Measure of a Man suffers from what TV Tropes calls the "Seinfeld Effect". That is something that's become so common that when you finally go back and watch the Seinfeld episode that started it all, you're like "that's it? Wow, I've seen this a dozen times." Although frankly you could call it "the Simpsons Effect" to much the same purpose.BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 1:56 pmI had already watched the first 3-4 episodes before giving up before. They were all red barred on Netflix. I couldn't remember them, but I never have the patience to retread just based on them being redlined.
But yes, following All Good Things there was no way I'd not finish it. It's incredibly insufferable. Truth be told, I don't find Measure of a Man very interesting, but it's quite possible that in another life I'd have more reverence for it.
It's very weird though I must say, having seen first Voyager then DS9, TNG 3 and 4 is just a different congratulatoryclappingmeme.gif, episode after episode.
Yes, Measure isn't unique in Sci-Fi, Asimov was playing around with it back in Caves of Steel and Heinlein in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but for on-screen effects where someone questions if a character you care for is human, and it's shown whether you can debate if a sentient person is human or a thing? Damn. That's some power. Data sitting in the courtroom while they debate if they have the right to treat him like an object. From a slavery metaphor to a discussion of "can a machine be human if it thinks" it's one of the first times, possibly the first time a show has ever gone there. Kirk blew up machines, Lost in Space had a wacky robot companion, Doctor Who had humans becoming machines, but no one asked "can we treat a machine as human?" in that way. It's a condemnation, not just of slavery but of mistreatment of the mentally ill and invalid, the autistic, or of anyone or anything that thinks differently from us but still, absolutely clearly thinks. It's a clear position statement: "You think differently? But you think? Then you're treated as human, because we don't have the right to decide otherwise."
I often make fun of how very not progressive Paramount was and is (Oh you killed a crew member and it's the gay black man? You don't say), but given how those issues were viewed in the 80s vs. today, it's one of those things that has aged very extremely well - so much so that it's now the "well duh" position.
