The Enterprise is assigned to ferry two quarreling sets of delegates to a mutual location. Already a difficult task for the diplomacy ship, Picard and crew must cater to their unruly guests while also tracking down a strange energy entity possessing the minds of crew members. The invasive lightening bolt originated from a passing energy cloud, and it ends up commandeering more of the crew’s attention and resources, as key officers become incapacitated or otherwise a danger to themselves and others. As a result, the petty bickering and entitled demands of the delegates are wholly sidelined.
When the ship accidentally absorbed the sentient energy creature, it first entered Worf’s body, causing him to lash out violently, and then it transferred itself to Dr. Crusher as she was examining the Klingon in the medical bay. Neither officers remember the time they were possessed by the entity, but Councilor Troi was able to fill in the details by hypnotizing both patients. The discovery of this lifeform, and the way it controls physical minds, alignes with a material origin of consciousness. This is a theory in which consciousness emerges from a physical source sufficiently capable of high order pattern development, such as the human brain or advanced computer circuitry. Details of how this creature functions, grows, or reproduces are sparse, but, using only what we learn about it in this story, one can argue that the entity may not be able to exist outside of a body.
The pure energy life form that Picard and crew encounter on this adventure is first interpreted as a sentient being that exists without a body, and was able to occupy and manipulate both physical minds and computer circuitry. Although Star Trek has explored many energy-based life forms before, there is not much elaboration on this one aside from its origin from a space cloud; it was mainly treated as a threat. The invasive hijacking of other minds evoked parasitic tendencies, but it was still assumed to be an independent life form. Troi first noticed it when she sensed a ‘duality’ within each victim’s mind, but she dismissed this as our normal ‘self-referential’ consciousness. Her words were, “When you approach a decision and ask yourself which direction to go, who are you talking to?” This is simply an example of our ‘self-awareness’, or the acknowledgment of ourselves as an entity which even we can recognize as independent from other ‘selves’. Isolating ourselves from the decision making process creates a distance which enables us to evaluate the consequences toward ourselves as well as others. It is a useful thought experiment, but not equivalent to being overtaken by a separate mind.
The new and invasive consciousness was able to exist alongside the consciousness of the affected crew members, but also suppressed them to the point where they had no memory or agency. Were two consciousnesses present or was it a case of one being grossly affected? Without further detail, it is difficult to say whether the ‘entity’ was the human (and Klingon) characters’ suffering a memory and behavioral lapse as opposed to being possessed. The brain is a strange thing, and stories of people performing actions of which they later have no memory are not unknown. Is it possible that the lightning bolt entity was not really conscious before it entered a brain of some kind?
All we see entering the ship is a lightening bolt, not necessarily a conscious intentionality. This may have manifested itself as an emergent property once it came into contact with matter capable of pattern expression. Perhaps it was attracted to certain types of matter, as it was able to invade the computer console and interact with machine components. The energy may have just experienced an attraction, like normal electricity, and the effects emerged when it has access to human words, understanding, Worf’s strength, and other capabilities. It was the combination of space energy and a complex physical mechanism which manifested a new life form. The attractions and tendencies this new being developed then compelled it to seek out its space cloud origins.
Inside Picard’s body, the entity beamed off the ship and dissipated once the physical body was gone. Troi still sensed Picard in the end, suggesting that his was the only real consciousness. The fact that Picard’s ‘essence’ was floating in space would refute a pure materialistic origin of consciousness, unless the remains of Picard were simply slower to dissipate. Or, the energy creature was just an emergent propterty, and Picard’s consciousness was ‘real’, whatever that may mean. Although the entity seemed malicious and parasitic, its temporary existence raises questions about our own consciousness. Do we emerge from the circuitry of our own brains once they became complex enough, or does consciousness require a spark?
Hopeless Trekkie 