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Star Trek is filled to the brim with fantastically crafted characters, both heroes and villains. They slot in perfectly in their complex universe, acting as a futuristic allegory for topical issues at the times when the shows were made. Out of all the villains the franchise offered up, one of the more memorable, but often overlooked by the writers, is that of Lore.

This insidious android is the ‘evil’ cyborg twin brother to fan favorite character Data. With his surprise appearance in the new season 3 trailer for Picard, it seems his time in the limelight is not over. So for those who don't know, who exactly is he, and what happened to him in between The Next Generation and his appearance in Picard?

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All great stories and character arcs start with a name. ‘Lore’ is a rich name with deeper meaning, especially when compared to his brother’s given name. Both Lore and Data are different types of information, but Data is far more factual and scientific. Lore, meanwhile, often relates to stories and mythology, handed down through generations. Data is inherently logical and factual, harder to falsify. Lore can be twisted and changed as stories pass from one mouth to another. It is also linked to traditions and religion. This makes perfect sense for why Roddenberry, a secular humanist with strong opinions about science over faith, would make Lore a villain The character would embody everything he disliked about religion: alluring and interesting, but dangerous.

Star Trek: soong

Like Data, Lore was created by Doctor Noonien Soong. Also like Data, he was, rather egotistically, built in Soong's own image. He was the doctor's fourth attempt at a fully functional android, and the first he made with a fully functional positronic brain. Lore was, at least at first, the perfect creation. He was advanced in both strength and intelligence, and also fully sentient. This latter aspect was good thing on paper, but as his personality developed, it made him much more dangerous. While Data was created afterward, his older brother was actually more advanced. Lore possessed complex emotional programming – something that Data was always desperate to replicate, but often fell short of or missed the point entirely, much like Seven of Nine.

Removing emotion from Data was no mistake. Over time, Lore became more and more emotionally unstable, starting to display signs of malevolent behavior. He started to see himself as better than the humans in the colony where he and Soong lived, aware of his superiority and tiring of those he believed to be beneath him. He grew more and more degrading towards them, until the humans began demanding that Soong deactivate Lore. Lore proclaimed that was because they were envious of his perfection. Soong, though, eventually saw the darkness in his creation. He finally chose to shut Lore down and dismantle him, but not before Lore set in motion his own plan for revenge. He knew he would be deactivated, so he contacted a powerful space-born entity known as the Crystaline Entity. He offered to sacrifice the planet and those who lived there to the Entity in exchange for his own survival.

Star Trek Data

While Soong set about creating Data, he placed Lore into storage for many years. He always meant to return, and fix the issues with his emotional programming, but never did. Soong managed to finish Data, but soon afterward, the Crystaline Entity appeared, responding to Lore’s call. It destroyed all life on the planet, leaving just Data and the dismantled, deactivated Lore ‘alive.’ Starfleet found and rescued Data, and Lore remained in storage until one fateful TNG episode, “Datalore.”

In the episode, Lore was found and reactivated by Beverly Crusher and the crew of the Enterprise-D. Some truly classic Lore shenanigans ensue. He quickly returns to his nefarious ways, culminating in a telenovela-style twin swap with him and Data. The crew eventually work out what he has done and, in a rather un-Star Trek-like conclusion, he is transported into the cold embrace of space. Here, Lore floats around for two years until he is finally picked up by a passing trade vessel, and returned to Doctor Soong, who is revealed to have survived the attack.

Soong re-actives Lore, and they argue. Lore is angry with his ‘father’ for never trying to fix him, and instead replacing him with Data. His anger softens somewhat when he learns that Soong is gravely ill, but is reignited when he learns that Soong has summoned Data as well. He plans to fit Data with a new and improved emotion chip. Combined with an emotionless upbringing where he learned the factual difference between right and wrong, this would prevent the problems that exist with Lore. Data arrives, and Lore once again plays the identical twin card. He takes Data’s place, hoping Soong's invention will ‘fix’ him, and Soong installs the chip in his head instead. Despite his intentions, the chip does the opposite, as it was never designed for him. It sends his emotions into overdrive, sending him into a rage that causes him to mortally wound Soong before escaping.

Star Trek: dismantled Lore

There is more to Lore’s story, like the time he partnered up with the creepy Borg and turned Data to the dark side, but his story ends in failure. Data, realizing his brother was too far gone to be helped, manages to stun and then deactivate him. Lore's last words were ‘I love you brother’ in a surprisingly emotional moment from the reccurring baddie. He is dismantled, and the emotion chip Soong is removed and returned to Data, who would later install it in himself. Data declares that Lore has been ‘permanently deactivated,’ his positronic net damaged beyond repair. His body/parts are most likely stored at the Daystrom institute.

While he may have been beyond repair during TNG, a lot of scientific discoveries and developments have been made by the time the Picard series comes along. With Maddox’s fractal neuronal cloning technique seemingly working fine, it might provide the perfect reactivation explanation for Lore's return in the new season.

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