Children's Illos in Datalore (An Irrelevant Mystery Solved?)

[Joe Momma]

I realize the following is a ridiculously petty issue but the thought got stuck in my head...

It always struck me odd in the TNG episode "Datalore" that there were children's drawings of people running from the Crystalline Entity that were found in Dr. Soong's intact lab even though it was specifically stated that there were no survivors from that attack. Some kids had the time and interest to draw the event in crayon and get it into a secret underground facility while the entire surface of the colony was devastated and everyone killed?

So my possible explanation is...Could B-4 have been the artist who drew those pictures? I'm assuming he's one of the three defectives Dr. Tainer mentioned and was somehow reactivated after she and Dr. Soong fled Omicron Theta. Perhaps he was revived in time to witness the attack somehow and depicted it afterward in his usual simplistic manner?

Yeah, I'm sure everyone is relieved that I have possibly solved this mystery of the ages.

[NecronLord]

That's an interesting idea. Hell, could they have been Data's after he was reactivated? His artistic ability clearly improves over the series. It's a long time since I've seen that episode though.

[Uraniun235]

Or, some of the colonists made it underground, some of the children drew those pictures while they were waiting and trying to ride out the attack, and then after their supplies ran out they all tried to make a run for it in a shuttle or some other spacecraft that was intact underground. I rather doubt they were drawn by Data or B-4 seeing as the kids signed some of the pictures; two were drawn by Josh, one by John, and one by Joe.


What interests me more about the background details on that set are the signs - they're not in English.

[Joe Momma]

Or, some of the colonists made it underground, some of the children drew those pictures while they were waiting and trying to ride out the attack, and then after their supplies ran out they all tried to make a run for it in a shuttle or some other spacecraft that was intact underground. I rather doubt they were drawn by Data or B-4 seeing as the kids signed some of the pictures; two were drawn by Josh, one by John, and one by Joe.

Ah, missed the signatures. With that in mind, your explanation makes more sense. There still seems to be a bit of problem with the timeline since the Crystalline Entity's attacks apparently don't last more than a standard day. The Enterprise was 27 hours away at warp 8 when it attacked Melona IV in "Silicon Avatar" and got there in even less time since they bumped their speed up to warp nine on route, but the crystalline entity was still long gone by the time they arrived. Unless the air was running out, trying to flee in less than a day is odd (Yar notes that the installation was large enough to hold hundreds of people). It also makes the parents sound batshit insane to make a display of said pictures on the wall (while leaving no other evidence of their presence no less), but trauma does funny things to people.

On the other hand, they also apparently had time to store their memories in Data. He claims to recall that having been done in a hurry by the colonists, who were trying to hide from something (in retrospect, obviously the CE) but feared they wouldn't survive (hence the hurried memory storage). They also had time to rig up the signal device that not only drew the Tripoli to the former site of the colony but also awoke Data when the Starfleet officers arrived. It sounds like they had a fair amount of warning about the CE's approach, given all the things they apparently did in response to its arrival.

I suppose the colonists may have done all of the above and then attempted to flee in escape pods as Noonian and Juliana Soong did only to meet even less success.

Still, the signatures rule out my theory. Well, unless B-4 watched each kid get eaten on a lab viewscreen and then drew doodles with the "signatures" being the victims' names in each drawing (in which case he really hated that little fucker Josh).