Star Trek's Brent Spiner Disagrees With Many Fans About Data's Nemesis Death

The death of Brent Spiner's Data in "Star Trek: Nemesis" has long been a contentious plot point for fans of the "Next Generation" branch of the sprawling franchise's family. The all-too-human android ultimately sacrifices himself to save his captain, Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart), and the rest of his crew, and he dies by immolation in a spacecraft explosion. It was an ending that ultimately divided "Star Trek" fans, as some felt it was a fate that obliterated Data's character arc and was absurdly martyrish. Yet others accepted it as an inevitability, as Spiner, unlike Data, has been forced to age as all mortals do, a definite concern when he was playing the character.

That hasn't meant the end of Spiner's attachment to the "Star Trek" world, however. He's played multiple relatives and clones of Data since his character's untimely demise in other "Star Trek" productions, including the evil Lore and Adam Soong, Data's creator. Some fans cried foul when the show finally brought back Data for good in "Star Trek: Picard." With his intelligence placed in an aged body resembling Soong's, this new version of the character combines the memories and intellect of both Lore and Data. The end result has been a Data who can feel emotions and use slang comfortably.

In the wake of the final season of "Star Trek: Picard," Brent Spiner spoke out about Data's original fate.  "You know, I was perfectly happy with the ending of 'Nemesis,' even though I know that a lot of fans weren't," Spiner admitted to The New York Times in February. Spiner even posited that Data's resurrection redeems the character's death for those who hated it.

Even though Brent Spiner thinks that Data's resurrection will heal old wounds for fans of the show who couldn't stomach his death, he admitted to The New York Times that his experience making "Star Trek: Nemesis" as a whole was an imperfect experience.

"There are things about "Nemesis" that didn't work. I think we went into it with the feeling that it was probably going to be our last film, which was why we let Data's demise happen. We thought a great dramatic conclusion to one of the characters would be a fitting end to the series," Spiner admitted after further prompting from Patrick Stewart. 

And yet playing out the complicated history between Lore and Data — a dance that ultimately results in Data's humanity growing by leaps and bounds, just as he long wished it would — has apparently proved satisfying to Spiner and he wouldn't change a thing. When asked by The New York Times if he would change Data's original fate, he said, "I don't think so, because then I couldn't have played those other things ... I would hate to have missed both those moments [Data's death scene and the resurrection of Data]." And in space as in life, sometimes destiny will take you to unexpected places.