Star Trek, "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"

Star Trek: The Original Series, "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", season 1, episode 7 (20 October 1966).[1][2]

Discussed by Victor Grech in Feature 101, "Brain and Dualism in Star Trek," SFRA Review #304 (Spring 2013).[3] Grech sees a Frankenstein motif and notes in the episode,

alien technology that can [...] copy the individual by creating a complete android along with an identical mind containing “[t]he same memories, the same attitudes, the same abilities.” Or to give this android copy a different program and agenda to the one inherent in the original being. Or to completely transfer the individual into an android replica [...].

The temptation for Captain Kirk is to have transferred into the android his total consciousness, explicitly referred to as, if Kirk wants to see it that way, his soul. "In android form, a human being can have practical immortality," and "can be programmed for the better," improved upon (Grech, pp. 20-21).

See for motifs, or tropes, of brain or mind upload, immortality and the perfected human or (more recently) transhuman or posthuman.[4][5][6]

RDE, finishing, 7Jul21