The nerds of Team Dordi spend their free time tinkering with Data's brain. Geordi hopes that in a crisis, Data could plug in and run the ship all by himself. Because the M-5 did a bang-up job a century back in 'The Ultimate Computer' and its high time somebody put a disembodied robot brain in charge of a starship once again.
As might be expected by anyone who's seen anything, it all goes awry, swapping the recreational library systems with bits of Data's mind.
This fills the replicators with cat food, trades Crusher's play for Data's cat-themed poetry, and (nothing to do with kitties) puts super-strong, super-fast copies of Data into the roles of the cowboys of Alexander's Ancient West program. Speaking of kitties, Alexander and Mr. Barclay wrote the program for a little father-son bonding time, with 'Miss Kitty's House of Pleasure' as a game bonus level nobody's going to be playing during family viewing hours.
Sheriff Worf of Deadwood (minus all the HBO cussing) must rescue his hostage Deputy Sonny from the clutches of the Dastardly Data Gang with the help of "Durango", The Mysterious Rifle-Toting Stranger from Betazed.
Ruthless villain Frank Hollander could gun even a Klingon down before he twitches a whisker.
Worf must draw on his ingenuity to cobble together a Brainiac 5 Forcefield Belt from a communicator and a telegraph machine to survive the obligatory shoot-out.
"A Fistful of Datas", originally written as "The Good, The Bad, & The Klingon" is both a great new take on the 'holodeck breaks down' story and a quality SF rendering of western tropes.
A VR western, a bar fight, Cowboys and Aliens, wanted posters, dynamite, and an android using a spittoon. You don't get this stuff anywhere else! Unless you watch Red Dwarf's 'Gunfighters of the Apocalypse'. Which I kind of want to do right now. So long, part'ners... (Mike rides off into sunset on imaginary space horse.)
Let us not forget what a great job HAL did in 2001 a Space Odyssey.
ReplyDelete"Open the door HAL.'
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.'