Overlooked Star Trek Episode Nearly Had The Perfect Picard Parody
It’s not the kind of thing fans usually admit, but pretty much everyone who loves Star Trek: The Next Generation has their own imitation of Captain Picard. Usually, those imitations are limited to fans doing an impression of Patrick Stewart’s bossy baritone voice. But the show itself nearly gave us the most perfect parody: “The Schizoid Man” was originally going to have a scene where Data imitates Picard by shaving his head bald.
Data’s Insecurity
For this tale to make much sense, we need to quickly review what the heck Data was doing in “The Schizoid Man.” The early seasons of TNG really emphasized Data’s quest to understand humanity, which is how we got weird plotlines of him trying to do things like master standup comedy. This episode begins with him summoning Geordi La Forge and Deanna Troi to his quarters and the chief engineer comments that, as impossible as it seems, Data had been acting relatively insecure lately.
In His Defense, Jonathan Frakes Grows An Amazing Beard
In a fun twist that seemingly proves Geordi correct, we discover that Data has grown a beard, much like Commander Riker, and wants his friends’ opinions. This opening scene of “The Schizoid Man” was mostly played for laughs: after Geordi asks if Data had “damaged” his face, the android describes this cosmetic change by calling it “a fine, full, dignified beard…which commands respect and projects thoughtfulness and dignity.”
When Troi doesn’t have much of an opinion on how it looks, Data asks her, “when I stroke the beard thusly, do I not appear more intellectual?”
Data’s Search For A Male Role Model
This is enough to send Troi running from the room in laughter, and Data sadly doesn’t have a beard for the rest of “The Schizoid Man.” Interestingly, even though the android looks like he is copying Riker with the new facial hair, he never mentions the commander by name. To this day, some fans think the whole scene was a kind of meta-joke about Jonathan Frakes, who grew a beard between Season 1 and Season 2 that eventually became what the character was most famous for.
Wanting To Be Like Picard
While the scene with Data’s beard was quite funny, “The Schizoid Man” almost had a more dramatic parody of the show’s most prominent character. In an unfilmed scene from the original script, Data would discover that the crew didn’t really like his Riker-style beard. In response, the android shaved his head bald, imitating Captain Picard.
Brent Spiner Is A Man Of Many Talents
Sadly, that never happened, but long after “The Schizoid Man,” fans were treated to Data imitating Picard in a different way altogether. Actor Brent Spiner is a regular on the convention circuit, and he sometimes shows fans his eerily-perfect imitation of Patrick Stewart. He unleashed that imitation at Comic-Con in 2016, and it was so precise that it even blew William Shatner’s mind.
Unleashed In Later Episodes
Later episodes like “A Fistful of Datas” would give us Data as we’d never seen him before, and later shows would bring Brent Spiner back as several different characters. However, part of us will always have a nostalgic soft spot for the bearded Data in “The Schizoid Man,” which really did make the android look even more dignified and thoughtful than usual.
If only we could have seen his bald Picard imitation, though, fans could rank whether this character tribute was “engaging” or enough to make us all cry, “make it no.”
