Star Trek: TNG 5x04 Full Reaction!
Added 2025-11-15 18:00:14 +0000 UTC
Comments
Again, assuming that this is the same entity. Supposing it is, Lore sending it to attack the Federation colony, and it wasn’t just a random encounter, would make for an interesting plotline as well. Rather love the differing ways this one can be interpreted.
Thomas Corp
2025-11-15 19:55:19 +0000 UTCThis would have been a good episode for a Lore cameo, given his ability to communicate with the Crystalline Entity. It's never confirmed in the show, but maybe Lore was the one who sent this Crystalline Entity to attack the Federation colony, and it wasn't just a random encounter. Lore plotting in the shadows against the Federation.
Geordie Joe
2025-11-15 19:49:40 +0000 UTCI was going to speak some about the writing process for this, but we can’t fully get into that until we tackle a few other episodes to come this season. Ellen is great. Like you say, hard working actress who always brings the goods. Funny enough, I remember that she appeared as Frances in The Odd Couple II, and I have a bit of fun imagining what Felix would say about Dr. Marr. The character does start off with more hostile dialogue than even the early Dr. Pulaski dialogue, yet the writing does better with it here. She does have that great balancing act, leading to the Dr. Manhattan quote. My mind often goes to the Tech line “Understanding you does NOT mean I agree with you.” and like when Hera mentioned Saw’s extremist nature, how Kanan responded, “Considering his past, can’t say I blame him.” Mad respect for the bravery with the continuity with the crystalline entity, especially with the landscape of television being what it was way back when. Obviously, since I was at or around six months old at the time of this episode’s debut, I can’t speak to what the adverts were like. Shared curiosity on that. Yeah, it probably would have been nice to have had this be sans gratuitous fridging, thus Riker’s wish to be a Demolition Man with the entity. (And good catch with the Seinfeld of it all.) The moral quandary brings so much thoughtful stuff here about how much you can really blame the Entity for just following its alien nature, as you describe, and that is great. Slightly undercut by remembering the Lore of it all, though it is. (Which yeah, we are still fuzzy about just how the hell that worked exactly.) Does feel like this was supposed to be a new being, and then it was changed to the previously seen entity to increase the drama. So, your comments about Lower Decks, I did not know about that, though it adds further weight to what I said of the episode IS just vague enough that it’s entirely possible that the entity that worked with Lore, and this one are two separate entities. Even Data mentioning the computer confirming that could just be confirming the same species. I like to favor the idea that they are the two separate entities as it makes the ending all the more tragic. I do so love how Brent made the call that he did with the subtle emotion. Not sure if he gets satisfaction, though I take your point about The Most Toys making it a possibility. No easy answers. We’re left to form our own conclusions about the right or wrong about this, and yes, it does show tremendous courage that you really never saw much of in television of that era.
Thomas Corp
2025-11-15 19:37:12 +0000 UTCJust like last week, this is an episode where I really love everything it sets out to do, but a few really weird writing choices means it's not quite as good as it could have been. So let's start out with the absolute best thing about it, Ellen Geer. A hard-working actress who plugged away from the '60s to right now despite never getting much mainstream recognition, this script calls on her to run through so many different emotions in quick succession, and never giving her or us an easy out on what we should really think of this very complex character, and she pulls off every bit of it. It took some real guts to start out a character having such a strong dislike for Data and then try to build our empathy for her (just look how badly Dr. Pulaski turned out), but somehow it works, and as Dr. Manhattan put it, on every step of her story, without condoning or condemning, I understand. The episode starts off very strong, with the unexpected return of the Crystalline Entity after four years. Being too young to be at all aware of the show's ads, I'm very curious how much they played this up in those days before counting on the audience to remember plot points from that long ago was really a thing. Though I really wish they had enough trust in us to have the proper emotional response to the destruction without a gratuitous fridging, as if Riker being about to ask her to do a sex makes her more important to us. She never even got to have that nose job. From there we go hard into the main moral quandary, and there's so much thoughtful stuff here about how much you can really blame the Entity for just following its alien nature...so it's a shame that's all wrecked when you remember Datalore clearly portrayed it as deliberately malicious in its alliance with Lore. That deal never made sense anyway, but that doesn't mean later episodes should just ignore it. It feels a lot like this script was originally written about some new creature but then they decided to ramp up interest with this continuity pull, without thinking through how that should change the script already written. And as with so many other things, Lower Decks actually did a lot to retroactively fix this when it revealed there's a whole species of these things, meaning this may well not be the same one and Marr's revenge was completely misplaced the whole time. We at least get to end on a great note that involves one of those lovely times when an actor's greater understanding of their character leads to a big improvement. The original script had Data not understanding at all the emotions involved in Marr's request and his honest response, but Brent asked if he could play it like he fully did understand how devastating it would be to her, but was unable to give her anything but the full truth (and remember that we already saw him driven to cold-blooded murder in The Most Toys, so you have to wonder if he doesn't get his own kind of satisfaction out of it). It refuses to give the audience any easy answers to what we just saw and lets everyone make their own conclusion about the right thing in this situation, and not many TV shows back then would have the courage for that.
Ryan
2025-11-15 19:11:40 +0000 UTC
