'Star Trek: Picard' Season 1 Episode 2: Who is Bruce Maddox from 'The Next Generation', what are his motivations?
The second episode of 'Star Trek: Picard' was dense and there was a lot to unpack. Apart from the flashback of the Mars terror attack conducted by a rogue Synthetics, information about the Borg cube and its connection to the Romulans was revealed, and more importantly, our hero Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is gearing up for a secret intergalactic mission, albeit against the Federation's orders.
Picard, as we remember, has not been able to heal from the injuries inflicted by the past. He lost his android friend Data (Brent Spiner) in 'Nemesis', and after a Romulan rescue mission failed spectacularly, he had distanced himself from the Federation and decided to live a lonely life in La Barre, France.
Yet two decades after Data's death, he runs into an android that seems to have been built from Data's remains. Data's daughter 'Dahj' (Isa Briones) had tried to seek Picard's help in the first episode, before being killed off quickly. However, she has a 'twin' named Sohj, and Picard is determined to find her.
Picard speaks to Doctor Agnes Jurati of the Daystrom Institute. She reveals that the only person who could have conducted such a feat is her mentor Bruce Maddox. Maddox was mentioned in the first episode and was again referred to in the second episode.
Who is Maddox?
This isn't a new name that 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' will assert. Maddox was the clinical antagonist in 'Star Trek: The New Generation', who wanted to disassemble Data for his own study and went against all odds to prove that he was just an android.
Obviously, Picard was far from being on board with this idea. In a historic military trial, Picard became Data's defense attorney and delivered a powerful speech and proved that Data was a sentient human being, with emotional connections. This comes after Maddox bleated about the advantages of an army of androids, who could be sent in place of sentient people. Picard retorted that Maddox was just arguing for an entire race of android slaves. Data won the case.
Being the thoughtful android that he was, Data never held a grudge against Bruce Maddox, and encouraged him to pursue his studies on the subject and that if Maddox's research ever proved fruitful, Data would agree to the tests. Maddox and Data parted on a good note, as Maddox finally referred to him as 'he', rather than 'it'.
However, Maddox did not feel the same about B-4, as Jurati shows Picard the disassembled android. Going by the second episode of 'Star Trek: Picard', we'll probably get to see Maddox again, as Dahk and Sohj are the results of his experiments and he possesses quite a few answers to some mysteries. He seems to be creating his own race of androids.
However, are his motivations evil?
'Star Trek: Picard' airs on CBS-All Access, Thursdays 12:01 am.