Headscratchers / Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E4 "Silicon Avatar"

• If Data has always had the actual thoughts and memories of a few dozen people swimming around in his head, you'd think that it would be easier for him to relate to human behavior.
  • Data made it clear that the memories weren't complete. He says here, "I do not possess the minute to minute remembrances of each person, although the more intense recollections are contained in my memory banks." He also said in Datalore that it did not mean every experience, every day of their life. "It means only the knowledge they had accumulated. Actually, I am quite deficient in some basic human information. Sneezing, for example." When Marr whether her son blamed her for what happened, he said "There are no records of any negative thoughts about you. His personal journals indicated that he was proud that you were such a fine scientist." Of note, Data wasn't able to pull up a complete list of every thought her son had had. In fact, he ended up recalling information from his personal journal instead. So the information Data had access to seems largely to relate to incomplete knowledge of certain experiences people had, mixed with some recorded knowledge. Access to recorded knowledge doesn't give him any great insight into people. In terms of experiential knowledge of people, while that might be a useful reference for him, he's also been observing the people on the Enterprise for years and learning about their experience. Such knowledge doesn't automatically translate into an understanding of someone's behaviour, as anyone who struggles to understand other people's behaviour will tell you.
• Why was Picard so amazed they can communicate with the Crystalline Entity in some primitive way? They already knew Lore had worked with it in some manner, which clearly required some communication.
• When Dr Marr insinuates that the colonists were spared because of Data's presence, he dismisses it out of hand. But it's entirely plausible that the CE indeed thought Data was Lore and held off for that reason. It's not like Data is supposed to be miffed here —even though he has shown such behavior before, the dialog here is very specific that he's not bothered by Marr's statements.
• Though it's a nice character moment when Dr Marr is so stunned by the beauty of the CE that she actually blurts that out, how could she have been studying it for so long without ever having seen footage of it, including from the Enterprise?
  • It could be she's seen footage before, but seeing something like the CE in person rather than as a recording or still photograph had a more profound effect on her.