Wanderlust

5.4 — “Silicon Avatar”

5.4 — “Silicon Avatar”

Plot: Riker looks forward to a picnic and some sexy times when DAH-DUUM! No-one expects the Crystalline Entity! It’s mayhem and destruction. Four members of the Enterprise crew end up trapped with injured colonists in a hole (which fortunately doesn’t activate Beverly Crusher’s PTSD, although it does mine). When the ship takes aboard a scientist who specializes in CE studies, the hunted becomes the hunter. However, moral quandaries lie ahead.

Thoughts: This episode is a direct sequel to episode 1.13 — “Datalore.” Good idea! It’s fun to be reminded of how wacky that episode was, and how far TNG has come.

Despite really good effects and music at the beginning, and the deadly beauty of the Crystalline Entity, “Silicon Avatar” isn’t a great episode. I think it’s worth talking about the central moral conundrum. Is Picard right to want to communicate with the entity and make peace with it, or is the better approach, given its deadly legacy, to destroy it?

I’m going to quote commenter Hitchcoc on IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708774/): “The Crystalline Entity is a mass murderer. It attacks planets, absorbing every bit of life (both flora and fauna) and leaves the planets wastelands. . . . Picard seems to feel that even though the Crystalline Entity has killed tens of thousands, it may well be a sentient creature, to be negotiated with. Hitler was a sentient creature. Joseph Stalin was a sentient creature. I know that Picard is an explorer, but I would be hard pressed to give up my life for something so murderous I found some of the dialogue pontificating and hard to accept.”

Indeed, Hitchcoc, you would be hard pressed to find the idealism of Picard expressed, let alone lionized, today. The talk I hear on the news is less… elevated. 

However, this is a pretty murderous entity. Space must be really crowded for it to attack 11 known settlements and a space freighter.

But, y’know–life is full of tragedy. No need to add more. I’m with Picard. You try to talk to it, do your best to communicate. If that doesn’t work, then you know where you’re at.

The Crystalline Entity functions much like the Doomsday Machine in TOS, but in that episode we knew that the DM was not sentient, but purpose-built for destruction.

3 of 5 intentionally frumpy lady costumes.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Silicon_Avatar

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5 responses to “5.4 — “Silicon Avatar””

  1. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    I’m with Hitchcoc.  This kind of reminded me of a Disney movie, where the bad guy needs to die but the hero is too noble to kill him so the bad guy conveniently kills himself by accident.  Or is killed by a “misguided” 3rd party, as in this case.  Sure, it might be interesting to try to talk to it, but didn’t Lore talk to it before?  So it knows that humans are people, and it’s still killing them.  I think that’s enough chances.

    I found the story about the frumpy scientist and Data to be the most interesting part of this episode.  Her wish to be connected to her son was touching, and the part where Data reads the letter was really satisfying.  It’s too bad they turned her into a caricature later in the episode.  I sort of feel like she started as one, became human in the middle, then reverted to two-dimensionality again by the end…

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  2. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    It was kind of headscratching, the big mystery about whether you could talk to the creature, when it had already collaborated with Lore.

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  3. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    But, what isn’t headscratching about the creature? I think an investigation to determine if it is intelligent, and whether meaningful communication is possible or productive is warranted, if it can be done safely. But if there isn’t a route to neutralizing the threat that becomes quickly apparent, it’s been murderous enough that it needs to be neutralized one way or another. 

    I’m reminded of TOS 2.18, “The Immunity Syndrome,” where you had this big massive cell  that was threatening the ship, but ulimately it was a living organism that was innocent and unaware of the harm it is causing, just as most humans choose to be unaware of all the harm we are causing. Of course, they kill the organism in “The Immunity Syndrome,” it’s just handled in a much more thorough way.

    I guess it’s a losing cause for me to keep defending amnesty for a ridiculous contrived space-faring crystalline killing machine, but as a general principle, I’m not a supporter of “shoot first ask questions later.”

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  4. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    Right! I like that you support rule of law, as is fitting given your profession!

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  5. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    I was just looking back at the transcript of Datalore to try to remember how Lore’s relationsihp with the CE was depicted–and hoo baby, that episode is bizarre: http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/114.htm

    Reply

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