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CBS All Access’s Star Trek: Picard focuses on an unusually emotional mystery for Star Trek. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is struggling with grief and angst in his advanced age. His only comforts are his few surviving friends, his dog, and his wine. However, Picard gets a jolt to his system when an unusual young woman named Dahj (Isa Briones) shows up at his vineyard in desperate need of help. It seems that she might not be who she thinks she is. She might be an android.
All this begs the question for Picard: Did Data (Brent Spiner) leave behind a daughter?
**STAR TREK: PICARD EPISODE 1 SPOILERS AHEAD**
The idea that an android like Data could be a daddy isn’t so wild. After all, Data was a father in the Season 3 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Offspring.” Her name is Lal. Now, however, Picard has evidence to believe that Dahj is Data’s daughter…and what of Dahj’s twin sister, Soji?
Here’s your guide to Data’s daughter from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lal, as well as the two women who may carry Data’s legacy within them: new synthetic humans Dahj and Soji.
Who Is Lal? Data's Daughter From 'Star Trek: TNG'?
Data became a daddy all the way back in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3, Episode 16, “The Offspring.” Data decided to create a child, named Lal (Hallie Todd), without the knowledge of anyone else on the ship. Interestingly, Data let Lal choose their own species and gender, and Lal decided to become a human female.
At first, Picard was furious with Data for creating artificial life without looping in the Federation, but when another admiral tried to force Lal to leave the Enterprise (and Data’s safekeeping), Picard defended Data’s right to be a parent. Lal eventually superseded her creator, managing to use contractions and to feel emotions. However, feeling emotions resulted in a system collapse. Data honored his daughter by copying her memories to his neural system.
In Star Trek: Picard, Jean-Luc Picard realizes that Dahj looks identical to a figure in a painting that Data made entitled “Daughter.” He believes Dahj is somehow Data’s daughter.
PS: Yes, Data’s daughter was indeed played by Lizzie McGuire’s mother. Same actress! Hallie Todd!
Who is Dahj? The Mysterious Synthetic Girl in 'Star Trek: Picard'?
Star Trek: Picard‘s first episode introduces Isa Briones’s Dahj. She’s a sweet nerd who we learn lives in “Greater Boston” and has a nice boyfriend. However, that falls apart when a group of mysterious assassins transport into her apartment, slay the nice boyfriend, and throw a bag over her head. Suddenly, Dahj’s AI programming kicks in and she kills the intruders. Shocked, she leaves and looks for the one man she can see in her mind’s eye: Picard.
It doesn’t take Picard too long to piece together that Dahj is an android and that she has some sort of connection to Data. However, as soon as Picard can swear himself to her cause, she is murdered by assassins.
Undeterred, Picard travels to the Daystrom Institute in Okinawa, a center for AI research. There Picard meets Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), a stymied expert on androids. She reveals that if her mentor Bruce Maddox managed to create AI life, he would have done so copying at least one of Data’s neurons…and there would have been twins.
At the end of Star Trek: Picard’s first episode, we learn that Dahj’s twin sister is named Soji…
Who is Soji, Dahj's Twin Sister?
As of yet, we don’t know too much about Soji except that she exists, she lives, and she is on some sort of science mission on a former Borg cube that has since been dubbed a “Romulan Reclamation Zone.” At the very end of the first episode of Star Trek: Picard, she flirts with a handsome Romulan played by Harry Treadaway.
Dahj might be dead, but Soji lives…and it’s likely that Jean-Luc Picard will be on a mission to find her and her connection to Data over the course of the first season of Star Trek: Picard.
