Star Trek: Masks

Episode: "Masks"

Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation

Season 7, Episode 17

Original Air Date: February 21, 1994

via Memory Alpha

The Enterprise encounters a floating archive from a civilization likely long extinct.  The archive gradually takes over the ship, flooding computer screens with ideographs, sprouting palm trees, erecting monoliths and converting corridors into stonewalled temple passages.  It's invaded Data's programming, too, generating multiple characters who communicate, poorly, with the rest of the crew.  

My goodness, is this one terrible!  Even the cast hated it while they were filming.  In Brent Spiner's recollection, they were all laughing at each other, particularly him as, without much preparation time, he stumbled through the various personalities.  It's a shame because the idea itself is cool, drawing meaningfully from Picard's passion for archaeology.  The visuals work fine.  But when every other line from Data is either "I don't know" or "I cannot be certain," you know they're scraping the bottom of the dialogue barrel.

"Masks" was written by Joe Menosky, who wrote a lot of good episodes, including the amazing "Darmok."  Menosky was living in France at the time, but still sending in scripts.  In 1994, email was still a new concept so coordinating over something like editing was tedious and/or not worth the trouble with a production deadline looming.  So, the other writers did the best they could with it.  The result was a god awful mess.

Acting Notes

via Disney Wiki

Rickey D'Shon Collins played the role of Eric Burton, a student in the Enterprise school.  "Masks" was his second of three appearances, all in Season 7.  He had a better story in "Liaisons" when he got to join Iyaaran Ambassador Loquel in his exploration of desserts.  Collins was born in San Diego, January 17, 1983.

Most of Collins's work has been in voice acting.  He had principal roles on Recess and Danny Phantom plus films such as Once Upon a Forest, The Golden Blaze and Happy Feet.  Other live action appearances include Blossom, Grace Under Fire and The Practice.