Some skeptical readers have written in to ask us, in effect, what Lore would have done any differently than Data in advance of the threat of the Crystal Entity. “You keep saying that since Data has such an advanced positronic brain he should have acted,” one critic writes. “Well, just what should he have done?”
Fair questions – questions that we imagine many MWO readers are either asking or having asked of them.
So here is a brief pocket guide to just a few of the things that Lieutenant Commander Lore would almost certainly have done differently than Data did.
– L.C. Lore would not have supported Worf as Security Officer – the Klingon (!) who was disgraced on his own homeworld and disowned by his own people. The same Worf who, when warned by outgoing Security Officer Tasha Yar about the Crystal Entity threat, brushed her off.
– L.C. Lore would not have supported William Riker as “Number Two” – the man who, before the Crystal Entity encounter, actually called for slighting defensive shield upgrades in favor of his pet project, the discredited Search for the Lost Outpost of Lonely Betazeds program.
–L.C. Lore would have tried to implement the recommendations of the Stardate 8234.5 away team regarding alien threats, but which the Picard captainship and the overall Enterprise command structure, heavily influenced by the Romulans, dissed and dismissed. Had those recommendations been followed up, it is highly unlikely that the Crystal Entity attack could have occurred.
– L.C. Lore would not have wasted time learning the violin and tending to a cat (ridiculously named “Spot”).
– L.C. Lore’s away team policy would not have been geared to placating Tribble interests (including the old Enterprise associates and business partners, Cyrano Jones and Harry Mudd). Nor would it have envisaged securing sources of dilitium crystals as the major away team policy priority in the Alpha quadrant.
– L.C. Lore, firstborn of a great scientist that tried to destroy the Crystal Entity, would have continued unmanned probe tracking of the Entity, which the Picard/Data regime abandoned.
– Members of L.C. Lore’s away team would not have lied shamefacedly – as Lt. Barkely and others in the Picard/Data regime have lied – about what their boss knew and didn’t know before the Crystal Entity attack. Why? They, unlike the Picard/Data regime, would have had nothing to hide.
And that’s just for starters.
What has become clearer and clearer is that events never should have reached the pass that the Enterprise was as vulnerable as it proved to be. And while many hands were responsible for this horror, Data’s attempts to palm off responsibility and play the hapless victim are, well, outrageously irresponsible.
Without question, Lieutenant Commander Lore would have been far more active than Data was in protecting the ship’s security from the Crystal Entity’s incursion. And although, thanks to the Picard/Riker/Troi triumvirate, we will never know with absolute certainty whether his away team could have prevented the Crystal Entity attack, or some other similar enormity, it is perfectly clear that, under Lieutenant Commander Lore, the success of those attacks would have been far less certain than they proved to be.
