EDITED - Silicon Avatar (TNG S5E4) | Star Trek Journey 211
Comments (5)
The Lore!!!...and a reference to Lore!...sorry, but any character that hates Data can suck it!
It took me forever to realize that the title "Silicon Avatar" refers to Data and not the Crystalline Entity.
And best of both worlds is about Riker and not the borg
Yet again, STAR TREK shows that its achilles heel is its too-frequent inability to create nuanced, multilayered antagonist characters whose true intentions aren't visible a mile away. Not saying that it makes for an awful episode, but when the crystaline entity is less predictable than the human scientist, you know you need some character rewrite. C.
I think the shortcomings in this case is not star trek writing predictable antagonist, but expectations of how we think the characters should be. After almost 30 years the Dr in this episode is about to finally come face to face with the thing that killed her son. She is not evil or bad or stupid, If you dont buy into that pain, then the reaction that she is just stupid and predictable may be the result. I buy it, and I buy that she cna get away with her plan too. She mainly only shows her darker side in the interaction with data. The other crew dont see the red flags. I dont think she is poorly written or uncomplex. And the actor does a great job.