YMMV / Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E4 "Silicon Avatar"

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Marr seems completely put together when she first arrives on the ship. Did she become unhinged because she was always a broken person deep down, or was Data's conjuration of her late son so unhealthy for her that it pushed her into madness that would not have otherwise occurred?
  • In-Universe, characters are uncertain what to make of the Crystalline Entity. The abstract nature of its existence and limited time "talking" to it make a lot of aspects about it unclear. Is it an intelligent being, and if so, how intelligent? Was it an animal operating off survival instinct, or did it understand that it was killing sentient creatures? If it was sentient, was it uncaring about its actions, or was it possible for it to co-exist by providing it with an alternative food supply? The Broken Base entry on this page was almost certainly the intended reaction, as these questions inform how you feel about Picard's attempt to communicate with the entity, and characters react to that decision based on their own interpretations of what it is and what it wants.
• Broken Base: Whether Picard was right to attempt to communicate with the Crystalline Entity or whether he should have destroyed it at the first opportunity. What really complicates the issue is the Entity's first appearance in "Datalore." Were this a stand-alone story, then Picard would clearly be in the right, but that episode has Lore seemingly communicating with the Entity without major difficulty and even describing humans in ways that should clue the Entity in that humans are actual sentient beings. Showing how deep the divide goes, no representation of the Crystalline Entity in the Expanded Universe has agreed with Picard's interpretation that the Entity could be communicated with like a sentient creature. The novels portray it as being of animal intelligence (roughly comparable to a starving wolf), and that the best that could be done without destroying it is possibly "herding" it away from populated planets. Star Trek Online continues to portray it as a marauding force of nature roughly on par with the Borg for being able to bring together disparate factions to fight against it.
• Epileptic Trees: With it later being revealed in Star Trek: Lower Decks that there are in fact multiple Crystalline Entities, some fans like to believe that the Entity seen in this episode was a different one to that which destroyed Omicron Theta, as it makes Picard's insistence on trying to communicate with the Entity seem less like Head-in-the-Sand Management and more like him not wanting to hold it responsible for the actions of another of its kind, in addition to explaining away the plot hole of Lore being able to easily communicate with the one seen in "Datalore" by just hailing it, but the Enteprise crew not being able to do the same here.
• Jerkass Woobie: Dr. Marr spends the first portion of the episode treating Data with suspicion and hostility, making accusations that the audience knows full well are completely off-base. Yet, as she slowly warms up to Data and opens up more, it becomes quickly apparent that she's a deeply sad person.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Most fans will agree that the episode's basic concept is a sound one, but would perhaps have worked better with a threat other than the Crystalline Entity — or if the Crystalline Entity in this episode was established to be a different one to that which appeared in "Datalore" — as that would have allowed it to focus on the intended main storyline of Dr. Marr's grief and vengeful attitude, instead of getting bogged down in a debate that should really have been settled by what we saw in its previous appearance.

---