Crystalline Entity

The Crystalline entity is a mysterious life form which the Federation encountered several times. The first known incident came when the Omicron Theta colony was destroyed, leaving only the android Data and Doctor Soongs laboratory unaffected. At the time it was not known what had happened to the colony, although drawings made by some of the colonist children depicted a strange crystalline form. When Lore was discovered in 2364 he revealed that the crystal was in fact a life form. The Enterprise encountered the being, which Lore was allied with, but took no action against it. Doctor Kila Marr, whose son had been killed on Omicron Theta, made the study of the entity her life's work. She studied a dozen attack sites over the next few years, but was never able to find the entity itself.

The next encounter with the crystalline entity came in 2368, when it destroyed the Melona IV colony. On this occasion a group of colonists together with some visiting Starfleet officers from the Enterprise-D survived the attack by taking shelter in some caves surrounded by refractive metals. The Enterprise arrived at Melona after the attack and found the planet devastated by the entity. Captain Picard decided to investigate the entity in more detail and invited Doctor Marr on board. The Doctor held considerable enmity toward the entity, which she regarded as 'evil'.

The ship was eventually successful in tracking the entity down. Using a modulated graviton beam the Enterprise was able to establish limited communication with it but Doctor Marr locked the ships graviton emitter into a continuous beam, creating severe resonance within the entity. She refused to release the beam and the resonance built up until the entity shattered, killing it.