Summary
- Lore's debut in Star Trek: TNG's "Datalore" resembles TOS' "The Enemy Within" with evil doppelgangers wreaking havoc on the Enterprise-D and requiring reintegration.
- Star Trek has a long history of exploring the concept of evil twins and doppelgangers, from the Mirror Universe in TOS to DS9, Discovery, and Picard.
- Lore and Data's story in TNG is just one example of the many doppelganger stories in Star Trek, starting with Captain Kirk's evil double in TOS.
Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced Lore (Brent Spiner) as the evil brother of Lt. Commander Data (also Brent Spiner) with a story that recalls a classic episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. In TNG season 1, episode 13, "Datalore," Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) takes the USS Enterprise-D to visit Omicron Theta, the planet where the android Data was found by Starfleet years before. As the Enterprise crew explore the now desolate planet, they find the disassembled body of another android that looks just like Data. When the new android is reassembled and activated, he declares himself to be superior to Data and says his name is Lore.
Although Captain Picard and the Enterprise-D crew initially show some apprehension about Data's android doppelganger, they soon begin explaining to him how the ship works. Despite all of the unknowns surrounding Lore, he basically has free reign of the ship and access to the Enterprise's computers. Lore believes himself to be superior to all humans, and he has formed an alliance with the Crystalline Entity that destroyed the colony at Omicron Theta. Lore renders Data unconscious and begins masquerading as his brother, and only boy genius Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) shows any suspicions about Data's odd behavior.
