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Re: TNG S5: Silicon Avatar

@Booming

I don’t think my stating that a peaceful solution is unlikely is advocating violence. What a leap in logic that is! To me it’s along the lines of hope for the best, plan for the worst.

I base my point about how improbably the CE could be satisfied on historical facts. The CE is an ecosystem destroyer. It doesn't *just* gobble up the warm blooded life forms, but every single living thing. It makes planets uninhabitable. That alone makes me think it would be very difficult to satisfy. Not impossible, but maybe close to it. I see no evidence to the contrary.

Regarding Picard, I felt his position wasn't balanced enough. As Peter G said, it wasn’t peace no matter what, but there wasn’t enough "maybe peace won’t be possible" in my opinion. I wanted Picard to at least express greater doubts to someone that peace may not be possible than he did. I thought that would have made a better episode.

Regarding trust, maybe it isn't very "Star Trek" of me but I believe trust must be earned, not just given. Especially with an entity that is capable of such widespread destruction so quickly. To place trust in it and be wrong would be much worse than not trusting it and being wrong (which doesn’t necessarily mean killing it). How could Starfleet continue to monitor it if they did manage to make peace with it? Would they just accept its promise that it would stop eating humanoids? I doubt it, but I don’t think this was explored enough. Peter G also says “it would not be very complicated at this point to keep tabs on it, or follow it around, or whatever.” Based on what? How in the world does anyone know that? They are going to assign a starship to follow it? What if it decides to go to another quadrant, is it just someone else’s problem? Or the starship will follow it? Try to stop it?

When I said "job done" I was expressing what I believed to be Dr. Marr's position on what she did. I thought that was obvious, but maybe it wasn't.

My main point was Picard was callous towards Dr. Marr and the CE's victims. I also expressed that for the reasons given above, peace was improbable. I will continue to deny that by stating that, I am advocating violence. I do think the CE is actually more destructive than the Borg (just not as widespread) given how quickly and thoroughly it destroys entire ecosystems. Due to the great potential of destruction of this entity, anything but extreme caution and skepticism would be foolish. I didn’t see that expressed in this episode. Maybe you did or maybe you don’t think it was necessary.