Filament Doubts and Transfer Orders
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Data interrogates technical gaps—positronic brain construction, electron resistance across neural filaments—and warns that unresolved filament-link issues will doom any replicated model; Maddox admits he lacks precise answers but professes confidence.
Picard asserts Data's status as a valued bridge officer and refuses to let him become Maddox's test subject; Maddox shrugs the risk as negligible while Data amplifies the critique of Maddox's research.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Calmly authoritative with an undercurrent of determined certainty; registers no panic but masks gaps in knowledge with institutional weight.
Commander Maddox leads the procedural presentation: he explains his research goals, describes planned diagnostics and memory-dump procedures, minimally concedes technical uncertainty, and finally produces transfer orders as an enforcement instrument.
- • Secure custody of Data to complete his research
- • Legitimize his program by framing disassembly as a scientific necessity
- • Data is a specimen whose mechanisms can and should be replicated
- • Institutional authorization (Starfleet orders) justifies intrusive research even amid technical uncertainty
Protective and indignant; measured public authority overlays personal loyalty and moral outrage.
Captain Picard questions the safety and ethics of Maddox's plan, defends Data's status as a crew member, and refuses to permit voluntary submission—converting scientific doubt into a command-level moral objection.
- • Prevent Data from being removed and disassembled
- • Protect his crew member's dignity and safety before Starfleet bureaucracy
- • Data is a valued officer entitled to protection under Picard's command
- • Technical uncertainty should not be used to justify harm to an individual
Clinically concerned and intellectually engaged; curiosity shades into quiet apprehension about procedural risk.
Data asks precise technical questions about the experiment—specifically the electron resistance across neural filaments—pointing out that unresolved problems would invalidate Maddox's model and risk the experiment's success and his safety.
- • Clarify the technical soundness of the proposed experiment
- • Protect his own integrity and continued functioning by exposing gaps in methodology
- • Scientific experiments require resolved technical foundations before invasive procedures
- • Understanding and explaining the risks is the appropriate method to ensure safety
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The anterior cortex itself is cited as the surgical site where filament links will be examined; its mention grounds the abstract technical question in a physical place within Data's anatomy and raises the specter of invasive access.
Data's core memory is invoked as the prime object of scientific study: Maddox plans to dump it into the starbase mainframe for forensic analysis, making the memory itself both research material and the ethical focal point of the dispute.
The Starbase mainframe is referenced as the target repository for Data's memory dump and the analytic engine where Maddox intends to replicate Soong's work—functioning as the off‑ship infrastructure required to process and store Data's experiential data.
The message disk is physically produced by Maddox and extended to Picard as the decisive piece of evidence: an authenticated bearer of Starfleet's transfer orders that converts debate into enforced authority, shifting the scene from argument to command.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The USS Enterprise is the organizational home and protective locus for Data and Picard; the ship's identity and command norms frame Picard's objections and provide the stakes—loss of Data means loss to the vessel and crew.
Maddox's office is named as the physical site where Data is expected to report following transfer—it functions as the immediate operational endpoint of the orders and the location where disassembly preparations will begin.
The Observation Lounge serves as the enclosed conference space where Maddox presents his experimental plan, Data interrogates technical points, and Picard objects—its intimacy concentrates procedural argument and moral tension into a public yet contained forum.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Maddox produces formal Starfleet transfer orders for Data, which directly forces Picard to seek a non-coercive solution—he asks Data to submit voluntarily as an attempt to avert the transfer."
"Maddox produces formal Starfleet transfer orders for Data, which directly forces Picard to seek a non-coercive solution—he asks Data to submit voluntarily as an attempt to avert the transfer."
Key Dialogue
"DATA: Have you determined how the electron resistance across the neural filaments is to be resolved?"
"DATA: That would seem to be a necessary first step."
"MADDOX: I thought this might be your attitude, Captain. Here are Starfleet's transfer orders separating Commander Data from the Enterprise, and reassigning it to Starbase one-seven-three under my command. Data, I'll expect you in my office at nine hundred hours tomorrow."