This is an episode about a Data discovering another form of artificial life. But it is also an episode about the stereotype of the arrogant scientist who is more interested in proving their harebrained theory than who gets hurt along the way. And sure enough, pretty much everything scientist lady does turns out to be stupid and or reckless. The whole particle fountain mining thing seems like it is probably a bad idea and literally everything she does to try and prove that thought wrong goes terribly awry and even gets one of her men killed.
The episode opens with Dr. Crusher trash talking beards at the officers poker game and almost gets them to agree to shave if she wins the game. But fortunately for everyone the captain calls them to the bridge before we find out what cards they have. The Enterprise has been assigned to evaluate a new mining technology called a particle fountain. Geordi beams over to discuss progress with the project leader Dr. Farallon. Suddenly the station shakes as a power grid goes down. Dr. Farallon knows what to do and pulls out a tiny robot called an exocomp and gives it the job of fixing the power grid. It replicates the proper tool and floats down the access tube and save the day. As a side note, Dr. Farallon is willing to risk all their lives rather than give up 4 months progress, not someone you probably would like to work for.
Dr. Farallon beams to the Enterprise to meet the captain but also Data who she is clearly very excited to meet. Back on the station Data works with an exocomp and is very impressed. He sends it down an access tunnel to repair a plasma conduit, but it returns before the job is done. Dr. Farallon tries to send it back in but the control circuits overload. Just then the conduit explodes which would have destroyed the exocomp. Back on the Enterprise Data works with Geordi and Dr. Farallon to figure out what went wrong. The interface is totally blown, but it looks like the rest of it is still working. Dr. Farallon explains that sometimes they start creating lots of new circuits in their central processors and have to be wiped. She and La Forge return to the station but Data wants to know more and takes the exocomp to his lab. He discovers that there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the exocomp and that it appears to have intentionally destroyed its access circuits and then later repaired them. After meeting with Dr. Crusher Data takes goes to the captain, he believes the exocomps are alive.
Dr. Farallon refuses to believe it is even possible that they are alive. They devise a test by faking an overload in a conduit on the Enterprise and assigning the exocomp to fix it when it appears it will be destroyed. It fails the test, but Data isn't convinced. La Forge and Dr. Farallon get back to work trying to get the particle fountain operational in time for the captains inspection and Data keeps working on the exocomp. He eventually discovers that it has in fact determined that the conduit wasn't going to explode and even turned off the alarm. On the station Picard and Geordi beam over to inspect things but something goes terribly wrong. The beam is out of control and one of the technicians has been killed. They all leave except for the captain and La Forge who now have to figure out how to survive. On the bridge Riker and Dr. Farallon come up with a plan to detonate two exocomps to shut down the beam, but Data stops them and shuts down the transporters.
Riker is hella pissed at having his orders ignored but Data won't back down. They eventually decide that the best test is to give the exocomps a choice. They communicate the problem to them and they replicate tools that no one can figure out what they are for and set the transporter to beam them into the stations core. Inside the station the three exocomps manage to alter the beam enough that the captain and Geordi can beam back over and then one takes on the burden so the other two can be saved. Dr. Farallon kinda apologizes to Data and Picard makes it clear he was with Data the whole time.
Review: This is a pretty cool episode. They don't seem to be doing as many real scifi episodes as I remember, but this is a good one. Not a huge fan of playing up the reckless scientist stereotype, but otherwise a fine episode.
6 out of 10
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