Knowledge as Survival vs. Knowledge as Transgression

Every character grapples with how much data can be recklessly gathered before it endangers life. Data’s android fascination with lethal plague manifests, Pulaski’s compulsion to document impossible DNA sequences, and Worf’s desire to sterilise information by eliminating its biological source all dramatise competing philosophies about science: sword or sanctuary. The tension is never resolved, only suspended, when the mystery child matures and departs.