Naming Grief, Tracing Hope
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Troi steps into Clare's quarters and announces herself as the ship's counselor, offering a calm presence; Clare greets her with suspicion, assuming Troi was sent merely to 'settle' her. The formal introduction immediately establishes an unequal emotional axis—professional composure against private defensive pain.
Troi names Clare's feeling—profound sadness—and Clare flings back a flippant label ('the local shrink') that masks her pain; Troi's gentle confusion about the term cracks the tension and opens a space for emotional naming. Words shift from sarcastic deflection to a therapist's precise empathy.
Clare delivers a compact, devastating backstory—Donald froze her because he couldn't face living alone—then collapses into uncontrollable grief, turning away and fighting tears. The revelation reframes her present panic as rooted in loss and misguided love, intensifying the scene's emotional stakes.
Troi moves to a computer and pivots from consolation to action, requesting a personal-history search for Clare's children; the ship's computer asks for full names and birth details, turning private grief into a concrete investigative procedure. The beat converts despair into a procedural hope anchored by shipboard resources.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Not directly observable; functions as an emotional focal point for Clare's grief.
Tommy is not present but is named by Clare as an eight-year-old son; his identity and birthdate become key data points Troi seeks to locate records and possible descendants.
- • serve as catalyst for the search to find living kin
- • represent the personal stakes of the episode
- • (as assumed by Clare) that records tied to Tommy may exist
- • his existence could lead to familial closure
Calm, professionally compassionate — quietly urgent beneath a composed exterior, focused on converting emotion into usable information.
Troi enters Clare's quarters, identifies herself as the ship's counselor, listens empathically, names Clare's emotion, and then moves to a computer terminal to initiate a records search, translating private grief into procedural action.
- • soothe and stabilize Clare's immediate panic
- • elicit factual personal details about Clare's family
- • initiate a concrete search for records to answer Clare's questions
- • protect Clare from spiraling while creating practical next steps
- • Providing language to grief helps a person regain agency
- • Ship databases and records likely contain retrievable information
- • Turning emotion into procedure can both comfort and produce results
- • Counseling includes practical intervention, not only consolation
Shattered and disoriented; alternating between brittle sarcasm and open anguish, seeking facts to anchor overwhelming loss.
Clare receives Troi with sarcasm, then collapses into raw grief; she names Donald as the husband who had her frozen and supplies the names, ages and birthplace of her sons, moving from defensive banter to explicit requests about their fate.
- • discover what happened to her children
- • make sense of why Donald arranged her freezing
- • find connection or closure in a world that now feels alien
- • test whether the ship can restore personal ties
- • Donald froze her because he couldn't face being alone
- • Her children may have left public records that can be found
- • Naming the pain aloud might produce answers
- • The future (or closure) can be reached through institutional records
Not directly observable; functions as an emotional anchor whose unknown fate creates urgency.
Eddie is mentioned by Clare as a five-year-old son; like Tommy, he is absent but central to Clare's anguish and the impetus for Troi's records search.
- • act as emotional motivation for the crew to search
- • provide concrete identifiers for the database query
- • that birth records will show their existence and possibly descendants
- • that knowing their fate is necessary for Clare's grief process
Absent in the scene; recalled through Clare's mixture of affection and reproach toward his decision.
Donald is not present but is invoked in Clare's account as the husband who arranged her cryo-preservation; his actions are the cause of Clare's current predicament and emotional state.
- • (inferred) avoid living alone after Clare's death
- • (inferred) preserve the illusion of continuity by arranging cryo-preservation
- • (inferred) freezing Clare equated to not losing her
- • (inferred) he could postpone grief by preserving her physically
Affective-neutral; purely informational and task-focused.
The Enterprise Computer Voice responds neutrally to Troi's request, prompting for structured data (full names, dates, places of birth) necessary to execute a personal-history query and stabilize the search process.
- • collect precise identifying information to run a database query
- • ensure inputs meet system requirements for record retrieval
- • facilitate the crew's attempt to locate living relatives or records
- • Accurate data requires specific structured inputs
- • Starfleet and civil records are catalogued and accessible if correctly queried
- • Human intervention will supply the content the system needs
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
A shipboard computer terminal (screen and input) is used by Troi to place a formal request for 'personal history' on Clare's named children. The terminal functions as the means to convert Clare's spoken memory into searchable data and triggers the institutional machinery of record retrieval.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Clare's private cabin serves as the intimate setting where counseling occurs: it contains a data terminal Troi uses, personal papers that evoke memory, and a confined space that lets grief be both confessed and converted into action.
Secaucus, New Jersey, is referenced as the children's birthplace and thus becomes the primary geographic anchor for the records search — invoking municipal birth registries and bureaucratic paper trails the Enterprise can query.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Clare's disclosure of her husband and the reason for freezing provokes Troi to run a genealogical search; discovering ten generations of progeny is the direct procedural payoff to emotional confession."
"Troi initiating a records search for Clare's family pays off with the discovery of a living descendant."
"Troi initiating a records search for Clare's family pays off with the discovery of a living descendant."
"Troi initiating a records search for Clare's family pays off with the discovery of a living descendant."
"Troi initiating a records search for Clare's family pays off with the discovery of a living descendant."
"Troi’s initiated records search leads to the scene where she presents Clare’s descendant."
"Troi’s initiated records search leads to the scene where she presents Clare’s descendant."
"Troi’s initiated records search leads to the scene where she presents Clare’s descendant."
"Troi’s initiated records search leads to the scene where she presents Clare’s descendant."
Key Dialogue
"TROI: "You are feeling profoundly sad.""
"CLARE: "I'm in a world of strangers. I wish I knew what happened to my children. Did they get married, did they have kids...""
"TROI: "Computer - this is Counselor Troi. Request personal history on... What are their names?""