Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we profile Dr. Bruce Maddox, who starred in one of the most memorable episodes of TNG and reappears in the plot of Star Trek Picard. Note that like we have with other recent segments touching on elements of Picard, we will avoid major spoilers for those who haven't yet watched.
Dr. Maddox was born in San Francisco on Earth, so it should come as no surprise that he eventually becomes involved in Starfleet. To this end, he is a cyberneticist that works his way up the ranks of the Daystrom Institute. He eventually becomes the Chair of Robotics at Daystrom.
Once Maddox learns of Dr. Nooian Soong and his androids like Commander Data, he becomes inspired to make it his life's work to continue improving the field of androids to help humans and other races when in dangerous situations. His goals sounded good on first blush, but as Captain Picard would contest in the trial in the episode The Measure of a Man, his vision of duplicating androids as forced labor could also be argued to be nothing more than slavery of a sentient android race.
In that aforementioned episode of TNG, Dr. Maddox is a young Commander in Starfleet and has earned Admiral Nakamura's blessing on a plan to disassemble and reverse-engineer Commander Data. Data objects to the plan because he believes Maddox will not be able to preserve the important nuances of his positronic brain that defines who he is. Maddox orders Data to be transferred to his command, leading to Data's resignation from Starfleet and an eventual trial to determine if Data is a sentient lifeform allowed to make such a decision.
Of course, Captain Picard is successful in a trial against the arguments of Maddox in front of one of the Captains serving in the Judge Advocate General's office. So Data is deemed to be a sentient being, a critical moment that really begins his character development arc for the remainder of TNG. Despite the loss, Maddox remains dedicated to his goals of continuing Dr. Soong's research, including by learning more about Data through correspondence with him, as we also see in the episode Data's Day which the main show covered a couple weeks ago.
The story of Maddox and his research is then left as one of many open ends in TNG, and it's one that fits neatly into the Star Trek Picard story, which centers around synthetic life forms. Thus, it should be no surprise that Dr. Maddox re-appears in the new show, but you'll have to watch for yourself to see where Dr. Maddox's story goes from there.
Bruce Maddox was played by Brian Brophy in his TNG appearance, and although we don't cover details of the new Picard stuff yet here, John Ales is the actor who picked up the role this year. Brophy has been largely retired from acting since the early 2000's, but you can spot him in small roles in great films including The Shawshank Redemption and Armageddon. He is currently the director of theater at the California Institute of Technology.
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