That is one nasty helix of crystal. It kills Riker’s booty call, it was around at the Data/Lore creation myth (which I kinda remember) and it’s causing this nice, grieving scientist Mom to a) roleplay with Data and b) cause Picard to get on his high horse and babble about the Prime Directive. Great, just what we needed — another lecture about every creature’s right to exist. Well, everybody wins. The creature is killed and Picard had nothing to do with it, so he gets to sleep at night.
