Much of the episode was good but the ending required more thought to be believable and could have been far more engaging.
Dr. Marr has stated that she wants to kill the crystalline entity. Picard tells her that they must try to communicate with it first, which is of course the right action. Picard never has that conversation again, ever, even as they are on the way to approach the entity. Doesn't ask Data or counsellor Troi if they have seen any indication that she wants to kill it. Troi should have been monitoring her on the bridge and felt her deception or hate.
When Dr. Marr says that the entity is beautiful and then shows joy that it is responding to their signal, I thought that she had changed her mind, but so close to the end of the episode, not much time left for a joyful outcome of learning to communicate and providing an alternate power source.
My biggest problem is how incredibly slow the crew is to react to her sabotage. It took 40 seconds for Picard to order her to stop the transmissions and another 40 until it exploded. (felt like forever)
As incredibly implausible that a visiting science researcher could lock out Geordie and Data or prevent shutdown of a system, Star Trek viewers often must accept this.
It's a fairly dull ending. A much more invigorating ending would be for the beam to be stopped and then the entity to react. Would it run away and need to be chased? Would it attack the Enterprise? (To emit the gravitons, were the shields down?!)
Picard could have saved the entity by rotating the ship (if the graviton emissions are a directed beam) or simply moving away from the entity, so that they would be too far to hurt the entity (if not a beam, the intensity would rapidly drop by 1/distance cubed).
This would end either with (1) a showdown with the entity in which Picard finally must destroy it or (2) the entity running away, and thus it will continue devouring worlds and will now see Enterprise as an enemy. Does the Enterprise chase it or is it too fast to catch?
Where there is one life form, there are probably others. What ramifications will killing one have?
If it is the only one, then humans have eradicated yet another species.
Dr. Marr has stated that she wants to kill the crystalline entity. Picard tells her that they must try to communicate with it first, which is of course the right action. Picard never has that conversation again, ever, even as they are on the way to approach the entity. Doesn't ask Data or counsellor Troi if they have seen any indication that she wants to kill it. Troi should have been monitoring her on the bridge and felt her deception or hate.
When Dr. Marr says that the entity is beautiful and then shows joy that it is responding to their signal, I thought that she had changed her mind, but so close to the end of the episode, not much time left for a joyful outcome of learning to communicate and providing an alternate power source.
My biggest problem is how incredibly slow the crew is to react to her sabotage. It took 40 seconds for Picard to order her to stop the transmissions and another 40 until it exploded. (felt like forever)
As incredibly implausible that a visiting science researcher could lock out Geordie and Data or prevent shutdown of a system, Star Trek viewers often must accept this.
It's a fairly dull ending. A much more invigorating ending would be for the beam to be stopped and then the entity to react. Would it run away and need to be chased? Would it attack the Enterprise? (To emit the gravitons, were the shields down?!)
Picard could have saved the entity by rotating the ship (if the graviton emissions are a directed beam) or simply moving away from the entity, so that they would be too far to hurt the entity (if not a beam, the intensity would rapidly drop by 1/distance cubed).
This would end either with (1) a showdown with the entity in which Picard finally must destroy it or (2) the entity running away, and thus it will continue devouring worlds and will now see Enterprise as an enemy. Does the Enterprise chase it or is it too fast to catch?
Where there is one life form, there are probably others. What ramifications will killing one have?
If it is the only one, then humans have eradicated yet another species.