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The Crystalline Entity first appeared within the “Star Trek: The Subsequent Era” episode “Datalore” (January 18, 1988), and it served as an awesome pressure of nature that the crew of the usS. Enterprise did not know cope with. It was large in scale and required nice offers of power to remain alive, power it acquired by consuming complete planets of life. It will lengthen a beam right down to a planet’s floor and primarily suck up and obliterate something alive beneath. The Entity was an detached pressure of faceless destruction, and plenty of Trekkies have in contrast it to Moby-Dick in that regard. It isn’t evil, however merely unaware that its consumption habits have the aptitude of ending complete civilizations.
In “Datalore,” the Entity had been weaponized by Lore (Brent Spiner), the “evil twin” of the android Information (additionally Spiner). Evidently Lore resented the best way he was handled on the human colony the place he and Information had been first constructed, and he lured the Entity to return snack on everybody. It is by no means made clear how Lore discovered to speak with the Entity. Lore additionally goals to feed the Enterprise to the Entity, however he was naturally unsuccessful. On the finish of “Datalore,” the Entity sailed off to components unknown.
The Entity returned within the episode “Silicon Avatar” (October 14, 1991), and the Moby-Dick parallels grew to become extra pronounced. One Dr. Kila Marr (Ellen Geer) was keen to search out the Entity and research it, claiming it was an interesting, distinctive life type. Solely later did she reveal that it had attacked her house planet and evaporated her son. Her purpose, she introduced, is to exterminate the Entity. It was her White Whale.
In response to the writers of the episode, as revealed in Larry Nemecek’s invaluable “The Star Trek: The Subsequent Era Companion,” the Moby-Dick parallel was fairly deliberate.
‘Silicon Avatar’ is the Moby-Dick episode of ‘Subsequent Era’
Dr. Kila Marr, it must be famous, was shocked to be taught that Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) sought to search out the Crystalline entity in an effort to discover a strategy to talk with it, and maybe discover a strategy to feed it in a means that did not contain murdering complete inhabited planets. This was Picard’s resolution after he knew it destroyed the colony the place Information was constructed, and after it killed a number of scientists on a analysis mission firstly of the episode. The Entity trapped a number of of his senior employees members in a cave, and so they barely escaped alive. Picard, nonetheless, remained diplomatic by way of all of it, understanding that the Entity had a proper to exist, identical to any organism.
Kila Marr merely needed revenge, and her resolve strengthened when Information performed an audio recording of her lifeless son’s diary, saved deep within the android’s reminiscence. For some time, she was suspicious of Information, pondering he was in league with the Entity like Lore was, however after listening to her son’s voice coming from his mouth, she discovered him to be a … silicon avatar for her son. By the tip of the episode, Dr. Marr has discovered a strategy to kill the creature, and Ellen Geer offers a wonderful efficiency as a girl obsessed to the purpose of doing it.
In response to the “Subsequent Era Companion,” the script for “Silicon Avatar” was a contract submission by a author named Lawrence V. Conley. The late “Trek” producer Jeri Taylor did not suppose that “Subsequent Era” must be doing “sequel” episodes at that time, however the return of the Crystalline Entity was sudden. Taylor stated:
“Of all of the characters to carry again, who’d have thought the Crystalline Entity? […] However the ‘Moby-Dick’ premise of this obsessed lady whose son’s consciousness was saved in Information was too good to move up.”
A Moby-Dick-like mineral creature. The White Shale?
The Moby-Dick parallels had been evident from the beginning
Within the oral historical past e-book “Captain’s Logs: The Unauthorized Full Star Trek Voyages,” edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, the director of “Silicon Avatar,” Cliff Bole, talked about making the episode. He additionally recalled what adjustments he would have made, had he had an opportunity to begin over once more, Bole stated:
“I feel I might have made Marr stronger in locations and within the ending I assumed we had been weak. Then once more, she was over the sting. , once you’ve solely bought 40 minutes of image, it is powerful to take a personality and go all over the change and what occurs to any person. We’re doing quick tales right here. Why does she do what she does? Generally you simply haven’t got the movie time to discover it correctly. We’re promoting 9 minutes lower than the previous present. You are able to do a whole lot of character improvement in these 9 minutes.”
By 9 minutes, he implies that industrial breaks now ate up 9 further minutes of time when in comparison with the shorter industrial breaks of 1966, when the unique “Star Trek” was on the air.
Bole additionally famous that he was form of on Marr’s facet, feeling that Picard’s ultra-diplomatic resolution was calm to the purpose of inhumanity. He wasn’t outraged and even angered on the Entity’s fixed destruction. Each emotional being, Bole thought, would suppose to kill the Entity. Producer Michael Piller liked the episode’s premise, noting how shut it was to Herman Melville’s dense masterpiece, however did really feel, that it may have been dramatically stronger.
Taylor, nonetheless, liked the entire thing, understanding the ache that Dr. Marr felt. Taylor ended up writing the ultimate teleplay and infused Dr. Marr with relatable struggling over the demise of her son. “I used to be actually capable of faucet into these emotions,” she stated, “and inform a narrative a couple of lady whose vendetta over the lack of her son ruined her.”
