Protocol B: Containment and Conjecture
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Beverly Crusher reveals the severity of the situation, stating that if the crew member had been alone, he would have died.
Picard issues immediate orders to restrict access to power components and ensure protocol "B" is enforced.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Worried, shameful, and quietly panicked; trying to reconcile youthful ownership of experiments with potential catastrophic consequences.
Wesley is physically present but silent; the report and Picard's measures send him inward, considering that his own experiment might have precipitated the emergency and feeling mounting guilt and fear.
- • Understand whether his nanite experiment caused the incident
- • Avoid further harm and, if possible, take corrective action
- • His work could have unintended, dangerous side effects
- • Owning up to responsibility is necessary even if it risks blame
Resolved and urgent with an undercurrent of concern; outward control masks the gravity he feels about potential shipwide harm.
Picard hears the medical report, instantly translates medical danger into command measures: orders quarters, invokes Protocol B to restrict power component access, and assigns Data to sensor watch while sitting heavily and thinking.
- • Contain the immediate technical/biological threat to crew and ship systems
- • Preserve command control by restricting access and channeling technical work through Riker
- • Establish reliable external intelligence via sensors to determine if threat is external
- • The safety of the crew and integrity of the ship supersede other considerations
- • Immediate, centralized control of critical systems reduces risk of further accidental damage
- • Conflicting sensor reports must be reconciled before escalating to lethal measures
Clinical concentration; dedicated to the assigned analytical duty without panic.
Data is ordered to remain on the sensors; he becomes the bridge's external eyes, tasked with continued detection and analysis of anomalous signatures beyond the ship.
- • Detect and identify any external phenomena impacting the Enterprise
- • Provide objective sensor data to inform command decisions
- • Sensor data can reveal the origin and nature of the threat
- • Sustained monitoring increases the likelihood of catching transient signals
Alarmed and combative beneath a restraint of duty; assumes hostile intent as default when ship safety is at risk.
Worf reacts to Picard's look and voices a tactical hypothesis: the incident might be an attack rather than mere computer failure, injecting suspicion and urgency into the bridge's threat assessment.
- • Identify whether the anomaly is hostile in origin
- • Prompt defensive measures to prevent further harm
- • When vital systems fail, external attack is a plausible and dangerous explanation
- • Immediate tactical caution is preferable to optimistic technical explanations
Concerned but controlled; leaning toward confirming Picard's worst suspicions and preparing to execute orders.
Riker reports sensor reads (no life in the stellar system), endorses the gravity of the situation, and offers the operational reading that the Enterprise is being compromised, acting as Picard's pragmatic foil.
- • Provide accurate sensor-based situational awareness
- • Support command decisions and manage enforcement of restrictions
- • Hard sensor data should drive operational response
- • The ship must be treated as vulnerable until proven otherwise
Concerned and serious; prioritizing human life and using medical authority to push command toward protective measures.
Doctor Beverly Crusher delivers the clinical fact that the electrocution was nearly fatal and warns of lethal potential if the victim had been alone, framing the incident as urgent medical evidence rather than abstract anomaly.
- • Ensure crew safety and prevent further casualties
- • Convey the true severity of the medical incident so command takes it seriously
- • Medical facts must shape operational decisions when lives are at risk
- • The electrocution is a symptom of a larger systems failure that could threaten others
Tentative and concerned; she provides measured counsel rather than certainty, highlighting unknowns about the phenomenon's nature.
Counselor Troi replies that she perceives no life force or ill will, but caveats her perception's limits — offering an empathic data point that undercuts and complicates tactical and technical theories.
- • Contribute psychological/empathic information to the threat assessment
- • Prevent premature escalation based solely on fear
- • Her empathic faculty is a useful but limited tool for detecting non-human intelligences
- • The absence of sensed hostility does not guarantee safety
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
A sensor return briefly painted a Borg vessel signature that the bridge later acknowledged did not exist; the false contact functions narratively as a red herring, escalating fear and prompting defensive hypotheses about external attack.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Science One (the aft science/sensors station on the main bridge) functions as the operational node where Data will remain to sweep for external anomalies; it anchors the bridge's attempt to convert fear into measurable data and houses the consoles that give the crew authority to act.
The unidentified stellar system serves as the external context referenced by Riker's sensor sweep — it yielded no signs of life and thus becomes part of the evidence that the anomaly isn't a local life-bearing threat but may be an engineered or synthetic phenomenon.
Sickbay is the origin point of the crisis: a near-fatal electrocution occurred there and Beverly's report from that location supplies the concrete human cost that triggers Picard's containment orders.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Themes This Exemplifies
Thematic resonance and meaning
Key Dialogue
"BEVERLY: If he had been alone, he would have died."
"PICARD: Advise everyone to remain in their quarters when not on duty. Protocol "B" access to all power components. Nobody else uses them unless it's cleared by Commander Riker."
"TROI: I perceive no life force, Captain... no feelings of ill will. But I am not attuned to every form of life."