Every "human" thing Data attempts is supposed to look like a caricature of itself. It's the comical edge to his character and his never-ending quest for humanity. He's just too fundamentally different to smoothly and effortlessly human.
I don't know in this episode I was kind of amused as a kid by the cake stuff but was more freaked when Data attacked Troi in the Elevator. The Idea that Worf eats cake let alone talks with his mouth full of mint frosting was just funny to my brother and Me.
There was a planned episode which never got filmed, that would've been even more absurd. Riker would stand next to a wall and hit it with a loaf of bread all day, because that is his "job". At some point, the TNG crew would figure out that what they are doing is kind of absurd and that reality was tempered with... because Q had gone mentally insane and his crazyness transformed the reality and made it equally "broken".
I can only wonder, what was the baker thinking when the set designers called him and said, "So yeah, we're commissioning a cake in the shape of a human torso, and frosted to look like a science officer's uniform."
I remember being a kid, not familiar with Star Trek at all, turning the show on and it happened to be this episode. Years later, in a College class on Psychoanalysis and Science Fiction, this was the first show watched and it seemed familiar, then it got to this part and I said "IT'S THE CAKE EPISODE!!"
Seeing this episode as a child in the early 90's bugged me out. Still, I can remember sitting there compelled and gripped by its awkward/weird inducing nature and I still come back here today to watch this scene. I see it had the same kinda effect on other ppl here as a child . That's weird too! Love ittt!
I remember watching this episode as a kid and it creeped me out. Even Geordi's "This oughta be a lot of fun!" was quite ominous. But when Worf spoke with his mouthful of cake, "With mint frosting!", I laughed out loud and made everything okay. Not from this clip, after.
I'm going to go see Troi, Crusher and Worf at Comicon in Portland Oregon on September 7-9th 2018. I am trying to line up a wedding cake bakery to make a replica of this cake, except this time it will be Riker is the cake because he was supposed to attend Comicon but isn't. And I hope they can make his head too. I will present to Marina Sirtis I think.
I have seen this episode 5 times. Every SINGLE time, I tune in just after the opening scene!! Later, when Data is discussing his nightmare with Geordi in Engineering, he ends his conversation with: "... after I woke up, for a moment I...". YOU WHAT?!?! WHAT DID I MISS??? Aaaaarrrrgh!!
This episode aired when I was a kid, I had mono at the time n had a terrible fever I’m old now but still remember those fever dreams I had of data cutting Diana up n waking up crying Not the only Star Trek episode that gave me nightmares either Schisms creeped me out pretty bad too
I relate to Data. I tend to have dreams like this. Unrealistic, bizarre. The only difference is I'm usually other people. A variety of people. With their own thoughts, desires, histories and behavior. In the dreams I have entire lifetimes of memories I can recall to. I am almost never myself. It's strange to me, almost like I'm hopping to another life in another dimension rather than my own creation. Some are outside of the scope of something I'd even imagine.
+Mirin Brah It's how alot of films do scenes where there's chest surgery, she's actually inside the solid table with only her head poking out of a carefully placed hole so it looks like she's lain there, then the set it put around her; in this case, a cake.
Hehe, pretty sure x3 it's a very old technique; they even used something similar in the Iron Man movies where Piper was helping Tony fit his new reactor and had to reach into his chest; though they used CGI air-brushing and green screening to hide his body in that case. Back in the The Next Generation and Voyager era, it was the common practice for scenes like this to use the hidden body
I've wondered about something for years when it comes to this episode. At the end, Troi brings over a Data Cake for her and Data to eat, but we never actually see him eating any. Did they ever bring up whether or not Data could ingest food?
Yes. In the episode: "Deja Q"... Q: I've never eaten before. What do I ask for? DATA: The choice of meal is determined by individual taste. Q: What do you like? DATA: Although I do not require sustenance, I occasionally ingest semi-organic nutrient suspension in a silicon-based liquid medium. Q: Is it good? DATA: It would be more accurate to say it is good for me, as it lubricates my bio-functions. Q: It doesn't sound very appealing. What else is there?
LOL, I've just LOL' d out loud, Watched this clip, I have an Alexa in the computer room with the trigger word set to "Computer" (for obvious reasons!), and some LED lights on a wifi controller... guess what happened!
A case of Next Gen trying to have its cake and eat it at the same (literally in one case), Phantasms ends up with some potentially disturbing psychological horror being watered down in favour of some nonsense about invisible parasites from the new warp core. Whilst it makes sense for Data to be the central figure in this tale, both he and the other cast members look bored most of the time and some attempts at incorpoating Freudian theory just fall flat causing us to become as bored as the cast. The Troi cake and the shocking follow up to it are probably the only memorable moments.
