Transfer Orders: From Debate to Decree
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Maddox escalates from argument to authority: he produces Starfleet transfer orders and a message disk, officially reassigning Commander Data to Starbase 173 and summoning the android to report—transforming debate into compelled action.
Focus tightens on Picard as the scene closes; the encounter fractures into a legal and moral standoff—FADE OUT signals the transition to the conflict's next stage.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Controlled, quietly triumphant — professionally impatient but masked by procedural politeness.
Maddox calmly presents his scientific ambition and methodology, answers technical queries with clinical confidence, then produces authenticated transfer orders to assert institutional authority and schedule Data's removal for study.
- • Secure legal custody of Data for research
- • Begin disassembly and analysis as the first step toward replicating Soong's work
- • Neutralize personal or command resistance through official orders
- • Data is an object of study whose knowledge justifies invasive examination
- • Institutional authorization (transfer orders) legitimizes and overrules personal objections
- • Scientific progress warrants decisive action even amid uncertainty
Concerned and defensive on the surface; growing alarm and constrained by duty as institutional authority is presented.
Picard leads the meeting's questioning, presses for specifics about technical risks, objects on moral grounds to Data's submission, and is handed the transfer disk that converts his ethical protest into an immediate command dilemma.
- • Prevent Data from being disassembled without proven safety
- • Defend the ethical integrity and welfare of a crew member
- • Force clearer technical justification before allowing invasive procedures
- • Data is more than hardware — a valued member of the crew deserving protection
- • Starfleet procedure can and should be challenged when it threatens individual welfare
- • Decisions about invasive experiments require specific, demonstrable safety measures
Clinically curious with underlying cautious skepticism; concerned about procedural adequacy for preserving functioning systems.
Data engages analytically, asking precise technical questions about the positronic brain, neural filaments, and electron resistance while registering cautious interest and concern about the experiment's viability and risks.
- • Obtain clear, technically sound answers about the procedure's risks
- • Protect the integrity and function of his own positronic systems
- • Assess whether participation is safe and scientifically justified
- • Technical specificity is essential before undertaking invasive procedures
- • Incomplete understanding of neural filaments threatens experiment success
- • An organism (or system) should not be disassembled without a reliable method to preserve function
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The anterior cortex itself is named as the anatomical site Maddox wants to access to study filament links; the cortex is functionally the access point for any invasive diagnostics or disassembly.
Maddox states his intention to 'dump' Data's core memory into the starbase mainframe for analysis, making the core memory the critical data-asset to be extracted and examined, and the ethical focal point for the procedural debate.
The starbase mainframe is named as the repository where Data's core memory will be dumped and analyzed; it functions as the technical destination that enables Maddox's proposed forensic work and institutional control over Data's internal data.
Commander Maddox withdraws a small, authenticated message disk from his pocket and extends it to Picard; the disk physically contains Starfleet transfer orders that convert a debated experiment into an enforceable reassignment, closing down persuasion and invoking jurisdiction.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The USS Enterprise is the broader setting and institutional home of Data and Picard; the ship's identity as protective vessel frames Picard's resistance to off-ship reassignment and provides context for the conflict between individual crew loyalty and Starfleet authority.
The Observation Lounge is the close, formal meeting space where Maddox lays out his research plan and produces the transfer orders; its intimacy turns technical questioning into a public, procedural confrontation and amplifies the personal stakes.
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: "His basic research lacks the specifics necessary to support an experiment of this magnitude.""
"PICARD: "Data is a valued member of my bridge crew. Based on what I've heard I cannot allow him to submit to your experiment.""
"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.""