Cute robots have rights too!
I thought this was a philosophically interesting episode that ended up missing the mark because a bit too much time was spent dancing around the subject of ‘what can the robots do’. It would have been much more interesting if that had been settled quickly, and the debate was instead about whether that was enough to represent intelligent life.
It was nice to have another call back to the question of when machines are life, and it’s good to put Data in this kind of situation – his reaction was believable. The writers just needed to have a bit more faith in their concept, rather than trying too hard to maintain a sense of suspense about the robots.
243 down, 494 to go.