsider" characters that comment on humanity and sometimes try to emulate it. These correspond to the "unemotional" crewmembers. I always thought it was a bit species-ist that all of these aliens looked up to humans so much like we were the hot shit of the galaxy or something. That's why I liked Odo so much - he really didn't want to be human and preferred to observe them as an outsider.

Only on very rare occasions, and usually as a way to demonstrate her progress, since in her very early days she insisted on referring to Annika in the third person. The writing was actually pretty good about respecting that.
Odo was hypocritical about that, though. "I don't understand the humanoid need to couple. Now excuse me while I go pine for Kira." He talked a good game of Spock, but he had a Data streak running through him that made him want to be a little bit like the people around him.

I agree with Cleo. Odo disliked humanoids because they disliked him, or at least didn't understand him. In the first few seasons, he seemed like the nerd that would badmouth the cool kids but secretly wanted to be one of them.

Seven, on the other hand, loved who she was and didn't want to be more human. If anything, she thought humans should be more like her.

What I want to see next is an unemotional outsider crewmember who's sole ambition in life is to be more Bolian.

Data only framed his desire to be "human" as such because he was surrounded by humans, built by a human, and looked human (more human than Klingon, anyway). He frequently took emotional cues from Worf and Troi, and other non-humans.

I guess my point is that Data would have gladly studied to be more Bolian, but he just didn't say it that way.

I thought Dr Soong deliberately programmed Data with the desire to become more human. Maybe I imagined that.

Fair point, but a big part of the premise of the show is to examine what it means to be human - hence the outsider who has to have things explained to them. Although it might be interesting in a sort of academic way to have a character who really wants to learn how to be, say, Cardassian, I'm not sure it would be really gripping TV.

Then



I'm confuzzled. Although the EMH was exceptionally emotional he was included so I just figured it was a thread about outsiders. My bad.

If I have to pick from whose been mentioned then I'll go with 7 just based on that scenario that Curare described because damn that was some really great work on Ryan's part and I just found the character very interesting and fleshed out in general.

Sorry, maybe I should have prefaced that with "it's my opinion that Worf isn't in the running..." because, still, I wouldn't call a Klingon emotional.

As for the EMH, I know he programmed emotions into himself (just as Data could) but intrinsically he wasn't emotional because he wasn't human.

Maybe I'm not explaining it very well.

I understood it to mean those characters who were struggling with the concept of humanity (or Bajoranity if you're Odo), usually by exploring their emotions or trying to keep them in check. Worf was neither struggling with humanity nor trying to be more or less emotional.

Okay, got it. Thanks guys. I stand by my 7 endorsement. Damn shame how they treated the Chakotay relationship, that could have been a good opportunity for more human angst.

I really don't know what went wrong with the writing withVOY. The actors were not incapable of doing really good work. 7 and Chakotay could have been interesting but it was so forced it was nothing short of annoying.

I remember reading that C/7 was the result of a dare between Robert Beltran and Brannon Braga. Braga was dating Jeri Ryan at the time and Beltran dared him to write a story where Chakotay ended up with Seven of Nine. Would that they had considered it settled after "Human Error".

That was more or less Worf's story, and probably would have been ok if "being Klingon" wasn't just a pastiche of Samurai movies and Conan movies.

I completely agree. I didn't really watch season 7 in order, so when I watched the series finale, I figured that I had just missed the episodes in which their relationship had developed. Silly me. There were none.

I do appreciate the unemotional character/emotional character pairings though. The Trip and T'Pol relationship is one thing that ENT has done well (although I'll reserve judgement until the rest of the episodes are aired). I think they've had the best chemistry when T'Pol wasn't CRACK WHORING. They started out the series at complete odds with each other. She was seemingly all logic, and he was seemingly all emotion. But over the years working together, they each developed an appreciation for each other's styles and even learned from each other. It's kind of sad that Bermaga felt they had to use the CRACK WHORE card as a catalyst for their relationship though. I think it would have been much more interesting without the Trellium. They turned a perfectly good Vulcan (albeit an impractical dresser sometimes) into a CRACK WHORE!

And along those lines pennyq, there have been instances in Trek (TNG) where a Vulcan female took a human male as a mate, Suspicions. So they didn't need to go with the CRACK WHORE thing. It was just crappy writing. I keep thinking what Moore or Wolfe would have done had they been in charge on ENT. The only thing consistent about T'Pol is how badly she's been written.

the doctor and odo had emotions

http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/me...ms_capitals.gif

Supernuke, we have discussed what it means for the EMH and Odo to have or not have emotions earlier in the thread.

It might be a good idea to go back and read those discussions in order to add to and make a more substantial post.

For anyone with some excess time on their hands....

http://www.grudge-match.com/History/spock_data.shtml

A great Spock vs. Data scenario.

Does anybody think that this is an inappropriately named thread. They are semi-emotional rather than unemotional.

They all possessed emotion and/or curiosity to varying degrees, some of them didn't want to change or did so grudgingly, some of them accepted that change when it came and Data actively went out to embrace it and experience it. They all seem to accept themselves and yet have clear goals for improvement also, whether it be clear control and understanding of emotions and humanity (Spock, Odo, Tuvok, Seven and T'Pol) and to be human themselves (Data and the EMH). Seven wants or at least has the Borg-ingrained need to be perfect and reject some aspects of the humanity she was born to, she was never going to 'recover' completely, her journey was the cybernetic parallel of B'Elanna's in some ways, to come to terms with her hybrid self. Tuvok, T'Pol and Spock are Vulcans so they both need logic in some ways. Odo wants to know where he comes from and figure out how to be a Changeling and function in a solid universe. Data and the EMH don't want to be confined by the limitations of their technology and programming.

I think there's more of a journey of the soul going on and that's clearly impossible if one is not seen to have feelings because you can't make that choice without feeling even a little dissatisfied with your lot.

Your analysis is quite right, NMdum1, and I think it is particularly interesting that you classify a "feeling of dissatisfaction" as the impulse for change. Regarding the thread title- I think it's supposed to be ironic.