Granger's Reinforcements: Armed Standoff in the Cloning Lab
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Granger bursts in with three identical, armed clones (2A, 2B, 2C), seizing the moment and forcing a standoff as the confrontation ignites.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Controlled and resigned; she prioritizes immediate triage and containment over moral hesitation, suppressing personal revulsion to permit decisive action.
Beams in with Riker and Geordi, conducts rapid visual assessment of the cloning units, gives a terse nod of assent when Riker indicates destroying the developing copies, remaining clinically steady and pragmatic.
- • Prevent further propagation or misuse of the cloning technology.
- • Support measures that protect living persons and crew rights aboard the Enterprise.
- • Medical ethics can justify direct intervention when nascent life poses ethical or biological harm.
- • Rapid, controlled decisions are necessary in crisis to prevent larger harm.
Urgent and defensive; determined to protect his people and their practices, prepared to assert forceful control to stop the crew from destroying colony assets.
Bursts into the laboratory with three identical, armed clones (2A–2C) following, seizing the initiative and turning an internal ship forensic action into an armed standoff against Riker, Pulaski and Geordi.
- • Stop the Enterprise team from destroying the clones and cloning equipment.
- • Reassert control over the laboratory and protect Mariposan institutional interests.
- • The clones and equipment are vital to Mariposa's survival, and outside interference threatens that survival.
- • A strong, immediate show of force is necessary to deter further unilateral action by the away team.
Visibly horrified and enraged — disgust quickly hardens into violent resolve; action masks shock and a desire to remove the threat immediately.
Beams into the chamber, approaches smoke‑filled wombs, recoils at seeing a half‑formed likeness of himself, gropes for a phaser and fires twice to destroy two developing clones, catalyzing the confrontation.
- • Immediately eliminate the physical evidence and threat represented by the developing clones.
- • Protect the crew from contamination or further ethically ambiguous acts occurring in the lab.
- • Partially formed human replicas represent a moral and biological violation that must not be allowed to continue.
- • Direct, forceful action is justified to prevent further harm or nonconsensual creation/harvesting.
Alert and focused; curiosity and professional curiosity are tempered by alarm as the situation escalates from evidence gathering to violence and confrontation.
Beams into the lab with the team, witnesses the interior of the artificial wombs and Riker's violent reaction, stands alert and investigative as the scene pivots from forensic inspection to lethal action and then suddenly to a standoff.
- • Collect forensic and technical data about the cloning equipment and process.
- • Ensure the safety and operational integrity of the away team during the confrontation.
- • Technical evidence is crucial to understanding the colony's practices and motivations.
- • Quick escalation to violence jeopardizes the mission's investigative aims and the team's safety.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Mariposan clone phaser‑like weapons are present as Granger and three identical armed clones rush the lab, converting the scene into an armed standoff; these compact energy emitters symbolize the colony's readiness to defend its practices through force.
A row of heavy hatch panels and cloning unit doors are forced open by Riker, acting as the physical thresholds between containment and the lab; their opening releases smoke and converts private horror into public confrontation.
A banked artificial womb (the second cloning unit) is opened to reveal another nascent duplicate; it functions as corroborating evidence of systematic cloning and becomes the second target of Riker's destructive action after Pulaski's assent.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Mariposa cloning laboratory (set on the Mariposa colony whose orbit is in canon) functions as the immediate stage: a confined, industrial research space where containment fails, bodily replication is visible, and ethical lines are violently crossed — its physicality forces choices between evidence gathering and self‑defense.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Pulaski’s confirmation of stolen epithelial cells triggers Riker’s furious destruction of his developing clones."
"Pulaski’s confirmation of stolen epithelial cells triggers Riker’s furious destruction of his developing clones."
"Riker’s claim to bodily autonomy is enacted when he destroys the unauthorized clones of himself."
"Riker’s claim to bodily autonomy is enacted when he destroys the unauthorized clones of himself."