Spot is Data's pet cat and a recurring character in the show. Spot appears in several episodes during TNG's last four seasons, first appearing in "Data's Day". Spot also appears in the feature films Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: Nemesis.
Despite the name, Spot is not actually patterned with spots. Spot originally appears as a male Somali cat, but later appears as a female orange tabby house cat, eventually giving birth to kittens (TNG: "Genesis"). The authors of The Star Trek Encyclopedia jokingly speculate that these inconsistencies can be explained by the idea that Spot is a shape-shifter or victim of a transporter accident (depending on which edition of the Encyclopedia one reads).
Data creates several hundred food supplement variations for Spot and composes the poem "Ode to Spot" in the cat's honor ("Schisms"). (The poem was actually written by Clay Dale, the visual effects artist.) A computer error which occurs later in the series (in the episode ("A Fistful of Datas") causes some of the ship's food replicators to create only Spot's supplements and replaces portions of a play with the ode's text.
In "Genesis", the morphogenetic virus "Barclay's protomorphosis disease" temporarily mutates Spot into an iguana-like reptile.
Spot is notoriously unfriendly to most people other than Data. Commander William Riker once received serious scratches while trying to feed Spot ("Timescape"). Geordi La Forge borrowed her to experience taking care of a cat, but she knocked over a vase and teapot and damaged his furniture ("Force of Nature"). When Data asked Worf to take care of Spot, Worf proved to be allergic to her and sneezed in her face, angering her ("Phantasms"). However, she did get along with Lieutenant Reginald Barclay, so when Data had to leave on a mission at the same time Spot's kittens were due, he persuaded Barclay to take care of her ("Genesis"). After Data died, it was mentioned in a deleted scene of Star Trek: Nemesis that Worf is now taking care of her on board the Enterprise.
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Famous quotes containing the word spot:
“If a person lost would conclude that after all he is not lost, he is not beside himself, but standing in his own old shoes on the very spot where he is, and that for the time being he will live there; but the places that have known him, they are lost,—how much anxiety and danger would vanish.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man without his Vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery, if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just Tribute to the Memory of BOATSWAIN, a Dog.”
—John Cam Hobhouse (1786–1869)
“But money, wife, is the true Fuller’s Earth for reputations, there is not a spot or a stain but what it can take out.”
—John Gay (1685–1732)