happy phantom, some of us are under the sway of the subversive lure of Michael Rosenbaum, rather than the hypnotic glare of Tom Welling's orthodontic work. Actually, I don't watch it anymore anyway.

I was always a little irritated with the conception of Data (and Spock, for that matter) -- quite clearly he had emotions. How could he have wanted emotions without them? And as fond as I am of "My neural pathways have become accustomed to your input," he liked the crew!

(Edit: Although of course with Spock it makes more sense. Still, sometimes I just wanted to hit Bones over the head: "Look, you shithead, facts aren't somehow the opposite of emotion!" Then he'd see the light and get down on his knees and propose and we'd live happily ever after while going from elf-strewn planet to puppy-and-kitten-inhabited planet to Planet of the Amazons, where I would be crowned Prettiest Princess, looking for the Home of the Talking Horses.)

I was also taken aback by how much more "alive" the Holo Doc on Voyager was than Data. I was told that the emotion problem was because Data was self contained, and wotsisname didn't have that problem.

Whatever.

And contractions -- what the hell? It's just language. You can have a computer use them without exploding.

It's just language. You can have a computer use them without exploding.

No shit. I can program contractions. Data had full language capabilities! That's... that's... we still don't know quite how that works! But he couldn't learn "if first word 'I' && second word 'am', replace with 'I'm'"?

I read a really bad DS story where Fraser never used contractions, because his grandmother instilled it in him or something.

Of course RayK claimed he liked to be called Stan. And Diefenbaker was spelled wrong.

It was a cross over story so I'm thinking the author hadn't actually *seen* Due South but the characters from the other show were pretty out of character as well.

And contractions -- what the hell? It's just language. You can have a computer use them without exploding.

Stupidest. Plot device. Ever.

I can't remember which magazine it was--Starlog ?? or something like it--that had a cartoon about Data's no contraction thing. It was Data explaining it to Worf. "I can not use contractions such as 'can't' ." and Worf just repeating "Can not say can't" over and over going insane trying to figure the logic in it.

I'm not sure how I feel about this development, I may have to wait until I see the movie to know for sure. Either way, it's been a while since I really cared all that much.

Sean, it sucked like a thing that sucks. So stupid - either have the balls to go all the way, or don't bother.

And contractions -- what the hell? It's just language. You can have a computer use them without exploding.

Stupidest. Plot device. Ever.

No, that's second place. First place is when the android contracted a virus (in "The Naked Now" episode). And no, it wasn't a computer virus.

Apparently, UPN will have repeats of Jake 2.0 but I cannot get into the tvguide.com site today so I cannot find out when.

Also -- the Bashur you guys are talking about is he the one that was mentioned (here or lj?) as being the Algerian terrorist on MI-5 last night?

either have the balls to go all the way, or don't bother.

That is my dissatisfaction with the series and what they did with it right there in a nutshell.