Two‑Second Warp Gambit
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Riker enters Engineering and sets a hard clock—simulation in one hour—tightening urgency around Geordi and Wesley’s repair push.
Geordi commits to delivering warp capability but flags a twist; with Wesley’s assist, he reveals a precarious workaround—warp one for just under two seconds.
Riker flips limitation into leverage, aiming to use the micro burst as a surprise to seize tactical advantage.
Geordi warns the plan is purely theoretical; when Riker presses the failure case, the team names the stakes—stall the Hathaway—and Wesley drives it home: the Enterprise would close and pulverize them.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Uneasy and apologetic yet determined — nervous about consequences but committed to making the procedure work.
Provides the critical quantification — 'just under two seconds' — with visible unease; accepts responsibility for the technical detail and the implied danger to the ship.
- • Ensure command understands the precise limitations of the micro‑warp window.
- • Support Geordi in implementing the risky fix and avoid catastrophic failure.
- • Accurate technical detail is vital to command decision-making.
- • Even small contributions can materially affect survival in crisis situations.
Controlled and resolute — outwardly steady but pressing urgency; converts anxiety about the stakes into firm directive energy.
Enters engineering, immediately sets a strict one-hour deadline, listens to the technical briefing, and reframes a dangerously short micro‑warp as a strategic maneuver rather than a mere flight plan.
- • Force the engineering team to focus with a time constraint and prevent dithering.
- • Recast a technically fragile solution as a tactical advantage to preserve morale and create opportunity in the exercise.
- • Constraints (deadlines) sharpen performance and reveal what is possible under pressure.
- • Tactical framing can convert technical risk into strategic leverage; command must make hard choices to create outcomes.
Pragmatic caution — calm competence overlaid with concern about catastrophic failure and responsibility for crew safety.
Leads the technical explanation: admits the Hathaway can achieve 'warp one' only as a micro‑burst, repeatedly qualifies the plan as theoretical and uses a terrestrial analogy to convey the risk of stalling the ship.
- • Convey an honest assessment of the engineering fix and its limits to command.
- • Protect the crew by ensuring command understands the real, mechanical risks of the maneuver.
- • Engineering solutions must be honestly communicated, including failure modes.
- • Analogies help commanders understand technical risk; restraint and clarity are safer than false assurance.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The Grenthemen Water Hopper appears only as an analogy invoked by Geordi to communicate the sudden, binary failure mode of a clutch — a terrestrial image that translates engineering risk into lived experience for Riker. It functions narratively to ground abstract failure modes in a tactile, memorable image.
The Hathaway's clutch (warp clutch) is invoked as the fragile mechanical interface threatened by an abrupt micro‑warp: the engineers warn that engaging the burst risks 'popping' or stalling the coupling. Functionally it is the imagined weak point whose potential failure raises the stakes of the entire maneuver.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Part of Larger Arcs
Key Dialogue
"RIKER: "The simulation begins in one hour.""
"WESLEY: "-- for just under two seconds.""
"GEORDI: "Sir, all of this is 'theoretical.'" / WESLEY: "... and the Enterprise will waltz over and pulverize us.""