When the Crystalline Entity attacks a planet where an Enterprise away team was helping to establish a colony, a scientist is brought in to analyze the aftermath. Dr. Kila Marr has devoted her life to studying the Entity after it killed her son in the attack on Omicron Theta, the planet where Data was built. Though she is initially suspicious of the android, believing he may be in league with the creature as Lore was, she eventually comes to respect him. And when she discovers that Data holds within his positronic brain many memories of the Omicron Theta colonists, she realizes Data may be her only remaining link to the lost son she seeks to avenge.
In later interviews, Michael Piller (showrunner) and Jeri Taylor (the staff writer who took the lead on scripting the outside pitch) both praised the idea at the core of this episode. They loved the Moby Dick tale of Kila Marr, determined to hunt down and get revenge on the Crystalline Entity. Taylor was particularly drawn to the story of a mother who has lost her son, and asked for the assignment to craft the script.
But everyone involved acknowledged that the finished result didn't really succeed. Piller noted simply that it wasn't as effective as it might have been. Director Cliff Bole felt the compressed 40 minutes of the episode didn't really allow enough time for the arc of Kila Marr's character, particularly her becoming unhinged in the final act. Actor Brent Spiner was even more critical. He recalled there being difficulties with getting the next episode ("Disaster") ready for production; this script "was ready to go, but it wasn't very remarkable." He also was dissatisfied that if the Crystalline Entity storyline was really to be concluded, that it would go out this way.
A storyline inspired by Moby Dick would later be done more effectively, in the feature film First Contact. And while part of the difference in appeal is that the Borg are a far more compelling adversary than the Crystalline Entity, the real reason is that that story revolved around Captain Picard, one of the main characters. At the risk of sounding like a broken record on this issue, "Silicon Avatar" is another episode built too heavily around a guest character. It's a showcase for Kila Marr, barely involving our characters at all.
Just look at the whirlwind journey she goes on. First, she harbors an illogical hatred for Data: an almost racist distrust of him (though one less compelling than that portrayed just a few episodes earlier in the season premiere). Then, when Data later presents a theory on how to communicate with the Crystalline Entity, Marr suddenly warms to him -- even though that should, if anything, reinforce her notion that Data is in league with the creature. Suddenly, the episode is all about Marr bonding with Data, whose role in the story is little more than that of a glorified "lost diary" left behind by the doctor's son. And ultimately, the tale winds up with Marr throwing away her career to get revenge. None of the main characters grow during any of this, and none are at all altered by the experience. Consequently, it makes for a quite dull hour.
The closest thing we get to an interesting thread involving a main character is a subplot involving Commander Riker. He's putting the moves on one of the colonists, a woman named Carmen Davila. (And it's totally working, too.) But then she is killed in the Crystalline Entity's attack, showing the deadliness of the creature, and giving one of our characters a personal loss. Riker later has a scene with Picard in which he shares the desire to kill the Entity, claiming that he knows what it's like to lose someone on a mission, so his thinking in this matter is clear. It would have been nice to delve further into that; an exploration of Riker facing the death of someone he cared for might have made for a better episode. (Though to some extent, we already got that in season three, and it didn't make for that much better an episode.)
It also doesn't help that the episode is riddled with little continuity errors and plot holes. The "brilliant" Doctor Marr holds her tricorder upside-down. She's supposed to be the expert on the Crystalline Entity, but it's Data and Geordi who figure out how to track it (and she is initially dismissive of their theory). The doors in Picard's ready room have built-in drama sensors; Riker is farther from them when they open at the end of a scene than he is when they remain closed as he reconsiders leaving mid-scene. Why in the final act is everyone so shocked that it's possible to communicate with the Entity when they know from personal experience that Lore was able to do so? Why, when Marr's program is about to destroy the Entity, does no one think to just "unplug" the graviton emitter?
The one thing the episode does have going for it is that the teaser and first act serve up some pretty exciting action. The "death ray" from the Entity is presented with a cool visual effect as it instantly turns every living thing to dust. The actual location filming (for the third episode in a row; this time in Golden Oak Ranch in Santa Clarita Valley) showing the beautiful landscape makes for a great contrast with the matte painting showing the post-attack desolation.
Other observations:
- Jeri Taylor admitted that another element of the outside writer's pitch that captured the staff's interest was the strange title, "Silicon Avatar." Yet she also thought that no one really knew exactly what it meant. (It must refer to Data's hosting of Renny Marr's memories, right?)
- Data has picked up yet another musical instrument. In this episode, he's shown playing guitar.
- If Brent Spiner's recollection was correct, and this episode indeed was inserted last minute before "Disaster," it had the unfortunate side effect of hurting the ongoing introduction of Ensign Ro. After her first appearance the week before, Ro is nowhere to be seen in this episode. One might have thought that she wasn't meant to be around for the long haul after all, that she was just another random character to appear once and then disappear.
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