Customer Reviews

Star Trek - The Next Generation, Episode 104: Silicon Avatar [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Many people seem to feel compassion and mercy for those who have done wrong and even killed, but I am seldom among them. But this episode shows us an unique situation in which a creature, the crystaline entity, seems to kill on a large level because of its nature. IT MAY NOT EVEN KNOW IT IS KILLING.

Now enter the mother of a victim, who, since the death of her 16 year old son at the hands of the creature, has been obsessed with the study and eventual destruction of the entity.

The crew of the enterprise figures out a possible way of communicating with the creature (reminiscent of the "Companion" from the original series). Despite the deadly nature and our contempt for the creature, I found my curiousity in what the creature "has to say" out-weighing my hate for it.

Five stars if it were not for the high standard set by so many other episodes!

This episode (actually #204 on all the STTNG lists) featured the return of the Crystal Entity, first seen in the "Datalore" Episode. Rather than being just "the monster of the week" sort of story, this one was rich with character. The mother of a victim of the Entity uses the Enterprise (and Data) to track down the creature, and in the process has to face her own "survivor's guilt" over the loss of her 16-year-old son. The story deepens as the woman realizes that Data holds in his memory banks all of her son's journals and personal letters, and can even simulate his voice. At one point, the woman even believes that Data embodies her child, and begs him for forgiveness (for leaving him on Omicon Theta when the Entity attacked that planet.) She's thrown into further despair, however, when she learns through Data, after she's killed the Entity, that her son would never have approved of such an action, and would be saddened by the fact that she "murdered" another being in his name. A touching and deeply emotional story, well acted by all. This one's a keeper.

This is a good, solid episode - well made, and with some real depth to it.
The Enterprise crew are helping some colonists establish themselves on an empty planet when the Crystalline Entity, that "giant snowflake" that sucks the life energy out of entire planets, attacks. Starfleet sends a xenobiologist, Dr Kila Marr, to study the attack and find some way of dealing with the Entity. But she has secrets of her own, and the developing relationship between her and Data, set against the background of their mission, provides some real emotional depth as the tension rises.
There are some flaws with this episode. Dr Marr is allowed to get away with too much, and it seems that Data failed to tell anyone about the growing instability in her behaviour. It also seems that everyone has forgotten about the Enterprise's last encounter with the Crystalline Entity, where Lore proved that it was intelligent and that he could talk to it and understand when it talked back.
But those quibbles aside, this episode is very good. The acting is excellent, as is the pacing. The special effects are rather good, too. This episode also raises some thought-provoking questions. How do you react to a life-form that is so different from your own? How does it view the world around itself, and how can you deal with it? Star Trek: TNG at close to its best.

This episode has everything! Family loyalty, communicating with an intelligence, and the want for vengence. This one is a keeper & I'd recommend it to any Trek fan...

Does the good of the many, outweigh the good of the one? The antagonist of this story thinks that it does. Thusly, she is set up as calculating, vengeful, deceptive and, at points, delusional. This plot device is used to undermine an affirmative reply to the fundamental question posited by the premise of this episode. Now we have the agenda, or the 'moral' of the story. That's fine. However, I would tend agree with the antagonist with regard to her general position, as it is fundamentally counterintuitive to pursue Capt. Picard's directive. Culpability notwithstanding, if it boils down to kill or be killed, in general, the choice is clear. I would not consider as 'enlightened' a viewpoint that runs counterintuitive to an act of self preservation, either in and of itself or by empathetic extension. But beyond that, I think that is dangerous to embrace any ethical claim as 'enlightened' based solely on its portrayal as such. And I think it is even more dangerous to accept an ethical claim as true if it seems in any way counterintuitive to the sum of experiences. I dislike this episode not only because I disagree with the moral of the story, but also because of the manner by which it went about making it's point; it was heavy handed and pedantic. I really didn't like Data's lines at the end. Just awful. And Data is my favorite. But Riker's love interest was very attractive. Also-- The enterprise was in no danger from this being. Therefore, they had the luxury of trying to communicate with it. The non federation entities are correct in their frustration with Starfleet. The hegemon can abide by their own set of standards, and thereupon base all kinds of ethical claims. It's funny how ubiquitous this had become in the writing of the later episodes.

Guest star Ellen Geer is memorable as a scientist that has motives, other than science, in her investigation of the mysteriously dangerous "Crystal Entity". The episode abounds in one revelation after the other, with an end that is possibly one of the series' most surprising...and thought provoking.

"Trek" doesn't get any better than this!