Picard Demands a Formal Ruling Over Data's Rights
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Picard records a supplemental log that frames the conflict: Maddox seeks legal remedy after Data's resignation and Phillipa Louvois has summoned Picard to discuss the matter, establishing official stakes and chain of authority.
Phillipa quips about Picard's sentimentalism while Picard answers with measured advocacy, asserting Data's value as a bridge officer and invoking the language of rights to counter Maddox's dehumanization.
Picard demands that any ruling with sweeping implications be backed by an official decision and reminds Phillipa of the zeal used in the Stargazer court-martial, pressing for formal legal adjudication and escalating toward a hearing.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Frustrated and impatient; occasionally composed as he reframes arguments to neutralize moral objections and appeal to progress.
Maddox argues forcefully for commandeering Data as a resource for scientific progress, leaning on the desk and using utilitarian examples to minimize moral objections and press for institutional permission to prevent Data's resignation.
- • Prevent Data's resignation and secure authority to subject Data to experimental disassembly.
- • Establish a legal precedent that treats androids as property to enable widespread scientific use.
- • Scientific progress and the expansion of human capability justify assertive institutional measures.
- • Data is fundamentally a machine — valuable, but not entitled to personhood-based protections.
Calm, mildly amused; her professional detachment masks a readiness to wield institutional authority with precision.
Phillipa listens with clinical detachment, interjects pointedly to test legal foundations, and nods thoughtfully while steering the conversation toward law rather than rhetoric, turning personal history into prosecutorial leverage.
- • Clarify the legal basis for Maddox's claim and determine if Starfleet law supports seizure of Data.
- • Maintain the JAG's procedural integrity while testing the boundaries of precedent (e.g., Stargazer).
- • Legal questions must be resolved by formal process and precedent, not emotion.
- • Institutional mechanisms (JAG) exist to adjudicate contentious claims and should be used accordingly.
Icy, controlled indignation — anger at the threat to his crew tempered by a commander's need to uphold institutional law.
Picard stands rigid with fury, moves between personal feeling and professional duty, delivers calm but cutting legal insistence, and reframes Maddox's demand as a constitutional question requiring formal adjudication.
- • Protect Data as a member of his crew from forcible seizure or experiment.
- • Force Starfleet to resolve Data's status through legal precedent rather than ad hoc action.
- • Starfleet's legitimacy depends on following its own regulations and legal processes.
- • Data is more than property; membership in Starfleet confers rights that must be defended.
Absent as a participant; reflexively subject to others' emotional projections — treated alternately as property, instrument, and crewmember.
Data is not physically present but is the focus of the argument: his resignation, rights, and future use are debated as if his personhood hangs in the balance of institutional interpretation.
- • (Implied) Preserve autonomy and agency to choose resignation.
- • (Implied) Avoid being reduced to a mere experimental subject.
- • (Implied) His status should be determined by law and moral reasoning, not utilitarian convenience.
- • (Implied) His service and personhood are meaningful despite being artificial.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
A stately desk serves as a physical anchor in the argument: Maddox palms it and leans forward to emphasize urgency and ownership, while Picard uses the room's furnishings as points to separate himself and punctuate legal declarations—desk becomes a locus of power-play and rhetorical posturing.
The Enterprise computer is invoked as an analogy by Maddox to argue that systems can be treated as property and therefore subject to refit or seizure; the terminal functions narratively as an institutional foil to Data's claimed personhood.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The USS Enterprise is referenced as being in parking orbit, framing the dispute: Picard's crew member is aboard that ship and the ship's systems are used as legal analogies—Enterprise's presence makes the conflict immediate and operationally consequential.
The austere Sector Twenty-Three JAG office is the formal, claustrophobic container for this exchange; its procedural atmosphere shifts a private captain's anger into an institutional quarrel, converting emotional stakes into a legal battleground where precedent and procedure are summoned.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Key Dialogue
"PICARD (V.O.): Captain's log, supplemental. Commander Bruce Maddox, having been thwarted by Data's abrupt resignation from Starfleet is now seeking a legal remedy for his woes. Captain Louvois has requested my presence at those discussions."
"MADDOX: Your response is emotional and irrational. You're endowing Data with human characteristics because it looks human. But it's not. If it were a box on wheels I wouldn't be facing this opposition."
"PICARD: (separating and punctuating each word) Starfleet is not an organization that ignores its own regulations when they become inconvenient. Whether you like it or not, Data does... have... rights."