Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S1 E12 "Datalore"

• Acting for Two: Brent Spiner as both Data and Lore.
• First Appearance: Of Lore.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: This marks the final appearance of Biff Yeager as Chief Engineer Argyle. At the time, he was under consideration for a permanent role on the show. Then Paramount started getting a lot of fan mail praising Argyle and demanding that he stay on. The producers soon realized that Yeager himself was writing these letters and he was fired.
• Wag the Director: The writers and producers went back and forth for quite some time about Data not using contractions, which wasn't helped by the fact that Data had used contractions in the episodes before this one. Brent Spiner refused to walk on set until they made a decision. Considering a detail like that was going to be very crucial to how he played the character going forward, it's hard to blame him.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Lore was originally planned to be a female android to provide a love interest for Data. Her job would have been to go out and do repairs in dangerous situations. The new android was intended to have been created as something that could be deployed into dangerous or hazardous situations, described in the premise as something along the lines of a female android version of Red Adair, the fire fighter. It was Brent Spiner who suggested the old "evil twin" concept be used instead.
  • An early story for this episode was named "Apocalypse Anon". In this story the Enterprise-D was on a rescue mission on a planet. Part of the away team was a female Starfleet officer with the name Minuet, who fell in love with Commander Riker. Riker was shocked when he learned that Minuet was an android. This would be reworked into the later episode "11001001"
  • The episode was originally developed to include the creation of Data by an alien race. This was instead dropped and Dr. Noonian Soong was introduced.