Is the gaseous entity for "obsession" a less evoled crystal entity
- Thread starter Tcsfan
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An interesting hypnosis, but I would say no. However, they may be from the same family or group of species.
I always found it interesting that Kirk mentioned a somewhat similar life form in Wolf in the Fold, called the "mellitus, cloud creature of Alpha Majoris One. " Kirk says "I've seen the mellitus myself. In its natural state, it's gaseous. When it's at rest, it's solid." The solidity aspect and planet of origin are different, but I found the return of a gaseous cloud as a life form to be an interesting, if accidental, bit of continuity.
Don't ya think it could be the other way around? (Both in-universe and conceptually)
The Tycho IV vampire cloud creature could outrun Kirk's Enterprise, but it could also penetrate the ship's shields and withstand incoming fire from phasers and photon torpedoes.
The Crystaline Entity was never able to penetrate the Enterprise-D's shields, nor was it clear that it could. Kila Marr's trick graviton pulse beam was enough to shatter the entity, but the only way to kill the cloud creature was to bait it and then trick it into "tasting" an antimatter bomb before blowing it up.
To me, the Crystaline Entity was simply a poorly done retread of the original vampire cloud concept. Actually, the whole Data/Lore doppleganger and cosmic snowflake-from-Hell storyline was very embarrassing, really a shame that TNG wasted all that time, location shooting, and FX on an ill-conceived imitation of "Obsession", and that's all they could come up with. The only thing interesting about "Silicon Avatar" was that we learned Data had the engrams of the Omicron Theta colonists impressed in his memory, so we could hear Marr's deceased son speak. Data delivered the fitting end to this lackluster anthology when he told Dr. Marr that her son would have nothing to say.
What a bitch she was.
Hmm... I thought the hungry snowflake was not just the saving grace of the evil twin nonsense of "Datalore", but also one of the few scifi-concept highlights of TNG - most of these being clustered in the first season, after which the show got really timid with doing scifi. I just have a soft spot for opponents who feel like forces of nature rather than personified villains...
The "Obsession" cloud was a superbeing in its ability to evade, hide, penetrate and destroy. The "Datalore" crystal was more humdrum an opponent. On the other hand, the cloud was pretty straightforward and consistent in its actions, while the crystal appeared to act illogically and inconsistently (largely because it made two appearances), which makes the crystal the more interesting concept from the apologist's viewpoint. The interesting thing is that both creatures were chiefly viewed through mentally compromised characters - the obsessed Kirk, the raving lunatic Lore, the grief-stricken Marr. This gives us quite a bit of leeway in choosing what the creatures were really like...
Personally, I'd choose interpretations that make the two critters maximally distinct. Although we could also speculate that since the planets are inhabited by humanoids who are all relatives (due to ancient alien meddling), free space is also populated by related species (for the same reason).
Timo Saloniemi
The "Obsession" cloud was a superbeing in its ability to evade, hide, penetrate and destroy. The "Datalore" crystal was more humdrum an opponent. On the other hand, the cloud was pretty straightforward and consistent in its actions, while the crystal appeared to act illogically and inconsistently (largely because it made two appearances), which makes the crystal the more interesting concept from the apologist's viewpoint. The interesting thing is that both creatures were chiefly viewed through mentally compromised characters - the obsessed Kirk, the raving lunatic Lore, the grief-stricken Marr. This gives us quite a bit of leeway in choosing what the creatures were really like...
Personally, I'd choose interpretations that make the two critters maximally distinct. Although we could also speculate that since the planets are inhabited by humanoids who are all relatives (due to ancient alien meddling), free space is also populated by related species (for the same reason).
Timo Saloniemi
The thing is that the span of time between Kirk's last encounter with the cloud, and the Crsytal Entity's destruction of Data's home planet, was only, what, 80 years?
Unless it's a housefly, that ain't enough time for anything to evolve that radically. And both creatures seemed extremely long-lived
Unless it's a housefly, that ain't enough time for anything to evolve that radically. And both creatures seemed extremely long-lived
There's no reason to assume the evolution took place in the intervening time. It could have happened in the preceding fifty-eight million years, with Species A spawning Species B through an evolutionary process yet not ceasing to exist in the process. A bit like how the frogs are still with us (for the time being) even though we have evolved a long way from the heyday of the amphibians.
Timo Saloniemi
Knight Templar
Commodore
The only thing good to me about "Silicon Avatar" was the obvious anger at Riker toward Picard when Picard (unbelievably) actually compared human lives to cuttle fish or something like that whales on Earth consume as they feed.
...But it would be pretty ridiculous to think that they are the sole representatives of their respective species. Which makes the action of destroying the respective individuals an incredibly stupid move.
Neither creature really posed any danger as such, because at the conclusion of their original episodes they had revealed their fatal weaknesses (the cloud could be suckered by bloodbait, the crystal couldn't penetrate combat shields and could be easily destroyed by conventional weapons) and could have been assigned a shepherd that
a) kept them from doing damage
b) studied them for further weaknesses and/or alternate ways of feeding
c) thus either starving them to death after giving the UFP the means to defeat the entire species or
d) domesticating them and allowing the UFP to do the same to the entire species.
By proceeding with destroying the individuals, our heroes (TOS) or villains (TNG) denied the UFP key strategic information in the ongoing fight against the species, to no tangible gain.
Hell, the heroes in "Obsession" agree that the creature is about to spawn. Which should by all rights mean that they should agree it has been spawned, which means there could be trillions of such individuals out there.
Timo Saloniemi
Neither creature really posed any danger as such, because at the conclusion of their original episodes they had revealed their fatal weaknesses (the cloud could be suckered by bloodbait, the crystal couldn't penetrate combat shields and could be easily destroyed by conventional weapons) and could have been assigned a shepherd that
a) kept them from doing damage
b) studied them for further weaknesses and/or alternate ways of feeding
c) thus either starving them to death after giving the UFP the means to defeat the entire species or
d) domesticating them and allowing the UFP to do the same to the entire species.
By proceeding with destroying the individuals, our heroes (TOS) or villains (TNG) denied the UFP key strategic information in the ongoing fight against the species, to no tangible gain.
Hell, the heroes in "Obsession" agree that the creature is about to spawn. Which should by all rights mean that they should agree it has been spawned, which means there could be trillions of such individuals out there.
Timo Saloniemi
The crystalline entity is always a solid form (and does not in fact eat blood), so I would say, no, the two have no connection.
As for the wisdom of destroying them: That's war. Something tries to kill you, you have the right to defend yourself. If that means killing the bastards, so be it.
As for the wisdom of destroying them: That's war. Something tries to kill you, you have the right to defend yourself. If that means killing the bastards, so be it.
^ In this case, these entities could not, in fact, be captured. They were too powerful for that. The only way to save the crew was to kill the entities. Harsh, but true.
Knight Templar
Commodore
Actually, the Vampire Cloud creature was immensely dangerous and simply had to be destroyed. It was preparing to spawn thousands of other creatures (Spock) said so himself.
It was capable of outrunning one of the fastest ships in Starfleet, could penetrate the shields of one of the most powerful ships, and could not be hurt by the heaviest weapons that same ship (Enterprise) could bring to bear.
One could easily imagine thousands of Cloud Creatures eradicating all life in the galaxy that had iron based blood.
...Except that it's completely false.
The crew was in no danger from the crystalline entity - "Datalore" established that it could not penetrate combat shields. General shipping and colony planets might have been in danger, but not if Starfleet assigned a shepherd ship with combat shields to the known individual. And if shadowing the one individual did not suffice for protecting the shipping and the planets, then killing it would not suffice, either.
The vampire cloud in turn could be suckered by blood and blown to bits by conventional means (antimatter warheads) while feeding on the blood - probably because feeding would have been incompatible with the substance-shifting tricks the creature was otherwise capable of. It did not demonstrate an ability to threaten a starship unless she flew with a maintenance hatch open. Again, the crew would be in no danger from this beast - only colony planets (but not shipping) would be.
Which means it should absolutely not be destroyed, not before Starfleet learned how it behaved and how it could best be defeated. After all, if Spock was right, there were already trillions of such creatures around, and if he was wrong, there was no particular danger. (Although frankly, we have no reason to believe he was wrong - he never gave a shred of evidence for his outrageous claim, and every time he does that, he turns out to have been right!)
And one would be wrong. After all, the galaxy was not in the state of having been eradicated of all life.
It would be absurd to think that this creature was the very first of its kind, or that its very first spawning would coincide with (that is, fall within the same date, plus or minus a million years, of) our heroes encountering it.
Timo Saloniemi
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