The way Data was written is always fascinating to me. Was he really created to be a human-shaped computer, devoid of emotion? Did the writers look at this wide-eyed child-man who routinely makes instinctive and irrational decisions and think, "Oh yes, this guy thinks entirely in ones and zeroes"? Or did they create him to be a man who feels every emotion that matters but fails to realize it because he's always been told otherwise, because he's always been told that he's not enough? Is Data, positronic machine, a metaphor for ourselves, electrochemical machines who likewise fail to recognize that we are more than our physical shells, more than our self-perceptions, more than how others define us? Is Data's quest for humanity a mirror of our own quest for the completeness we already have?
On the one hand, I feel like the second interpretation gives TNG's writers too much credit. On the other hand, I find the first one impossible to believe. It's an eternal mystery.
