Half a Million Words — and No Data
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Riker questions the plan, voicing the crew's skepticism about outmaneuvering the Sheliak legally.
Worf and Troi reveal the daunting length of the treaty, underscoring the challenge ahead.
Worf laments Data's absence, highlighting the android's unique value in parsing complex data.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Matter-of-fact and measured — delivering an unsettling fact without melodrama, letting others react to its implications.
Troi supplies factual intelligence about the treaty's size — five hundred thousand words — delivering the crucial datum that reframes the bridge's strategy and mood toward urgency.
- • Provide clear, relevant information to enable command decision-making.
- • Anchor the bridge's strategic conversation with concrete data.
- • Precise, authoritative information will shape the crew's tactical choices more than speculation.
- • The treaty's sheer length significantly complicates any attempt to quickly find exploitable clauses.
Measured, quietly urgent — outwardly composed while urgently seeking leverage to avert catastrophe.
Picard commands decisively from the bridge, orders the channel closed, and instructs that the treaty be retrieved for analysis, reframing the crew's response from force to law and procedure.
- • Secure a legal avenue to delay or undermine Sheliak enforcement.
- • Obtain the treaty text for rapid analysis to find exploitable formalism.
- • The treaty contains formal loopholes or language that can be used to the Enterprise's advantage.
- • Diplomacy and legal procedure can buy time and protect lives more effectively than immediate force in this situation.
Absent — his persona exerts influence through others' concern rather than direct behavior; he is a lacuna that creates anxiety.
Data is physically absent but functionally present in the conversation as the missed capability; crew members note his absence as a concrete tactical shortfall that alters available strategies.
- • (Implied) Provide analytic support to parse the treaty quickly and accurately if present.
- • (Implied) Serve as an impartial, machine-level interpreter of arcane formal language to protect lives.
- • (Implied) That precise, unemotional analysis could reveal legal openings or compliance details crucial to negotiation.
- • (Implied) His capabilities are uniquely suited to tasks demanding exhaustive parsing and formal logic.
Glum resignation mixed with pragmatic worry — he recognizes the tactical deficit and its consequences.
Worf asks about the treaty's length and then, glumly, warns that the crew will regret Data's absence — a terse blend of operational concern and blunt emotional admission about lost capability.
- • Highlight the operational consequences of lacking Data for the proposed legal-technical effort.
- • Prompt command to consider the capability gap when planning the response.
- • Parsing and exploiting a massive treaty requires computational and analytic skill beyond human speed alone.
- • Absence of specialized personnel (Data) meaningfully reduces the ship's tactical options and increases risk.
Incredulous and wary — he respects Picard's judgment but is uneasy about relying solely on legal wrangling under time pressure.
Riker voices skepticism at Picard's legal gambit, questioning whether the crew should attempt to out-play the Sheliak at their own bureaucratic game, testing the plan's practicality aloud.
- • Clarify the tactical soundness of Picard's decision before committing scarce resources.
- • Ensure that operational realities (evacuation, analytics) are accounted for in the legal strategy.
- • Beating an adversary at their own formalism is risky and may be impractical without the right tools or personnel.
- • Tangible analytic capability (like Data's) is necessary to exploit complex legal documents quickly.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The shipboard communication channel is the medium of the Sheliak contact; Picard shuts it down to end unproductive back-and-forth and pivot to an internal legal strategy. The channel's closure signals a change in posture from reactive diplomacy to planned analysis.
The Treaty of Armens is the pivot of the exchange: Picard orders it retrieved so the crew can comb through its language for exploitable formalism. Troi cites its immense length, turning the treaty from abstract leverage into a daunting analytic challenge that defines the bridge's next actions.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Main Bridge functions as the command nexus where the decision to trade force for procedure is made; its panels, processors, and viewscreens concentrate legal text, personnel, and urgency into a single locus where lives and law collide.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Key Dialogue
"PICARD: Close channel -- and get me that treaty! They've been beating us over the head with it for three days. Let's see if we can't find something in it that can be turned to our advantage."
"TROI: Five hundred thousand words."
"WORF: We are going to regret Data's absence."