Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Schizoid Man"

Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Schizoid Man". Les Landau, director. Season 2, episode 6 (21 January 1989).[1] Alternative date for first airing, 23 January 1989.[2]

Discussed by Victor Grech in Feature 101, "Brain and Dualism in Star Trek," SFRA Review #304 (Spring 2013), who notes

In “The Schizoid Man” [...], a famous and arrogant scientist (Ira Graves) is on the verge of death but has “learned to transfer the wealth of my knowledge into a computer. Before I die, I plan to transfer my great intelligence into this machine, thus cheating the Grim Reaper of his greatest prize.” [...]

Graves manages to deactivate Data and applies his knowledge to download his mind into Data.

When confronted, Graves freely admits and justifies his actions: "I deactivated Data and transferred my mind into his frame. I never imagined how much of my self I would retain. My feelings, my dreams. [...] Data? Before me, he was nothing. Just a walking tin can with circuits for intestines. Pathetic. Without heart, a man is meaningless."

He [Graves] eventually relents, vacates Data’s body and moves into a simple computer, and the Captain notes the difference: “[t]he intellect of Ira Graves has been deposited into our [ship's] computer. There is knowledge but no consciousness. The human equation has been lost.” (Grech p. 19)[3]

See for motif, or trope, of "Brain Uploading"[4] and the idea of computer-mediated immortality, as in, e.g., The Annals of the Heechee and a number of other works.[5] Note on the Fandom site what seems to be a still of Mr. Data standing next to Graves enclosed in a sarcophagus such as in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (film).[6]

Cf. and contrast Star Trek: Voyager episode where "the computer-generated Emergency Medical Hologram on the [spacecraft] Voyager embarks on a self-enhancement project, a hubristic scheme that involves the grafting of famous historical personae onto his program, software that defines his personality." He gets taken over by the Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll: "Darkling," season 3, episode 18 (19 Feb. 1997);[7] discussed briefly by Grech (p. 19), quoted here also.

RDE, finishing, 7Jul21