A Christmas Carol Taught Star Trek’s Data What It Means To Be Human

Data's Quest for Humanity

Charles Dickens' enduring novella A Christmas Carol taught Star Trek: The Next Generation's Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) a valuable lesson about humanity. TNG's beloved android finally became human in Star Trek: Picard season 3, but Data was always one of the most human of souls aboard the USS Enterprise-D. Data's quest to understand more about humanity took in the great literary works of human history from Shakespeare to Dickens. Data was also keen to understand humanity through acting, and would regularly seek feedback from Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) on his performances in Henry V and The Tempest.

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This was something of a Star Trek: The Next Generation cast in-joke, as Patrick Stewart was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company before being cast as Picard. Data also sought feedback about his performance as Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This was another in-joke, as the role of Scrooge was another one close to the heart of Patrick Stewart. However, the advice that Picard gives Data about playing Scrooge was yet another vital lesson to TNG's beloved android about what it means to be human.

A Christmas Carol’s Scrooge Taught Data How To Be Human

Star Trek: The Next Generation season 4, episode 13, 'Devil's Due', opens with Data in full costume as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. The scene Data is performing is the one in which Scrooge is first visited by Marley's ghost. Data notes the power of fear to compel Scrooge to change his ways, which effectively sets up the main plot of the episode, in which Picard is tasked with disproving the existence of the devil on the planet Ventax II. However, Scrooge plays an important role in Data's ongoing story, too, thanks to Picard's astute assessment of Data's performance.

Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge in his robe and pyjamas standing in the woods with the Ghost of Christmas Past

To play Scrooge effectively, Star Trek: The Next Generation's Data was trying to trigger emotions of his own by re-enacting Ebenezer's haunting. Picard approves of this more method approach, after he had previously replicated historical performances of Shakespeare's Henry V.

Data, the moment you decided to stop imitating other actors and create your own interpretation, you were already one step closer to understanding humanity. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is still being performed nearly 200 years after it was first published, proving that it's one of humanity's enduring myths. So there could have been no better way for Data to learn about the complexities of the human experience than embodying the character of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Patrick Stewart's Connection to A Christmas Carol and Star Trek

Eight years later, Star Trek: The Next Generation's Patrick Stewart played the role in a Hallmark TV movie adaptation of A Christmas Carol. The Scrooge that Patrick Stewart plays in the movie embodies Picard's advice to create one's own interpretation. Stewart's Scrooge is a fragile and regretful man, who is reconciling the generational trauma of Victorian masculinity and a society that places profit over people. Stewart's connection with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol went back much further than this, however.

From 1988, Stewart had harbored an ambition to do his own small-scale stage show in tandem with Star Trek and had even performed a rough-and-ready one-man A Christmas Carol for the TNG cast to a warm response. In 1991, the same year that Data gave his Scrooge in 'Devil's Due', Patrick Stewart performed his one-man A Christmas Carol at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in New York before touring it throughout the 1990s. Given that both Charles Dickens' Christmas classic and Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek: The Next Generation have an overriding message of kindness and compassion, it's no surprise that Stewart felt an affinity with both Jean-Luc Picard and Ebenezer Scrooge.