I had forgotten that Data had a mysterious origin at the beginning of the series since Dr. Soong ended up being referenced many times later in the series. Also I forgot how much TNG struggled to have villains since they seemed to be trying to follow a, "nobody gets god powers except Q," rule that kinda limits how threatened the ship is likely to feel. The children's drawings of crystalline entity are pretty creepy at least.
We begin with the Enterprise passing by the remote planet Data was found on. Picard decides to stop by to check things out, but when they arrive they find it devoid of life. Wesley goes to get Data from his quarters and finds him practicing sneezing. They beam down and discover that literally everything alive down to the soil bacteria has been wiped out. Data points out the slab where he awakened in what looks like a cave, but Riker finds the secret switch or something and they find their way in a pretty advanced lab. Data remembers Dr. Noonian Soong working there and everyone recognizes him as being the leading expert on robotics who mysteriously disappeared years ago. Clearly no one ever thought maybe he made the mysterious one of a kind android. They also find what appears to be another Data disassembled.
They beam the other android up and chief engineer Argyle gets to work rebuilding him. With some help from Data they get him working and he identifies himself as Lore. Lore tells them Data was made first and found to be flawed. After acting kinda sketchy Lore drugs (no, I don't know how you drug an android either) Data's champagne and takes his uniform. Lore uses the computer in his quarters to signal the Crystalline Entity but is detected. For some reason they send Wesley to check it out and he figures it out, but they don't believe him. Lore comes to the bridge as the entity arrives and Wesley tries to tell everybody it isn't Data but he is told to shut up and leaves. Lore convinces them to let him beam a tree out so they can destroy it to show off which makes sense to them all for some reason.
Lore rushes to one of the cargo bays and has to fight Worf in the turbolift for some reason, but apparently the rest of the security team don't bother calling up to the bridge to report it. Luckily the boy genius has it all figured out and gets his mom to help him turn Data back on. For some reason Wesley and Dr. Crusher go with Data to confront Lore who of course uses them as hostages. But Data manages to throw Lore onto the transporter pad just in time for Wesley to beam him into deep space or maybe the entity. Picard forgives Wesley and credits.
Review: While not at his best Wesley manages to be just enough not the worst to not cost this episode a point. Lore certainly manages to be menacing, but his pretending to be Data should have been figured out more quickly, although I guess Picard did figure it out but didn't want to admit Wesley was right, and who wouldn't?
7 out of 10
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