Lore is a humanoid android from the sci-fi TV show, Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was created by Dr. Noonien Soong and is the 'brother' of android Starfleet officer, Data. As with both Data and Dr. Soong, he was portrayed by Brent Spiner.
History[]
Star Trek: The Next Generation[]
Lore was the fourth android of his type with a sophisticated positronic brain, which was programmed with advanced emotional subroutines. As revolutionary as he was, Lore showed clear signs of emotional instability and a superiority complex. He began to see humans and other biological organisms as beneath him, and his malicious behaviour frightened the inhabitants of the Omicron Theta colony.
The colonists demanded that Dr. Soong deactivate Lore, but shortly before his deactivation Lore made contact with the spacefaring being known as the Crystalline Entity, offering up the planet to it as an act of revenge. Sometime after Lore was shut down, the Crystalline Entity attacked Omicron Theta and destroyed all life on the planet. Lore and his younger brother Data had been left behind on the now-barren planet, but Lore's presence went unnoticed when Starfleet recovered Data in 2338. Lore had been stored in a separate laboratory which remained sealed until 2364 when the USS Enterprise-D arrived at Omicron Theta and discovered it.
Lore was reactivated by the Enterprise crew and discovered that his brother Data was aboard the ship. His malevolent nature immediately resurfaced and whilst aboard the Enterprise he shut down Data and began masquerading as him. He contacted the Crystalline Entity again and offered it the crew of the Enterprise, but the crew discovered his deception due to Lore's use of contractions in his speech. He was then beamed into open space.
Lore drifted in space for nearly two years until he was rescued by a passing Pakled ship. He subsequently responded to the homing signal intended by Soong to draw Data to Soong's new laboratory on Terlina III. Soong had intended to give Data an emotion chip that would allow him to feel Human emotions. However, once again, Lore tricked Soong, posing as his brother, and stealing the chip for himself. Then, in a burst of anger, Lore fatally injured his father. Lore escaped before he could be apprehended.
In 2369, Lore discovered a group of Borg that had been disconnected from the Collective after integrating Hugh's sense of individuality into the hive. Lore styled himself their leader, gave his Borg individual names, coercing them into becoming fanatical followers. He began cruel experiments on them, attempting to replace their organic brains with positronic components. Meanwhile, he somehow influenced their behaviour, making their attacks more violent – they ceased to assimilate individuals, instead murdering them.
Lore directed his Borg followers to launch attacks on targets in Federation space, in order to lure the Enterprise--and thus Data--in an elaborate attempt to use the emotion chip to manipulate Data to his side. Lore had modified the chip so that it could remotely instill anger and hatred in Data. Confused with his new emotions, and with his ethical subroutines deactivated, Data betrayed the crew of the Enterprise and joined Lore at his base.
While in Borg captivity, Geordi La Forge was able to instruct Captain Jean-Luc Picard as to modifying a Borg interlink transceiver in order to reset Data's ethical program with a kedion pulse, restoring his sense of right and wrong. Data would still experience negative emotions; however, he could at least choose whether or not to act upon them. Upon realizing Lore's malign nature, Data fired upon and deactivated Lore, whose last words were "I... love you... brother." Lore was subsequently dismantled--and the emotion chip, though damaged, was removed and returned to its rightful owner.
Star Trek: Picard[]
When Lore's body was retrieved by Starfleet, it was sealed away at Daystrom Station by Section 31. In late 2399, Dr. Altan Soong - biological son of Noonien Soong - resumed his father's cybernetic research. He constructed a new bio-organic "golem" as a totality of his father's work, a new android that incorporated the programming of Data, Lore, Lal and B-4. Soong had intended for the golem to become a new consciousness from its constituent personalities, alongside the 'wisdom and true human aesthetic of age'. However, he died before he could finish working on it, and it, alongside all of Soong's work, was taken by Starfleet. The golem was stored at Daystrom Station where it was integrated into the security system.
In 2401, Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Titan-A visited Daystrom Station in order to find out what Vadic and her group of rogue Changelings had previously stolen from there. Will Riker, Worf, Geordi La Forge and Raffaela Musiker beamed aboard the station and, after besting the security system, discovered the golem. After bringing the golem back to the ship, they activated it, but found that the multiple personalities within its positronic brain were at odds with one another. Initially, Data's personality emerged, but would suddenly be replaced by Lore's, who expressed his disgust over seeing Picard and his friends again.
For a time, Data and Lore's personalities duelled with one another for control while their shared body was placed in stasis. A partition separated the two competing consciousnesses, but this partition was removed as the crew were in desperate need of Data's assistance with Vadic's forces taking control of the Titan. With the partition removed, it was hoped that Data's personality would overpower and erase Lore's, but the opposite appeared to happen instead. Lore's consciousness began to consume Data's memories, taking various "trinkets" from Data in the form of objects representing treasured memories.
As the process continued, Data appeared to surrender and give Lore his memories willingly. The final memory Data handed over to Lore was his memory of his cat Spot, whom Data acknowledged that, despite being a "simple creature", had managed to teach Data how to love. Lore took the memory, and erased the final traces of Data from the android. Lore gloated over his victory, only to feel the effects of deletion himself as Data came back into being, his personality completely overriding Lore's within the android. Data had deduced that Lore would not be able to resist taking his memories as trophies. He had taken the things that had made Data who he was, and as such, the two personalities had become "one". Lore had become Data. The brothers said goodbye to one another as Lore's personality was finally overridden with that of Data.