I have just watched this TNG episode and I must say that the dilemma in this episode seems farfetched.
First off, Picard's desire to "communicate with the Entity" is a little bit unnatural. I mean, come on. On the first watch it even amazes that they are not there to stop it but to communicate with it and to then try to find other means of energy for it. Maybe they should run the same campaign for Borg!
Second, I cannot believe that Picard, the person he is, would manage things the way he did in this episode.
His behaviour in this episode is unfeeling, dry and out of touch with reality. Placing doctor Marr in one of the leading roles of the project was clearly a bad command decision, especially when he several times witnessed that this woman is broken inside, devastated by the death of her son. I always thought that captain Picard is a much better judge of human character.
Telling her that yes, we will communicate with the Entity, knowing about her loss and then going into a philosophical debate about it, is hard-hearted to say the least. Picard is a much more delicate man than this. At the very least he could talk about it with his senior staff only and make sure that during the experiment doctor Marr is not doing anything - anyone else can push buttons to change frequencies.
And all of that not to mention the weak argument that Picard "fights off" doctor Marr with by comparing humans to cuttlefish.
Third, the whole idea of "finding other means of energy for the Crystalline Entity" is questionable technically.
How were they going to do it? This thing just devours whole planets and then without even a slumber goes on to devour the next one. Did they at least have any plan? Or were they just thinking: "nah, we'll talk to the Entity and ask if maybe it can use something else for lunch instead of life." And the Entity would exclaim: "Yeah, actually, I can just eat free electrons, forgot about that option, oops! Sorry for all the millions of deaths, hehe".
So obviously, there doesn't seem to be any alternative solution, even theoretical, to the problem and we never see senior staff dicussing their plan of action. Which, again, is a very weird command decision, to try to communicate with such a dangerous creature and even have no plan of how to stop it from destroying whole planets. In less critical situations Starfleet would just order to destroy and kill, wouldn't it?
In fact, it is one episode where captain Picard stands absolutely alone, his views questioned not only by Riker, but I would think by the viewer too.
Finally, the last scene with doctor Marr and Data is perplexing.
What did they want to tell the viewers? That doctor Marr "did a bad thing"? That "revenge, my children, is very-very bad"?
The device used is Data saying that according to his "interpolation" of the boy's journals, he would have not been happy with what she did because he valued her scientific career and now she ruined it.
Kehemm. Excuse me? What?!
This is some poor writing or else it was the goal of authors of the episode to show how out of touch with life Data actually is.
Implying that a boy, who in his letters mentions that he is proud of his mother's career, would be sad, because she ruined her career, as a result of destroying an Entity which killed him and millions, if not billions, of other living creatures - is missing the whole point of what is going on. Opposed to this primitive interpolation, common sense tells us that her son, if his soul could witness the events, would hardly care about the career of his mother at that moment at all.
That said, it is strange of Data to even consider running this interpolation, as clearly no meaningful result can be gathered from journals which hold no experience of catastrophies, massive deaths and such. Nothing in these journals can tell anyone how this boy would feel. Taking some positive variable from letters to his mother and comparing it to the current situation, which has many new variables, not taken into account in the journal, is bad logic for an android so sophisticated as Data.
In fact, our common knowledge about the world tells us that you never know how a person would actually react, even if he had a certain opinion before a catastrophic experience. There is a difference between being proud of one's mother's career achievements and one's attitude towards her decision to ruin those achievements because her son died and she tries to take revenge. It is impossible to interpolate anything here!
Lastly, I doubt that her career would be "ruined". With so many lives lost, I think Picard's position would be a very unpopular one. Imagine the Federation Council issuing a statement: "We have stripped doctor Marr of all of her titles because she dared to put an end to the Crystalline Entity which has devastated hundreds of planets in our galaxy and which caused millions of deaths to your loved ones. Our goal was not to destroy it, but to communicate with it and possibly find another source of energy for it." This would cause a huge public outroar, even if they use softer words.
And even if we imagine various Federation officials, who almost always are shown to be not very good people, to still strip her of her titles, clearly she would not care much. She is old already and her career is behind her anyway.
So, I enjoy this episode, it is well filmed and well acted, but I think that the writing in this episode is, in my personal opinion, very poor. As for the final scene, I think it is one of the most confusing and outrageous moralizing attempts I have ever encountered in Star Trek.
Did that blog post some time ago on my site:
http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=blog&a=blog092011_15
First off, Picard's desire to "communicate with the Entity" is a little bit unnatural. I mean, come on. On the first watch it even amazes that they are not there to stop it but to communicate with it and to then try to find other means of energy for it. Maybe they should run the same campaign for Borg!
Second, I cannot believe that Picard, the person he is, would manage things the way he did in this episode.
His behaviour in this episode is unfeeling, dry and out of touch with reality. Placing doctor Marr in one of the leading roles of the project was clearly a bad command decision, especially when he several times witnessed that this woman is broken inside, devastated by the death of her son. I always thought that captain Picard is a much better judge of human character.
Telling her that yes, we will communicate with the Entity, knowing about her loss and then going into a philosophical debate about it, is hard-hearted to say the least. Picard is a much more delicate man than this. At the very least he could talk about it with his senior staff only and make sure that during the experiment doctor Marr is not doing anything - anyone else can push buttons to change frequencies.
And all of that not to mention the weak argument that Picard "fights off" doctor Marr with by comparing humans to cuttlefish.
Third, the whole idea of "finding other means of energy for the Crystalline Entity" is questionable technically.
How were they going to do it? This thing just devours whole planets and then without even a slumber goes on to devour the next one. Did they at least have any plan? Or were they just thinking: "nah, we'll talk to the Entity and ask if maybe it can use something else for lunch instead of life." And the Entity would exclaim: "Yeah, actually, I can just eat free electrons, forgot about that option, oops! Sorry for all the millions of deaths, hehe".
So obviously, there doesn't seem to be any alternative solution, even theoretical, to the problem and we never see senior staff dicussing their plan of action. Which, again, is a very weird command decision, to try to communicate with such a dangerous creature and even have no plan of how to stop it from destroying whole planets. In less critical situations Starfleet would just order to destroy and kill, wouldn't it?
In fact, it is one episode where captain Picard stands absolutely alone, his views questioned not only by Riker, but I would think by the viewer too.
Finally, the last scene with doctor Marr and Data is perplexing.
What did they want to tell the viewers? That doctor Marr "did a bad thing"? That "revenge, my children, is very-very bad"?
The device used is Data saying that according to his "interpolation" of the boy's journals, he would have not been happy with what she did because he valued her scientific career and now she ruined it.
Kehemm. Excuse me? What?!
This is some poor writing or else it was the goal of authors of the episode to show how out of touch with life Data actually is.
Implying that a boy, who in his letters mentions that he is proud of his mother's career, would be sad, because she ruined her career, as a result of destroying an Entity which killed him and millions, if not billions, of other living creatures - is missing the whole point of what is going on. Opposed to this primitive interpolation, common sense tells us that her son, if his soul could witness the events, would hardly care about the career of his mother at that moment at all.
That said, it is strange of Data to even consider running this interpolation, as clearly no meaningful result can be gathered from journals which hold no experience of catastrophies, massive deaths and such. Nothing in these journals can tell anyone how this boy would feel. Taking some positive variable from letters to his mother and comparing it to the current situation, which has many new variables, not taken into account in the journal, is bad logic for an android so sophisticated as Data.
In fact, our common knowledge about the world tells us that you never know how a person would actually react, even if he had a certain opinion before a catastrophic experience. There is a difference between being proud of one's mother's career achievements and one's attitude towards her decision to ruin those achievements because her son died and she tries to take revenge. It is impossible to interpolate anything here!
Lastly, I doubt that her career would be "ruined". With so many lives lost, I think Picard's position would be a very unpopular one. Imagine the Federation Council issuing a statement: "We have stripped doctor Marr of all of her titles because she dared to put an end to the Crystalline Entity which has devastated hundreds of planets in our galaxy and which caused millions of deaths to your loved ones. Our goal was not to destroy it, but to communicate with it and possibly find another source of energy for it." This would cause a huge public outroar, even if they use softer words.
And even if we imagine various Federation officials, who almost always are shown to be not very good people, to still strip her of her titles, clearly she would not care much. She is old already and her career is behind her anyway.
So, I enjoy this episode, it is well filmed and well acted, but I think that the writing in this episode is, in my personal opinion, very poor. As for the final scene, I think it is one of the most confusing and outrageous moralizing attempts I have ever encountered in Star Trek.
Did that blog post some time ago on my site:
http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=blog&a=blog092011_15
