TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

The cat one is enjoyable in a stylistic way, but the first one is just generally good. It's a little bit sad, showing two people sharing a sunset on a beach together, and ends with one side feeling alone even while sharing the moment. It's like, to the narrator, the science of it, the how of it doesn't detract from the beauty of it, it's what makes it beautiful. And the other person makes it seem like to think about it is to stop enjoying it.

It's got irony, it's got depth, it seems like it represents a lot of Data's experiences, and it does it with a pleasant scene. I think that poem was fantastic, and it blows my mind that the people in that room would be anything but impressed.

He's also one of the few 'adults' in Starfleet making any new art at all. That deserves a ton of applause on its own.

The content is fantastic.

He needs to work on his delivery.

It's a bit.... robotic.

Can't believe no one has linked this yet

I've only been able to get over his misuse of "obviate" by assuming the word evolved in a couple hundred years because not enough people knew its meaning in the 21st century.

When you think about it his development is like that of a child or a teenager. He may collect and process lots of information but he has to interact with people in order to learn how to relate to people, interpret their emotions, relate his own emotions and understand the complex, complicated, contradictory and constantly changing attitudes of every being ... it makes you realize that sometimes we're not so good at it either.

I have the first stanza of Ode to Spot committed to memory. I made no effort to do so and I haven't seen that episode an exorbitant number of times, but I can still recite it on demand.

Crew was too busy fawning over Shakespeare to recognize they were in the presence of modern greatness.

Is there any way of finding out who actually wrote it, and whether Data's two poems were by the same author? - I mean in "out of universe" terms.

Some scriptwriter/poet, wrote an episode, including a poem in the style of a futuristic android coming to terms with human nature - to the point we can all find meaning and parallel in the work spoken by a fictional character... and I think that shows some real skills.

Interesting. I grew up on this show.

Poetry is pure gibberish to me. I just dont get it. Never have.

So i never knew what the poems were supposed to mean so i dont and never did factor the quality of the poems as written.

Heres how i relate to these scenes in this show

The show is set 300 years from now roughly.

300 years ago was 1700

Data's poems are obviously written for the audience(us) to understand and as such they are actually twentieth century poems both in the real world, but also in the fiction universe as twentieth century style poems written by an android in the twenty fourth century.

Think about that superposition for a second.

Datas poetry to the other characters in the show is essentially just an archaic style that just isnt popular to the culture of the people he is around and data is writing stuff that has been done many times over by people who are way better at it that he is.

Like me writting you reading this a poem that is similar in style to red red rose by robert burns.

My love is like a red red rose.. etc

It being actually good poetry isnt the point, but its a kind of poetry that has already been done and isnt modern poetry to the other members of the crew. They would need a specific interest in the style data was going for becauase in all of datas creative efforts its abundantly clear he is mimicking the forms of art he creates in an attempt to understand emotion. Hes essentially trying to reverse engineer an understanding of emotion by creating new works in a style, and then querying the results to see if the emotions his works create match the style he mimicks and then uses those result to apply to himself. In a shell game kind of way, but not exactly

To put it another way, reading finnegans wake by most people who arent prepared for it, is an incredibly painful experience because yes you can understand and read the words, but that doesnt mean it was an enjoyable experience

Edit: i kinda lost focus here. Might rewrite what im trying to say. Or just delete it later.

Lemmy, you've blown my mind. Seeing Data as neurodiverse changes so much

The positronic pimp!

I'm loving the specificity (that narrows down nothing ) in calling a cat an endothermic quadruped.

Highly recommend Old Possum's book of practical cats by T S Elliot for more whimsical cat poetry. The Rum Tum Tugger will be eminently familiar to anyone who's ever owned a cat.

Data’s poems sort of read like they were written by ChatGPT. Right?