Pleasure Feeds the Vine — Therapy Backfires
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Pulaski punches up the diagnostics; the highlighted nervous-system scan flares brighter, and she confirms the organisms’ growth rate has doubled.
Troi clocks the spike, frustration hardening into realization as she admits they’ve made Riker’s condition worse, forcing an immediate course rethink.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Controlled alarm — outwardly composed and decisive while internally registering the severity of a treatment-caused deterioration.
Pulaski punches up the highlighted diagnostic view, reads the data aloud with clinical terseness, and registers a grim expression when the growth rate is revealed to have doubled; she remains physically present and authoritative at the console.
- • Confirm the diagnostic result and quantify the organism's response to treatment.
- • Protect the patient and ship by determining next medical steps and containment.
- • Maintain command of the medical situation to prevent panic and error.
- • Medical intervention must be data-driven and adjusted immediately when harming the patient.
- • She is responsible for both patient survival and shipboard biosecurity.
- • Experimental neural stimulation should have been controllable and beneficial; unexpected acceleration is unacceptable.
Physically incapacitated and therefore externally unreadable; implicitly vulnerable and reliant on the crew's competence and choices.
Riker is the passive subject of the diagnostic highlight — his nervous system displayed on the panel; he is physically present as the patient though unconscious and unable to act or speak, making him the emotional and medical center of the revelation.
- • (Implied) Survive the infection and treatment.
- • (Implied) Rely on medical team for correct decisions and containment.
- • (Implied) Trust in the crew's ability to save him.
- • (Implied) Confidence that the interventions applied would be beneficial rather than harmful.
Shaken and frustrated but striving to remain professional; grief at the possibility of having failed Riker underpins her controlled reaction.
Troi composes herself, watches the wall readout intently, and vocalizes the moral and clinical implication of the worsening data — expressing frustration that their intervention has apparently exacerbated the infection.
- • Interpret and communicate the empathic and clinical implications of the diagnostic change.
- • Support Pulaski's decision-making while advocating for Riker's welfare.
- • Contain the emotional toll on the team so objective action can follow.
- • Her empathic readings and memory-driven approach were valid diagnostic tools whose results matter.
- • The emotional content of memories can influence the organism's behavior — an idea now tragically demonstrated.
- • Immediate reassessment of treatment is required when diagnostics indicate harm.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Sickbay functions as the clinical arena where the diagnostic revelation occurs: its consoles, monitors, and wall panel provide the visual evidence that the therapy has accelerated the pathogen. The space compresses technical procedure and intimate moral reckoning into one charged moment.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Recognizing Riker’s warmly positive memories precedes Pulaski’s discovery that the microbes double their growth."
"Guinan’s ‘dreams can be dangerous’ warns that pleasurable dreams will worsen the infection."
"Guinan’s ‘dreams can be dangerous’ warns that pleasurable dreams will worsen the infection."
"Guinan’s ‘dreams can be dangerous’ warns that pleasurable dreams will worsen the infection."
"The spike in microbial growth triggers Pulaski and Troi to link the change to Riker’s memories."
"The spike in microbial growth triggers Pulaski and Troi to link the change to Riker’s memories."
Key Dialogue
"PULASKI: The organisms responded, all right. Their growth rate has doubled."
"TROI: Then all we've done is make things worse..."