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The crystalline entity first appeared in the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “Datalore” (January 18, 1988), and acted as a force of nature that the crew of the USS Enterprise was unaware of. How to deal with this. , It was massive and required a lot of energy to survive, this energy it got by eating entire planets that had life in them. It would shoot a beam down to the planet’s surface and essentially suck in and destroy anything living below. The entity was a gloomy force of unknown destruction, and many Trekkies have compared it to Moby-Dick in this regard. It is not bad, but simply ignorant that its consumption habits have the potential to wipe out entire civilizations.
In “Datalore”, the entity was weaponized by Lore (Brent Spiner), the “evil twin” of the android Data (also Spiner). It seems that Lore was displeased with the way she was treated at the human colony where she and Data were first settled, and she lured the Entity to everyone for breakfast. It was never made clear how Lore learned to communicate with the entity. Lore also aims to feed the entity to the Enterprise, but he naturally fails. At the end of “Datalore”, the unit left for parts unknown.
The Entity returned in the episode “Silicon Avatar” (14 October 1991) and the Moby-Dick parallels became more obvious. A Dr. Killa Marr (Ellen Geer) was eager to find the entity and study it, claiming it to be a fascinating, unique life form. He later reveals that it had attacked his home planet and blown up his son. His goal, he declares, is to destroy the entity. This was his white whale.
According to the episode’s writers, as reported in Larry Nemecek’s Invaluable “The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion,” The Moby-Dick parallel was quite deliberate.
‘Silicon Avatar’ is a Moby-Dick episode of ‘The Next Generation’
Dr. Killa Marr, it should be noted, is shocked to learn that Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) tried to find a way for the crystalline entity to communicate with him, and perhaps find a way to feed him that way . It did not involve the killing of entire inhabited planets. This was Picard’s decision because he knew it had destroyed the colony where Data was created, and had subsequently killed several scientists on a research mission at the beginning of the episode. The unit trapped several of his senior staff members in a cave, and they barely escaped alive. However, Picard remained diplomatic throughout all this, understanding that the entity had a right to exist like any other creature.
Killa Marr only wanted revenge, and her resolve was strengthened when Data played the audio recording of her dead son’s diary, stored deep in the android’s memory. For a time, she was suspicious of Data, thinking he was mixed up with a Lore-like entity, but after hearing her son’s voice from his mouth, she discovered that he was a silicone avatar for her son. By the end of the episode, Dr. Marr has found a way to kill the creature, and Ellen Geer gives an excellent performance as the woman obsessed with doing it.
According to the “Next Generation Companion”, the script for “Silicon Avatar” was independently submitted by a writer named Lawrence V. Conley. The late “Trek” creator Jerry Taylor did not think at the time that “The Next Generation” should make a “sequel” episode, but the return of the crystalline entity was unexpected. Taylor said:
“Who would have thought of the Crystalline Entity, to bring all the characters back? […] But the ‘Moby-Dick’ premise of this obsessive woman whose son’s consciousness was stored in data was too good to ignore.”
mineral creature like moby-dickWhite Shell?
The Moby-Dick parallels were obvious from the beginning
in oral history book “Captain’s Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Star Trek Voyages,” Edited by Mark A. Altman and “Silicon Avatar” director Edward Gross, Cliff Bole talks about making the episode. He also recalled what changes he would have made if he had the chance to start over, Bole said:
“I think I would have made Marr stronger in a lot of places and in the end I thought we were weaker. Then, she was on the edge. You know, when you only have a 40-minute picture, a character It’s hard to take and learn about what happens to someone. Why does she do what she does? Sometimes you don’t have time to explore it properly. There are fewer minutes than the old show. You can get a lot of character development in those nine minutes.”
By nine minutes he means that compared to the shorter commercial breaks of 1966, when the original “Star Trek” aired, commercial breaks now take nine additional minutes.
Bole also said that he was on Marr’s side in a way, believing that Picard’s ultra-diplomatic solution was cool to the point of inhumanity. He wasn’t even angry or upset at the continued destruction of the entity. Every sentient being, Bole thought, would think about killing the entity. Producer Michael Piller liked the episode’s premise, noting how close it was to Herman Melville’s masterpiece, but felt it could have been stronger dramatically.
However, Taylor loved it all, understanding the pain felt by Dr. Marr. Taylor finished writing the final teleplay and conveyed to Dr. Marr his anguish over his son’s death. “I was able to really tap into those feelings,” she said, “and tell a story about a woman whose vengeance for losing her son ruined her.”
