ST:TNG Season Five, Episode Four "Silicon Avatar"

ST:TNG Season Five, Episode Four "Silicon Avatar"
Production Order: 4
Air Order: 4
Stardate: 45122.3
Original Air Date: October 14, 1991

We open in a grove of trees on the surface of some planet, where a lady in charge, Carmen, is telling Riker about their colonization plans. They chit-chat about being adventurous. and how pioneering involves adventure, but also putting down roots and making a place a home. They quickly make a date to share Carmen's dried chicken curry rations in her tent that night, and she says that she makes "the most memorable desserts."
Shit, that was quick. I mean, no shame here, and maybe they've known each other for a while at this point, but maybe make a moment to swap health stats? Or have they cured STIs in the future?

They're joined by Data and Crusher, who are full of praise for the upcoming colony.
There's a rumbling noise in the distance, and Riker asks Carmen if they've started construction and not informed him. She replies no, and then they see it:

"Fuck," says Riker.
He asks Data where the nearest cover is, and Data indicates some caves not far off. They begin gathering colonists and quickly herding them to the caves.
"What is that?" yells Carmen over the wind.
"We've seen this before!" Riker calls back.

Dramatic music! Opening credits break!

Everyone runs after Data, who is leading them to the caves. Riker ends up grabbing up a kid who is not running fast enough, but then an old man stumbles. Carmen goes back to help him, and screams for Riker. He passes the kid off to someone else and runs back toward Carmen, but too late. The crystalline entity, who is devouring life in strips off the planet's surface, om nom noms them both while Riker watches.

On the bridge of the E, Worf reports that there's a "disturbance" on the surface of Melona IV, near the outpost where Riker, Data, and Crusher are helping. But they're too far away, so he doesn't know what it is.
"Electrical storm?"
"Contact them," replies Picard.
Worf tries, but gets no reply. "The disturbance is increasing, though."
"Hmmm." Picard contacts La Forge in Engineering. "You see this shit on Melona?"
"Yeah," says La Forge. "It's weird, and bad."
"Let's check it out," says Picard. "Warp eight to Melona colony."

On the surface, Riker and Data have ushered the colonists into a cave, and Data surmises that the metal content in the make-up of the cave may help shield them. They use phasers to cave in the entrance for protection, but now they have an air problem. Riker says he hopes there's a ventilation source for this cave. They then use phasers to cause the rock face near the ceiling to glow, so they have some light.
Crusher says most of the colonists are fine, then asks about Carmen.
"She didn't make it," says Riker stoically.
He tells the colonists (and it looks like an Enterprise Gold worker in coveralls?) that they should be fine, but he doesn't know about the air situation, so sit tight, and don't move around a lot. When Riker walks away to raise the E, he gets no response. Data says the metal in the rock may be interfering with communications.
"How do we know this cave will protect us from the crystalline entity?" asks Riker.
"We don't," shrugs Data.
Outside, they can hear the thudding and shaking of the entity doing its thing.

The E rushes to Melona, but it is still six hours away. Worf continues to hail the colony, but is not getting a response.
"Just because they're not answering, doesn't mean anything's wrong," Troi tells Picard. "Maybe their phones just died."
"Sure, sure," says a worried Picard.

On Melona, the colonists are sweaty and out of breath. Crusher tells Riker and Data that one man has lost consciousness. They briefly discuss the fact that they haven't heard the entity in over an hour, but maybe it's waiting out there for them. Hiding inside, they die. Going outside, maybe they'll die, too.
There's a crash, and Riker goes to investigate.
After a few tense moments at the cave-in site, Worf tosses some rocks out of the way. He's followed by La Forge and an away team of helpers.
"The hell happened?" asks La Forge.
"Crystalline Entity showed up and ate two colonists," says Riker bitterly.
He and Data go up top while the others care for the colonists.
And they take in the scene.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Picard's Log 45122.3: "Told Starfleet Command that we're going after the Crystalline Entity. They sent us a scientist, Dr Kila Marr, to help us. She's become an authority on the Crystalline Entity."

Riker meets Marr in the transporter room. As soon as she materializes, she tells Riker that she's stoked to be there. It's one of those situations where something terrible happens for others, but for the person studying that thing, they're inappropriately happy. Like when Scotland Yard tells Sherlock that there's been a murder, and he's all "Yaaasss, it's Christmas!"
Her excitement is explained right away when she tells Riker that his group is the only one to have survived an attack from the Crystalline Entity. Then she narrows her eyes a bit and is briefly... unsettled.
"Your android was there, too?"
"Lieutenant Commander Data was there, yes," he corrects. He's not into that whole treating a crewmember like a possession thing.
"Let's get started!" she says brightly.

There's a meeting in the Obs Lounge with some senior officers and Marr. Crusher moves away from the monitor like she just finished a presentation, and tells the group at large that when they exited the cave, there was no life left on the surface.
"That's typical," Marr nods. "Could be years before anything grows there again."
Then Data starts talking, and her face melts from one of active interest to "I can't believe the audacity, that it would talk to me."
Great. Another automatonophobic asshole.

That side-eye from Troi is amazing

"I went over the deets," says Data. "It's the same thing that destroyed the colony on Omicron Theta."
Marr kind of ignores Data's comment, and addresses Crusher's: "It needs a lot of material to keep going, so it strips all life from a planet to convert into energy. It even takes soil bacteria. But this time, there were survivors! I wonder why it left you guys alone..."
Riker, who was really looking forward to that dried chicken curry dinner with Carmen, objects that it didn't spare everyone.
"But it did leave some! That's never happened before!"
"So the cave we were in contained kelbonite and fistrium," says Data. "We think maybe it couldn't reach us through there?"
Again, her face melts. And it's subtle, but she's avoiding talking to Data at all. She's still actively participating in the conversation, but not actually answering him. "I wanna do interviews with the survivors," she tells Picard. "And I want to go inspect the colony, get as much info as I can."
"Sure," says Picard. He assigns Data to help Marr.
"Cool," says Data.
"No no no no no," replies Marr. "I want to pick my own team."
"Um, Data has more experience with this that anyone else on the ship," Picard tells her. "Also, he comes from Omicron Theta."
"I know he does." Marr's voice become rather terse. "I also know his brother Lore worked with the Crystalline Entity, and allowed it to kill everyone on the surface of the planet. I think I should be allowed to not work with him."
Picard is picking up what she's throwing down. "Nope. You can ask for other people to join your team, but you're working with Data here."
"Fine." She gets up and leaves.
Some of the others follow.
Troi: "You don't need to be an empath to sense that woman's feelings."
"Yeah," agrees Picard. "But if she's going to be a shitty scientist because she can't build a bridge and get over it, then we need to figure something out real quick."

Down on the surface, a team of Blues scan the cave. Marr does the same. Data comes in and tells her that he found some stuff in the soil that wasn't there before the attack. She ignores him. He tries to get her attention again, and fails.
"Y'all, you've made it clear that you don't like me," he says. "But if you don't talk to me sometime, we won't get anything done."
"I can hear you," she replies coldly. "If you have anything new to say to me, I will talk back. But what you found was found at the last three attack sites. It's not new. It seems to be something that the Crystalline Entity leaves behind when it consumes living matter. I'm still interested in why your group was not killed."
"The metal in the caves -" he starts to say.
"Yeah, yeah, the caves," she says dismissively. "In two other attacks, people hid in caves. In one, the cave was deeper than this one. But they were killed anyway."
"Was the metal in the caves -" he starts again.
She snaps her tricorder shut. "I think it was you. I think you lured it here and told it to attack the people."
He is... as surprised as Data can be. "You think I'm working with the Crystalline Entity?"
"Yes!" She's pretty pissed.
"Oh, I see. You think that Lore and I are the same. We're not. My programming is very different from Lore's."
And now she's angry, because he isn't angry at her accusation. She seems to want him to have an emotional outburst. "You can't feel anything, can you?!"
"That's true, Doctor."
Irritated, she goes back to scanning. And like a fucking sociopath, she just jumps right back into scanning shit and mentioning to him that there's trace elements of some something in the cave walls.
"My son died on Omicron Theta," she says quietly. "He was 16. That's why I became an expert on the Crystalline Entity. One day, I will track it down and find it. And if I found out you've been helping it, I will see to it that you're disassembled piece by piece."

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Marr and Data are down in Engineering with La Forge, plugging the info they've collected into the computer to see how they compare with the other attacks. But when everything is in, it appears that there's nothing new. Marr is disappointed.
"Did you think you'd get a different result?" asks Data, curious.
She actually answers: "I've never been able to examine a site so soon after an attack. I thought I might find something new." (She doesn't actually look at him, though.)
"Have you tried scanning your stuff for gamma radiation?"
"Why?"
"(Science.)"
"That's a good idea," La Forge tells him.
"I think it's dumb," she argues.
He and La Forge do it anyway, and get something new and unexpected. Marr, who has been standing stubbornly with her back to them, wanders over when Data calls her name.
Oh, look at that. The fucking android was helpful to have on your team. Despite the fact that you treated him like shit.
"It's... leaving anti-protons behind." She looks at La Forge. "Can we have the ship look through space to see if it left more anti-proton breadcrumbs in space? Could we follow it like a trail?"
"Yep," says La Forge. He starts plugging it in.
 And she actually nods to Data in a... non-threatening way as they both exit.

As they walk through the corridor, Marr admits that she owes thanks to Data for his help just now. Data replies that he actually got the gamma radiation idea from a scientist who was working on Omicron Theta at the time of the attack. Marr is surprised. She has read this scientist's work, but was not familiar with the gamma radiation thing.
They get in the lift.
"Um, I heard you were programmed with the experiences of the colonists," she says.
"Yeah, that's true," he replies. "Journals and logs and things. Dr Soong also experimented with downloading their temporal lobes into my programming."
"You have their thoughts?" She looks a little unnerved.
"Kind of. It was like, a bigger picture thing of the colony?"
She is interested.

On the bridge, Data and Marr show Picard the trail that they found. Data projects that the Entity is probably heading for the Brechtian Cluster, as there are inhabited planets there. Picard has the conn set a course for there to head it off, and Marr tells him she also has calculations set up to alter the photon torpedoes, to kill the Crystalline Entity. She hands a padd to Worf so he can start plugging them in.
"He should do that, yes," says Picard, "but let's hope we won't have to fire on it at all."
This was not what Marr had anticipated. She wants Picard to kill it. She's a big game hunter, and she wants a piece of crystal mounted on her wall.
Everyone on the bridge is like "WTF?" but they're professional enough to not all turn and look at her.
He invites her into the ready room.
"Why are we hunting this thing if we're not going to kill it?" she demands once the door closes.
"Seriously? This isn't Space Safari. We're not out to exact revenge on this thing."
She basically asks him sarcastically if he's going to offer it a safe space, and I roll my eyes. So far, she's threatened Data and a giant space crystal with destruction, and it's starting to feel like she long ago decided that that was her only option. What a fucking Karen.
"I want to try to communicate with it," says Picard. "Find out what it needs, and see if we can't figure out something else for it to consume. It's okay for Worf to reconfigure the torpedoes in case we need them, but I'm hoping we won't."
In Marr's mind, this is out of the question. The Crystalline Entity is a mindless killing machine that needs to die, and she wants to be there when it happens.
Picard compares the Entity to Earth's sperm whale, eating thousands of cuttlefish. "It is not evil. It is feeding."
(Remember this analogy; it's important.)
Marr seems to think she speaks for the Entity's victims, and declares that "we're not talking about fish, we're talking about people!"
"We're gonna talk to it," says Picard firmly. "Data has worked out some good ways to try. Go help him."

Data is in his quarters playing some classical guitar when Marr rings the door chime. When he tells her to come in, she sees the guitar and politely asks if she's disturbing him. She gives him a mostly apology. (Not actually saying the words apology or sorry, but using the phrase "I may have been wrong." She seems humbled, at least.)
For those of you following along at home, she began with wanting to take two sentient beings apart, but has halved it down to one. One murder instead of two is progress, I guess...?
He accepts her quasi-apology in the most Data way: "I have not been injured by you."
They get down to brass tacks, and start talking about communicating with the Crystalline Entity. Data has an idea that's similar to playing crystal goblets, using graviton pulses. He goes to his work station to pull up his research for her.
While he's working, she hesitantly asks if he has memories in his banks of her son, Renny.
"I don't have minute-to-minute stuff, but things like journals or specific memories, I have those, yeah," he replies.
"Um, did he blame me for going away?"
Data checks his memory banks, and tells her he finds nothing there against her.
She goes into a story about how she left her kid on Omicron Theta with friends to pursue her career as a scientist, and kept telling herself that she would go back to visit "next month," but then he was killed with the others by the Crystalline Entity, and she missed her chance to see her kid again.
And there we have it: she switched her career and became hell-bent on murdering the Crystalline Entity, possibly Data, and probably Lore... because she feels guilty. I've seen some real bad behavior from people who feel guilty about things, then take it out on unrelated people. Trying to get service workers fired or in trouble, yelling at people, armed robbery.
But Data gives her a good answer - Renny was proud of her for being an accomplished scientist.
She's overjoyed, and starts to ask for more information, but they are both paged to the bridge.

What amazing composition. I want to paint it.

When they arrive, there's an audio-only distress call from a ship called the Kallisko. They're being chased by some kind of thing with a "crystalline structure."
"You got shields?" asks Picard.
"Like, some?" replies the Kallisko's captain. "We're a transport ship. Pretty weak weapons."
"Evasive maneuvers!" Picard advises. "Outrun it!"
But they're under attack now, and they can hear people screaming in the background. The Kallisko's captain requests that the Enterprise contact Boreal III to let them know what happened, then there's silence. Picard tries to get Worf to re-establish the link, but no one is there to pick up the phone.
Marr steps away, clearly traumatized by the sounds of people being destroyed by the Crystalline Entity.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Picard's Log 45125.7: "I sent Data, Marr, Riker, and Crusher to the Kallisko to check it out. They're coming back now."

The away team enters the bridge and tells Picard that there's nothing alive left on the Kallisko, but the engines should start right back up again, and a skeleton crew could take it to the nearest starbase. Picard nixes this idea - they don't have time. He has Worf contact said starbase to send one of their crews out instead. Then he asks Marr and Data if they've found a way to talk to the Entity yet.
Marr replies that they're working on it still, and she and Data get in the lift.
After a moment of her staring off into space, Data notes that she seems distracted, and she confesses that hearing the audio from the Kallisko call made her wonder about Renny, asking if he called out for his mother as dying soldiers sometimes do, and wondering if he was disappointed that she didn't come help him.

Picard is in the ready room when Riker comes in to tell him that they're still following the Crystalline Entity to the Brechtian Cluster. Picard replies that Starfleet is sending Carmen's family her personal things, and would Riker like to include a letter to them?
Riker agrees, and is about to leave when he turns and asks if he can speak candidly.
"I think maybe I agree with Dr Marr," he admits. "We should kill the Entity."
Picard frowns. "Why?"
"It's killed thousands, and it'll kill thousands more if we don't kill it first. Those deaths are on my conscience if we let it go."
"Uh-huh. Is it that, or is it personal?"
Riker is offended. "I'm not a newbie. I've lost people on missions. But if we stop to talk to it, we might lose our chance to kill it."
Picard is disturbed.
Riker excuses himself to go write his letter.

Data and Marr are back in Data's quarters, and Marr begins writing a program that they can send to the Science station on the bridge, one where they can control the sounds and vibrations being made via graviton beams. She quietly asks if Renny was happy on Omicron Theta.
Data does a quick search. "He seemed pretty content. Lots of entries for Parrises Squares matches, and those are happy."
She waxes rhapsodic of small Renny being asked frequently by the big kids to join him for matches, and how his love of the game blossomed from there.
"I'm also getting a lot of happy stuff from a girl named Janina?" he offers.
She is surprised. Renny had never mentioned a girlfriend.
She hesitantly asks him for a favor: she knows he can mimic the voices of others, so could Data talk to her in Renny's voice? Like, read aloud his journals and stuff?
He tells her that a lot of Renny's journals are letters to family and friends, and she says that's fine, so he accesses those files and begins speaking. The letter Data picks is written to Marr, so unless it was written but not sent, she has presumably already heard it. Doesn't matter. Looks like she's going to cry.

Picard's Log 45129.2: "Still following the Entity. Data and Marr have the communication thing ready. We could either do great things today scientific-wise, or we could screw the pooch. Guess we'll find out."

On the bridge, Marr and Data finish the communication system set-up while Worf tracks the bread crumb trail. He thinks it's between the E and the Brechtian Cluster, but they don't have an exact location.
"What if we turn on the graviton pulses to lure it to us?" suggests Marr.
I... why am I suddenly thinking of Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs dresses in drag and calls "yoohoo" to Elmer Fudd? Has the graviton pulse system made the Enterprise an appealing mate to the Crystalline Entity? Why does my brain even work like that?

The Crystalline Entity approaches, and Dr Marr is taken in by how beautiful it is.
The Entity checks them out. They check it out. Data, after poking Marr to get a response, turns up the frequency of the pulses per second. After they do this a few times, the Entity sends some graviton pulses back.
"This is so fucking cool," breathes Picard.

"Y'all, it's sending back a pattern of pulses," says La Forge.
"Sweeeeet, communication." Picard is stoked. This is clearly what he wanted.
"It's gonna take a bit to figure out what the patterns mean," says Data. "We're communicating, but it may be saying "yo mama" to us."
"I'm gonna do a continuous beam!" says Marr.
The noise is loud and irritating. The crystal seems to back off.
Troi jumps up. "I don't think it likes that!"
"Go back to pulses," Picard tells Marr.
She doesn't move, just watches the Entity.
"Dr Marr," says Data.
The Crysalline Entity is vibrating.
"This is Bad News Bears," Troi tells Picard.
"Shut it off!" barks Picard.
Marr turns and tells Data

"I can't shut it off," says Data. "She locked the code up."
"Fuck!" yells La Forge. "Maybe I can shut it down manually!" He runs to the Engineering station.
The crystal is vibrating faster. Marr set the program to ramp things up steadily.
"I can do the thing," yells La Forge, "but it will take time!"
Too late.

Picard is incensed. "Worf, get her the fuck off my bridge."
"It will never hurt anyone again," says Marr airily, in this rather certifiable voice.
"Maybe I should take her," Data suggests.
"Good, fine, don't care," says Picard angrily. "Don't leave her alone."

Once in her quarters, Marr turns to look at Data, and he assures her that he will stay with her, as though he wasn't commanded to guard her here. She smiles and squeezes his hand, then asks how long he will live.
"I don't really have a life expectancy," he replies.
"Good. As long as you're alive, he's alive." She keeps shifting. She addresses Data, she addresses her dead son. "Do the thing again, Data. Tell me you understand, Renny. I killed it for you, because I love you, and wanted you to be at peace."
But Data isn't Renny, and can't give her what she wants.
"I can't find a file like that," he says. "Honestly, from what I have of his journals and things, I think he'd be disappointed with you. He was proud of your awesome career as a scientist, and you just destroyed it."

*******

So this episode... rarely shows up on my radar. It comes after three amazing episodes, and before one that I often recall. It features the Crystalline Entity, which is something that doesn't interest me much, and includes a character with automatonophobia, which frankly pisses me off.
Let's take a look at it.
We have another run-in with the Crystalline Entity, and Carmen is thrown under the bus to die so we get the full weight of the situation. But we've known her for 90 seconds, and while I'm not happy that she and an old man bite the dust, I don't have an attachment to her. Maybe Riker does, but there isn't enough there in the story to make me feel things for Carmen.
Once everything is relatively back to normal, we get a new character, Dr Kila Marr, who has made it her life's work to study the Crystalline Entity after it ate her son. She has automatonophobia, which annoys me to no end, though she at least has good reason for it: she thinks Data is in cahoots with the Entity, the way Lore was. That's fair. I hate it when people hate on Data just because they're assholes. They at least gave Marr a backstory to go with it. Then she discovers that Data isn't, in fact, in cahoots with the Entity, and actually has something she wants, which is both information and ties to her kid.
Girlfriend loses her mind and kills the thing, citing that she did it for her son. She doesn't quite get the crazy eyes of some of those TOS bitches, but you can tell something is off, because she keeps addressing Data as Renny. He tells her that she killed her own career in hunting down this Entity and destroying it, all to find out that her kid would not have approved.
If you're thinking that this episode is gnawing around the edges of something that you can't quite put your finger on, I have the answer: it's basically a rewrite of TOS' "The Doomsday Machine," wherein a Starfleet officer goes on a Moby Dick quest to destroy a thing called a planet killer.

WHO REMEMBERS THE FUCKING WINDSOCK?

You have a thing that kills indiscriminately. In TOS, it was a doomsday device that no one had been able to shut off. Here, it is just A Thing That Feeds.
You have someone who is hunting it out of guilt. In TOS, the Ahab character tried to beam his crew to safety, but they ended up being killed by the planet killer. In this episode, a scientist's son is killed before she could make it back to visit him.
The hunter loses their ever-loving mind, and winds up with nothing. In TOS, he went kamikaze to take the planet killer down. It didn't work, and Kirk had to jury-rig a better solution. In TNG, she succeeds in killing the Crystalline Entity, but destroys her career in the process, and doesn't even get the satisfaction of thinking her kid would have wanted that, because Data confirms that he wouldn't.

In the end, the thing I liked most about this episode was Marr's wardrobe. She wore two dresses, both in solid colors, and of simple, architectural design. They put her in something unobtrusive so as not to take away from her character, which was smart.

Also, I didn't hate Ellen Geer in the role of Dr Marr. She gives a decent performance, and manages to handle the full roller coaster of a woman who loathes, then loves, the android that carries her son's memories.

Fun facts:

- The title "Silicon Avatar" refers to Data. Here, the word avatar is taken to mean "a repository of knowledge."
- Both Jeri Taylor and Michael Piller liked the Moby Dick aspect of this story, and Jeri Taylor felt like she related to Kila Marr as a mother. Rick Berman was also excited for this story.
- Brent Spiner was not impressed with this story. He thought they went with this script because they were having trouble getting production ready on the next episode ("Disaster"), but this one was ready to go.
- Michael Piller later said he didn't think it was as effective as it could have been.
- Director Cliff Bole was satisfied with the finished episode, but thought that, if he were to do it over again, he would have made changes. He didn't think one episode was sufficient time to tell Kila Marr's story.
- One of the Melona colonists is wearing Salia's outfit from "The Dauphin."

- The outdoor scenes for this episode were filmed in the Santa Clarita Valley.

- This is one of four episodes where Data mimics someone else's voice.

Red deaths: 0
To date: 0
Gold deaths: 0
To date:

Blue deaths: 0
To date:
Unnamed color crew deaths: 0
To date: 

Sassy Geordi moments: 0

To date:
Sassy Ro Moments: 0
To date: 1

Sassy Worf Moment: 0

To date: 

Sassy Riker Moments: 0
To date: 

Sassy Picard Moments: 0
To date:  

Sassy NPC Moments: 0
To date:
Sassy Data Moments: 0
To date:
Sassy O'Brien Moments: 0
To date: 0
Sassy Crusher Moments: 0
To date:
Sassy Troi Moments: 0
To date:
Sassy Guinan Moments: 0
To Date: 1
Sassy Guest Star Moments: 0
To date: 1

Number of times that it is mentioned that Data is an android: 4
To date: 4

Number of times that Troi reacts to someone else's feelings: 4
To date: 6

Number of times that Geordi "looks at something" with his VISOR: 0
To date:
Number of times when Data gives too much info and has to be told to shut up: 0
To date: 0
Picard Maneuvers: 1
To date: 3
Tea, Earl Grey: 0
To date: 0

Lovely feral pepper