Silicon Avatar - morally conflicting plot
- Thread starter Cardassian General
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Well to be fair they didn't have any issue with "blowing up" that space amoeba. They had no option to kill V'Ger or the Probe as they were too powerful so it's tough to say what they would have done otherwise.
They tried, and kept on trying, with Balok's border marker cube already. They simply failed. But it's not for nothing that the phrase "Open hailing frequencies" is such a Trek trope...
It's more serious than that. In both "Datalore" and "Silicon Avatar", the CE appears to move extremely quickly. It's right on top of our heroes before LaForge has time to finish another of his bad jokes in the former, and Riker is stunned that the entity is "overtaking us this fast". In the latter, speed isn't explicitly discussed, but the gravitic signal lures the entity to the heroes in no time flat.
If the CE tried to run away, it would get away, and its destination and speculative intent would not matter. Picard would have to shoot a fleeing target in the back or he'd be directly endangering lives.
Timo Saloniemi
It's more serious than that. In both "Datalore" and "Silicon Avatar", the CE appears to move extremely quickly. It's right on top of our heroes before LaForge has time to finish another of his bad jokes in the former, and Riker is stunned that the entity is "overtaking us this fast". In the latter, speed isn't explicitly discussed, but the gravitic signal lures the entity to the heroes in no time flat.
If the CE tried to run away, it would get away, and its destination and speculative intent would not matter. Picard would have to shoot a fleeing target in the back or he'd be directly endangering lives.
Timo Saloniemi
You're talking about rules of engagement for wartime, which bears no similarity to this at all. There are also scenarios where a soldier executes an enemy who is no longer a threat, and is condemned for it, for exactly the same reasons that it is unethical to hunt the CE outright, but at least they have war as an excuse
I don't see how at all. Marr is not cornered into killing it. She does so because she is not willing to consider any other option. It's clear she's motivate by revenge, & even if we grant her that she did so also because she wanted to prevent further loss of life, we must recognize that a potential existed for that loss of life to be prevented less lethally, because they'd already begun communicating with it. If you don't try to communicate with something, given the opportunity, then you have no business being out there mixing it up with alien life at all. There's is a risky job, but that is their charter
But yes. There are MANY scenarios wherein Picard too would have to have destroyed it. In fact, I will give due credit to Riker's counterpoint about communication with the CE being time sensitive
That's a fair point, but only as it applies to a time critical scenario. Were the Enterprise only able to intercept the CE at a critical point when it's within range of a colony to feed upon, then even though it is not actively attacking a colony, trying to communicate with it, might use what time they have to prevent an inevitable attack. If their attempt fails for whatever reason, they may pay a cost in lives
The thing is, I'm sure Picard knows that, & even still, as long as that scenario isn't what they're faced with (which thankfully they weren't) then it's still premature to actively pursue it with the primary goal of its destruction
At no point does anyone suggest that the speed of the CE is beyond the ship's capacity to overtake. So, the sensible way to view this story is to accept that the only time sensitive scenario is one where they only get to it once it's within range of an attack, & nothing to that effect was ever stated.
What vacuum? Riker flies the E-D and is impressed. And in absolute terms, the CE enters hero sensor range in a matter of seconds - so departing that range in a matter of seconds should be possible, and Picard would have doomed yet another colony to die before he could finish the sentence "Follow that snowflake, maximum warp, engage!".
How so? The CE does not know the concept of peace. Nor can our heroes afford to think they would ever be at a state of peace until the foe of the week specifically declares such a state (and he may be lying about it). Peace is an artifact of fences, and there are none in deep space.
Sure she is. She has used up his onetime option of luring the CE in using gravitic signals; odds are the beast will not fall for the trick a second time. Unless she acts now, she will be causing the deaths of future victims through negligience, just like an antitank patrol hiding in the bushes would be guilty for the deaths of their comrades if failing to shoot at the passing tank that may not be invading despite having a literal track record of just having barged through five other nations.
But the risk is not theirs. They are killing bystanders from their ivory towers.
Marr is entitled to risk analysis. A slim chance of making the beast see the error of its ways vs. assured stopping of the beast favors the latter.
The thing is, she utterly lacks the authority to act. Even Worf would lack the authority, which rests solely upon Picard, who literally calls the shots. One can't help but wonder whether Marr would have accomplished her vengeance by sharing her risk analysis with Picard beforehand. Say, there could have been a pre-agreed communications strategy where the heroes talk with the CE with Picard's hand constantly on the kill switch. Odds of the CE being able to convince our heroes of doing no harm in the future would probably be slim indeed.
Whether the audience needed to be told of Picard knowing/not knowing is debatable. It's just that the audience does know that the CE just defeated the ability of the E-D to track it in two ways: long range pinpointing was declared impossible, and the arrival of the "bogey at five o'clock tangent" was just as sudden and surprising here as it originally was in Datalore.
Or are we to suppose that there was time inserted somewhere within this sequence of events?
Never mind whether the CE can outrun the E-D - it can outrun the ship's best sensors, by a deadly margin.
Timo Saloniemi
You know this how?
Did you just state that every initial encounter which has adversarial potential is an enemy until declarations to the contrary have been made by them? I get the exact opposite impression of Starfleet's protocol for dealing with 1st encounters
They didn't devise the communication attempt to lure it. They devised it to communicate with it. It wasn't a trick. It was a legitimate attempt to contact it. It was never stated that this would be the only way to intervene in the CE's actions
Not when your charter is to seek out new life & establish relations. Any opportunity to resolve this issue peaceably is the preferred option, unless there is undeniable evidence that they cannot stop loss of life otherwise
There's already been a concern raised by the 2nd officer about safeguarding lives. If at any point the action to communicate was going to endanger anyone, do you really think Riker, who is known to go against captain's judgement in the past, would allow it like he did in the episode?
I took his private declaration to Picard as something of a warning, one he never felt the need to push further. That ought to be all the evidence you need to suggest that they had a handle on dealing with this creature, enough to attempt communication when & where they did
lol On a side note, it's so odd that you & I are on opposite ends of 2 different threads about the ending of a lifeform, wherein here you advocate the blind destruction of a threat, with which no communication has yet been made, but yet advocate there devout abstinence from doing so, when the lifeform's intentions have been both clearly stated & unnegotiable, and there is a much narrower field of opportunity to prevent it. No need to sidetrack the thread here to go on about that, but I just found it interesting.
If it does, it is at war. If it is a dumb animal, it does not. Those are the two possibilities.
No. I said every communication is a potential lie. That doesn't mean any animosity should be involved: every statement is a lie of omission after all, and white lies are the most common sort.
Declarations to the contrary would just be further potential lies, and of no interest as such.
Picard would know of a different protocol from a lifetime of being human (and another of being Kataati). Discussions don't hold face value. But they do hold value. And diplomacy involves treating every statement as a lie but not letting it show. That is likely to be a Starfleet protocol, something one has to teach to humans and Kataati before they can enter the profession.
And then used it to lure it. The lure worked; check one box. An attempt to communicate would have followed, with potential further box-ticking.
If luring was topmost in Picard's or Riker's or, say Worf's mind, he would have been likely to comment on it, in terms of tactical considerations: should it be attempted at this specific moment because it's likely to only work once? That no such comment was made tells us something about their thinking here.
However, only Worf is a great worrier. The others would not unduly panic over the luring attempt until it had been tried out.
Lots of ways of intervening: it's not as if the CE had any known defenses. It's just that this gravitic thing would be the one and only key to information, not merely through discussions, but also through tracking and studying.
Every time Picard encounters another starship, he must be thinking "Can I defeat them in battle?". And also "Should I?". He cannot be categorically answering himself in the negative, either, not after meeting the Borg. Evidence will have to be uncovered, but that's a separate matter: Picard is tasked with assuming the worst.
Doing diplomacy through the gravitic channel shouldn't endanger much: Picard would be doing the diplomacy thing he's trained for, possibly beating his opponent to total submissin in that game, and even at defeat simply going all Clausewitz and telling Worf to fire, end of trouble.
Where Riker might have been worried is if the CE made an attempt to leave, at which point the "we expended our option to lure" thing would kick in. But the time for that had not yet come.
No disagreement there.
Heh, you know the saying about dogs that bark... The undercurrent here is that if you do have him talking, he's already lost, because you have him both intellectually (a potentiality) and at gunpoint (a certainty).
There's certain similarity here that's characteristic of TNG morality plays: the heroes hold the gun. The far less interesting stories where the heroes are the cul-de-sacked underdogs and gain dubious legitimacy to their fight from that (the bite ones) are sometimes welcome variety, but the talky pieces where actual hard choices have to made (the bark ones) are IMHO much more fun!
Timo Saloniemi
Too assume that an intelligent being must have a concept of war flies in the face of what Star Trek is about. It can be intelligent & never had to understand the notion of peace or war. Just because you're intelligent doesn't mean you are immune from being ignorant
One of the reasons I love this episode is because it is the polar opposite of one of my Season 1 favorites, Homesoil. Those sand sucking creatures assumed war had been declared, but in reality, the humanoids were just ignorant of the harm they were doing to an intelligent species....... on a very similar scale of wiping out whole civilizations. In that episode, we want to hope an amicable accord can be reached. The same should be true of the CE. We should extend it the kind of berth we'd want to have extended from someone else, if we were on the other side of the mishap, like they were in Homesoil.
In that episode, the sand suckers actually have MORE grievance, because communication attempts were already made, & to some extent, ignored by the scientists, because they were too obsessed with continuing their work (The main guy anyhow) The signs of intelligence were already there & blindly overlooked, because it might be inconvenient to their plan. Had those sand suckers not gotten bested, they might never have agreed to peace. So it's fortunate they did. That's a lesson the TNG crew should learn from, such that they'd known how to react on the other side of the conflict, just like with the CE
but equally tasked with availing himself of every opportunity to encourage the best
I don't necessarily agree with Dr. Marr's decision, but I absolutely understand it. If a relative or friend of mine was killed by a creature like this, I admit I would want revenge. It's not rational, but then again, what part of human nature IS rational?
The Borg, on the other hand - that's different. They are a deadly and immediate threat, and it's obviously impossible to negotiate with them, so their destruction IS rational. With the crystalline entity, not so much.
The Borg, on the other hand - that's different. They are a deadly and immediate threat, and it's obviously impossible to negotiate with them, so their destruction IS rational. With the crystalline entity, not so much.
I don't think it was that bad either. I do agree with Picard in that the creature has as much a right to exist as humans. However, one thing I question is this: if the entity was intelligent enough for communication with humans, wouldn't it make sense that it is also intelligent enough to realize that it is killing other intelligent beings and therefore stop doing it and find another source of energy? When I look at it from that perspective I agree with Dr. Marrs decision to kill it.
Picard's decision in this episode is very similar to I, Borg. Obviously he came to regret that one and Starfleet didn't agree with it either. It was made pretty clear to him that his priority was to safeguard the lives of federation citizens, not "wrestle with his conscience".
Picard's decision in this episode is very similar to I, Borg. Obviously he came to regret that one and Starfleet didn't agree with it either. It was made pretty clear to him that his priority was to safeguard the lives of federation citizens, not "wrestle with his conscience".
V'ger was more than intelligent enough to communicate with humans, but simply didn't recognize humans as a viable lifeform. No reason to believe the CE is any different. Heck, maybe it thought the ship itself was the organism trying to communicate. But then, the point is that communication was established; save the semantics for later.
We see little sign that the CE could aim its life-eating effect with any sort of precision. How could it not kill sapient life when it necessarily has to feed?
I mean, in "Datalore", an entire planet is dead, down to the last square meter. The Tripoli did not notice that the planet was dead when she picked up Data, though - so apparently the effect takes, well, effect gradually after the CE has departed, and finishes off even those parts the life-eating beam didn't happen to specifically hit.
Also, telling the CE to dodge "other intelligent beings" or "sapient humanoids" or whatnot is morally dubious. Picard was supposed to feel that the CE and humans had equal rights to existence, as a default position. Why should the CE then have to start making sharp distinctions on who gets to live and who gets to die? It is just as morally egalitarian as Picard by birth.
Very much to the contrary, the Borg understand language and are always willing to talk. The CE has never demonstrated the ability to communicate at all; Lore's pitiful attempt ended in total failure, and Picard's was inconclusive at best.
Also, the Borg have complex motivations and can survive without killing humans. The CE as far is known has a simple motivation that absolutely requires it to kill humans.
Both can be killed, both are elusive threats that offer few opportunities for a second shot, and both are unlikely to be eliminated as a threat simply by taking the first shot.
Timo Saloniemi
I mean, in "Datalore", an entire planet is dead, down to the last square meter. The Tripoli did not notice that the planet was dead when she picked up Data, though - so apparently the effect takes, well, effect gradually after the CE has departed, and finishes off even those parts the life-eating beam didn't happen to specifically hit.
Also, telling the CE to dodge "other intelligent beings" or "sapient humanoids" or whatnot is morally dubious. Picard was supposed to feel that the CE and humans had equal rights to existence, as a default position. Why should the CE then have to start making sharp distinctions on who gets to live and who gets to die? It is just as morally egalitarian as Picard by birth.
Very much to the contrary, the Borg understand language and are always willing to talk. The CE has never demonstrated the ability to communicate at all; Lore's pitiful attempt ended in total failure, and Picard's was inconclusive at best.
Also, the Borg have complex motivations and can survive without killing humans. The CE as far is known has a simple motivation that absolutely requires it to kill humans.
Both can be killed, both are elusive threats that offer few opportunities for a second shot, and both are unlikely to be eliminated as a threat simply by taking the first shot.
Timo Saloniemi
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