Only because the writers decided so to make it easy for her to destroy it. Picard had no knowledge of how to destroy it or if phasers and photons would even damage it. It was a threat of an unknown amount when captain and crew were simply trying to say hello. The last 4 minutes of the episode could have just as believably been a devastating battle ending with "evacuate the drive section before the warp core breaches and separate the saucer section."
Sure, and "Devil in the Dark" could have ended with the Horta devouring Our Heroes.
Starfleet doesn't attempt non-violent solutions first because it's always the smart thing to do; Starfleet attempts non-violent solutions first because their duty is to seek out new life and new civilizations.
Kirk's risk was considerably lower than Picard's. If the Horta had wiped out Kirk, Spock, and every human on Janus VI that would have been the end of it.
If the CE either was not destroyed or, worse, wiped out Our Heroes and the Good Ship Enterprise then its next course would have been more mayhem on a planetary scale.
The comparison is not the CE to Devil in the Dark. The comparison is the CE to The Doomsday Machine. There was no more or less evidence of that the entities could / could not be communicated and reasoned with in both cases. But they were a planetary level threat that had to be dealt with.
As long as you ignore Datalore. Because unless you do that then you know the CE can be communicated with and is a malicious force.
If the CE either was not destroyed or, worse, wiped out Our Heroes and the Good Ship Enterprise then its next course would have been more mayhem on a planetary scale.
The comparison is not the CE to Devil in the Dark. The comparison is the CE to The Doomsday Machine. There was no more or less evidence of that the entities could / could not be communicated and reasoned with in both cases. But they were a planetary level threat that had to be dealt with.
As long as you ignore Datalore. Because unless you do that then you know the CE can be communicated with and is a malicious force.
If a Starfleet vessel found a second Doomsday Machine that stopped blasting everything for a moment and seemed willing to maybe communicate, I think they'd hold off on shoving another Constitution-class bomb down its throat until they'd exhausted all possibilities of a better resolution. At least while the tactical situation allowed for it.
That's untrue. They were presented with direct evidence that communication was possible, in the form of a response to the ship's transmissions that Data believed was the creature attempting to communicate, right before Dr. Marr locked out the controls and exacted her revenge.
In terms of threat level, the Crystalline Entity is much closer to the Doomsday Machine than the Horta, which was only a threat to the miners on a single world. (And we don't even know if they are more than just, say, on one continent of said world.)
Really?
After the warp capable snowflake chased them down to stare at them face to facet, they hailed it, stared back, decided to be distracted yelling at Wesley for a bit, and I guess scratched their asses for 10 minutes before:
LAFORGE: Captain!
(The entity is starting to send rays their way)
TASHA: Deflector shields holding, sir.
PICARD: Bring photon torpedoes to ready. Main phasers to ready. Go to Red Alert, please.
(Data/Lore enters)
WORF: Weapons now ready, sir.
LORE: No, Captain, let me talk to it.
Picard was ready to shoot the CE the first time he encountered it until Lore talked him out of it. After it killed yet another planet and a starship, that's the smart time to be gentle?
Bringing weapons to the ready isn't the same thing as being prepared to use them without trying a non-violent solution first. At the time the entity was "sending rays" their way, whatever that means, so caution was warranted, but if Lore hadn't interrupted then it's entirely possible Picard would have looked for ways to try to communicate with the entity beyond conventional communications.
Obviously if the entity had overtly attacked the E-D, nobody would blame Our Heroes for defending themselves.
The Crystalline Entity attacked first (that was what WarpCore meant about 'sending rays their way, because it wasn't a typical phaser or disruptor beam that it used against the Enterprise).
So it had already overtly attacked them.
So it had already overtly attacked them.
On screen, the snowflake is invading the Enterprise's personal space and grazing its shields. Standard "is this food?" behavior. It just wanted a taste at first. That was enough for Picard to go to red alert.
Picard sounded outright annoyed that Data (Lore in Data's uniform) was confidently capable of communicating with the crystal. He wanted to do his best General Chang impersonation and blow the crystal from the stars. Picard knows you can't lick the Enterprise like checking a 9V battery and get away with it.
As for looking for ways to communicate, they did nothing on the bridge while waiting on Data (Lore) to get information from Lore (actually Data). The violent Hero of Maxia was looking for a fight, and there weren't any Naussicaans around to play pool with.
I would have wanted to see some sort of interaction with it. It was heavily implied to be sentient, but maybe its form of sentience didn't understand that the life forms it was destroying were sentient. At least, I would have wanted to know its origins.
If nothing else, knowing whether there were more of them out there would have been of strategic value to Starfleet.
The crystalline entities have been roaming the stars for god knows how long, if they were truly such a devestating threat, some interstellar empire would have eradicated them by now surely?
Perhaps that's why they've only run into one.
Because you believe the sperm whale is evil or, alternatively, because you believe the comparison was faulty?
The Cerritos ran into several
And the CE's natural enemy: Vejur!
