Dr. Noonian Soong, idiot savant.

  • Flying SquidOPM
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    98 months ago

    Is that a comprehensive montage or has he used contractions in other episodes? I’m betting on the latter.

    • gregorum
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      118 months ago

      I know I often claim to have encyclopedic knowledge of all things trek, but I don’t know that much. I’m just going based off what’s in this video. I started counting based off examples after S01, of which there were 5 that didn’t include ones from Future Imperfect, in which I knew Data got called out for using contractions.

      Perhaps there are a few others, but, still, I doubt that it’s more than a few more, which makes for a pretty good track record considering how many episodes of that show there are and how many lines Data got.

      • Flying SquidOPM
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        48 months ago

        I’m guessing what is more likely is that they spent a long time going through season 1 looking for them and then either skipped around or found posts somewhere online where people had noticed others.

        • gregorum
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          8 months ago

          I just think that the “no contractions” rule wasn’t set until S02 to help both define Data’s character and differentiate him from Lore, which is why they suddenly became a super-rare mistake rather than being a commonplace occurrence, but whatever. I’m too tired and stoned now to look it up.

        • gregorum
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          8 months ago

          Ok, so that’s 42 episodes where Spiner slips up post S01. That’s a 72.3% success rate at getting through episodes without a contraction mistake. Still not bad. Not great, though.

          But it still supports my theory that, after S01, ot was a rule that they really tried not to break, but did accidentally anyway. Or, maybe, writing around it would have been way too clunky.