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The Crystalline Entity first appeared in the “Star Trek: The Subsequent Era” episode “Datalore” (January 18, 1988), and it served as an amazing power of nature that the crew of the united statesS. Enterprise did not know take care of. It was large in scale and required nice offers of vitality to remain alive, vitality it acquired by consuming whole planets of life. It might lengthen a beam all the way down to a planet’s floor and primarily suck up and obliterate something alive beneath. The Entity was an detached power of faceless destruction, and lots of Trekkies have in contrast it to Moby-Dick in that regard. It is not evil, however merely unaware that its consumption habits have the aptitude of ending whole civilizations.
In “Datalore,” the Entity had been weaponized by Lore (Brent Spiner), the “evil twin” of the android Knowledge (additionally Spiner). Evidently Lore resented the way in which he was handled on the human colony the place he and Knowledge have 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 elements unknown.
The Entity returned within the episode “Silicon Avatar” (October 14, 1991), and the Moby-Dick parallels turned extra pronounced. One Dr. Kila Marr (Ellen Geer) was keen to search out the Entity and examine it, claiming it was an enchanting, distinctive life type. Solely later did she reveal that it had attacked her dwelling planet and evaporated her son. Her purpose, she introduced, is to exterminate the Entity. It was her White Whale.
Based on 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 study that Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) sought to search out the Crystalline entity with a purpose to discover a method to talk with it, and maybe discover a method to feed it in a means that did not contain murdering whole inhabited planets. This was Picard’s choice after he knew it destroyed the colony the place Knowledge 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, they usually barely escaped alive. Picard, nonetheless, remained diplomatic via all of it, understanding that the Entity had a proper to exist, identical to any organism.
Kila Marr merely wished revenge, and her resolve strengthened when Knowledge performed an audio recording of her lifeless son’s diary, saved deep within the android’s reminiscence. For some time, she was suspicious of Knowledge, 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 top of the episode, Dr. Marr has discovered a method to kill the creature, and Ellen Geer offers a wonderful efficiency as a girl obsessed to the purpose of doing it.
Based on 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 deliver again, who’d have thought the Crystalline Entity? […] However the ‘Moby-Dick’ premise of this obsessed lady whose son’s consciousness was saved in Knowledge was too good to move up.”
A Moby-Dick-like mineral creature. The White Shale?
The Moby-Dick parallels have 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 believe I’d have made Marr stronger in locations and within the ending I assumed we have been weak. Then once more, she was over the sting. You recognize, whenever you’ve solely received 40 minutes of image, it is robust to take a personality and go throughout the change and what occurs to someone. We’re doing brief tales right here. Why does she do what she does? Generally you simply do not have the movie time to discover it correctly. We’re promoting 9 minutes lower than the outdated present. You are able to do a number of character improvement in these 9 minutes.”
By 9 minutes, he implies that industrial breaks now ate up 9 extra 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 aspect, 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 might 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 dying 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.”
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