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In "Conundrum," Satarran Kieran MacDuff, while aboard another vessel, is able to wipe the short-term memories of all Enterprise personnel. After making Counselor Troi a Samarian sunset (in the traditional style), Mr. Data says, "I hope you enjoy it." After this, the "flash" from Kieran's memory-eraser moves over Data's face, and the android repeats the line. Why?

(It could be argued that Data simply forgot that he had spoken this, but nobody on the Bridge is shown repeating their last words.)

Data at the bar

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    My gut instinct is that the goal was to show that Data is also affected by the sweep and to set up the gag about him being the bartender.
    – Valorum
    Commented May 23, 2018 at 6:03
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    If your point is that nobody else but Data repeats their previous words, it could be argued in-universe that Data's memory may just work in not precisely the same way as meatbag-memory.
    – Mr Lister
    Commented May 23, 2018 at 10:22
  • Did anyone else just say something right before the flash? I mean, maybe they would have repeated their words had it happened at just the right time.
    – John Meacham
    Commented Oct 6, 2018 at 9:46
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    This reminds me of the first time I watched "Star Trek: Insurrection", on DVD. There is a scene where Data claims that the rest of the senior command crew are emotionally compromised, but "as an android, I am unaffected". At which point, our DVD player started skipping/glitching, resulting in "as an android, I am unaffected-ted-ted-ted-ted-ted-ted". Given the context, it took us a few seconds to realise that this was an error, and not actually part of the film.
    – Chronocidal
    Commented Aug 16, 2019 at 9:36
  • @Chronocidal Did you watch the rest of the movie with it skipping? Did you enjoy it?
    – Ham Sandwich
    Commented Aug 17, 2019 at 4:10

1 Answer 1

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Data was an Android, so his brain would have been wired differently than the other life forms. Though more efficient, his brain would have been affected differently by the red flash, causing a malfunction, which in turn caused him to repeat the words.

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    Hi there! That sounds like a reasonable guess, though if you could edit your answer to flesh it out a bit more, with quotes, evidence etc, that would make for a better post :)
    – Jenayah
    Commented Apr 13, 2019 at 22:57

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