michelle erica green, who reviewed the episode for treknation in may 2007, thought she might be more forgiving in hindsight as she knows that the follow-ups to "datalore" were great episodes. she praised spiner's "lovely, subtle performances as both data and lore", but felt that lore's motivations and goals were unclear, and that the crew came off as stupid by their inaction to the lore threat. she thought that transporting the villain into space was shocking (as the show generally presents androids as having personhood) and inconsistent (as lore had just told the entity to attack when the shields drop following a transporter activation). jamahl epsicokhan at his website "jammer's reviews" valued the episode for providing backstory to data, but agreed that the crew's inability to recognize lore's threat and unwillingness to listen to wesley made them seem stupid. he gave the episode a score of three out of four.