The Most Toys

*** (3 stars out of 5)

What you gonna do with all that hytritium? All that hytritium in your trunk?

Explode.

As far as his crew are concerned, Data is killed in a shuttle accident. In reality he is a victim of an elaborate kidnapping by Kivas Fajo, a scruple-free Zibalian trader.

I wonder if Fajo had an Earth ancestor called Artie Nielson of Warehouse 13? They have similar habits as hoarders, if wildly dissimilar moral motives.

Fajo has a shipload of cowed followers, and also heaps of valuable rarities. A baseball card, the last Lapling, even 1 of the 7 Mona Lisas which Leonardo da Vinci painted for the Fourth Doctor.

And now this evil space leprechaun owns the only known sentient android. One of a kind and helpless behind forcefields. Fajo's horrible friends will be green with envy even if they aren't Orions.

When Data refuses to be a good little manikin and wear Fajo's chosen costume, the twisted lunatic dissolves Data's uniform with finoplak. When his only choices are going naked or decked out in quasi-jodhpurs like some grey-and-pink Aquaman, Data picks jodhpurs. But it was a near thing.

Fajo owns several limited-edition Varon-T disruptors. Super-rare, and also super-banned throughout the Federation.

"It's not just lethal, it's vicious." Fajo threatens to use it to torture his 14-year minion Varria to death to force Data's acquiescence.

Varria confides to Data: he'd do it, too. Fajo's rewards for loyalty are lavish and "his punishments are equally... lavish." The way she delivers that line made me shudder back in 1990. Should her alien-smooth face REALLY look like that?

Riker and company start to doubt whether the water contamination they are stopping was naturally occurring, and why Kivas Fajo had the antidote ready, and finally chasing down Fajo's vessel.

Having betrayed Fajo's trust and failed an escape attempt with Data, Varria is slowly murdered by The Disruptor that Spells Rupture. Varon-T: For the Sadist Who Has Everything and Wants Some of It to Disintegrate Screaming.

Kivas taunts Data with a reminder that he is incapable of killing. IF ONLY DATA COULD GET ANGRY AT INJUSTICE!

O'Brien wonders what was up: Data's weapon discharged just as his rescuers beamed him out. Did he fire it at Fajo?

What do YOU think?

"The Most Toys" is a dark tale of greed, need, torment and death, made more so over the real-life suicide attempt by the first Fajo, David Rappaport. Saul Rubinek brings plenty of sick, sweaty, twitchy menace to the inherited role. He made Fajo convincingly worthy to be executed by even the nicest of androids, Federation law be damned.