Ultimate Computer questions...

[Marsden]

I think he was just as shocked as everyone else but didn't want to believe his "wonderful M-5 ®" did anything wrong.

Not saying he didn't have any problems, though, I think were more discussing the word psychopath than his actions.

psy·cho·path


noun: psychopath; plural noun: psychopaths

a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.





informal
an unstable and aggressive person.



So maybe I'm wrong, he could fall under that first definition, I was thinking of the second informal definition.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

At the very least, Daystrom is arrogant, and even unstable. Even before M-5 went down the crapper, Daystrom made it quite clear how jealous he was of others taking credit for his work and improving on it. That alone should have sent up some red flags.

And I think M-5 itself had more of a conscience than Daystrom did. (I got more of a sense of remorse from M-5, after Kirk convinces it that it's committed murder, than I ever did from Daystrom.) Just because Daystrom used his engrams to program M-5 doesn't make it a carbon copy of him. They are distinct entities. Daystrom views M-5 as his child, in a way, and I suppose that's an accurate analogy...just as a parent will raise a child to be like them, so Daystrom did with M-5. But the parent and child are different people, and so is Daystrom/M-5.