who reviewed the episode for TrekNation in May 2007, thought she might be more forgiving in hindsight as she knows that the follow-ups to "Datalore" were great episodes. She praised Spiner's "lovely, subtle performances as both Data and Lore", but felt that Lore's motivations and goals were unclear, and that the crew came off as stupid by their inaction to the Lore threat. She thought that transporting the villain into space was shocking (as the show generally presents androids as having personhood) and inconsistent (as Lore had just told the entity to attack when the shields drop following a transporter activation). Jamahl Epsicokhan at his website "Jammer's Reviews" valued the episode for providing backstory to Data, but agreed that the crew's inability to recognize Lore's threat and unwillingness to listen to Wesley made them seem stupid. He gave the episode a score of three out of four. Zack Handlen watched "Datalore" for The A.V. Club in April 2010. He noted that Data's origins had significant plotholes, such as that the ship which found Data did not investigate the planet. He thought that Lore was a well-conceived villain who works well with Spiner's strengths as an actor, but that the story only scratched the surface of the character's potential. He considered the contraction issue a problem, as despite saying that Data could not use them, he uses them throughout the episode, including immediately after Lore was beamed off the ship, which "punishes you for paying attention, because now you'll be half-convinced that the wrong robot was beamed away, and that Lore somehow won out in the end." He disliked the response of the crew to Wesley and thought that he was being mistreated, and gave the episode an overall grade of B−. The Crystalline Entity was noted by Space.com among the one of more exotic aliens in the Star Trek franchise; they note its snowflake like appearancebeautiful but deadly. In 2016, Empire ranked this the 38th best out of the top 50 episodes of the more than 700 Star Trek television episodes. In 2020, Space.com recommended watching this episode as background for Star Trek: Picard. In 2020, GameSpot noted this episode as one of the most bizarre episodes of the series. In 2020, SyFy Wire recommended this episode for binge watching, noting how it explores Data's origins and relationships. Home media and theatrical release The episode was release as part of