Wesley's Quiet Rebellion — The Failed Ico Request
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Wesley accepts Davies' minimal findings with polite approval, masking his dissatisfaction as he grips the first thread of doubt about the team's rushed conclusions.
Wesley presses Davies on the traker-dilithium link, forcing a technical reckoning that ignites the first crack in the team’s dismissive certainty.
Wesley boldly proposes the Ico-spectrogram, risks his authority by challenging protocol, and confronts the team’s fear of effort disguised as pragmatism.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Calmly impatient and mildly condescending—he is certain the readings are false positives and impatient with what he perceives as needless caution.
Davies approaches with a PADD, delivers the scan results in an offhand, friendly manner, minimizes the faint tanker readings as likely echoes, quantifies the time cost, and uses pragmatic authority to persuade Wesley to abandon the prolonged scan.
- • Avoid wasting five hours on a likely false positive
- • Preserve survey efficiency and ship resources
- • Reinforce his professional judgment and influence junior officers
- • Faint tanker readings are usually false echoes, not actionable anomalies
- • Time and resource economy is a hallmark of good fieldwork
- • Junior officers sometimes mistake noise for significance
Skeptical and pragmatic—he is unwilling to endorse a lengthy operation without stronger evidence and unconcerned about pressuring Wesley toward the pragmatic choice.
Hildebrant listens to the exchange, cautions that setting up the Ico-spectrogram is a major undertaking, then physically removes himself from the argument, aligning with Davies' practical assessment.
- • Prevent unnecessary allocation of time and technical effort
- • Support the team's efficient workflow
- • Signal practical constraints to junior leadership
- • Large scanner setups are resource- and time-intensive and should be reserved for strong leads
- • Operational efficiency outweighs speculative diagnostics
- • Senior technical caution is appropriate in routine surveys
Conflicted and insecure—externally polite and uncertain, internally disappointed and anxious about failing to press a safety-first judgment.
Wesley reads the PADD, identifies UV absorption signatures, proposes a full Ico-spectrogram, then hesitates and capitulates under senior skepticism; he stands awkwardly as Davies and Hildebrant move away, visibly troubled.
- • Confirm the possible traker/dilithium link by running the Ico-spectrogram
- • Do the scientific job thoroughly and avoid half-measures
- • Establish credibility as a competent leader during the survey
- • UV absorption signatures are meaningful indicators of traker deposits and possible dilithium involvement
- • Running a proper diagnostic (Ico-gram) is necessary to avoid dangerous oversights
- • Senior, practical officers' opinions matter to his authority and career prospects
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Wesley takes Davies' PADD to read the third Selcundi system scan. The PADD frames the evidence—UV absorption readings—that catalyze Wesley's request for an Ico-spectrogram and becomes the tangible locus of the dispute over whether to escalate diagnostics.
The Dilithium Ico-Spectrogram readout is invoked as the necessary, time-consuming diagnostic Wesley urges. Functionally it is the step that would confirm or deny the dilithium-traker correlation; narratively it represents a choice between thoroughness and expedience.
The work table anchors the scene—Davies is busy at it before approaching Wesley, and it provides the physical staging for the PADD exchange and technicians' choreography; it frames the everyday lab realism against the moment's moral friction.
Traker deposits are the inferred subsurface anomaly indicated by the PADD's UV absorption readings. They function as the hidden threat motivating Wesley's push for deeper scanning and as the scientific justification he cannot convince his seniors to pursue.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Enterprise geophysical laboratory is the setting for the technical disagreement: a cramped, instrument-filled workspace where data is readied, debated, and weighed against operational constraints. It functions as a practical arena where authority, caution, and scientific curiosity collide.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Part of Larger Arcs
Key Dialogue
"WESLEY: Then don't you think we ought to run an Ico-spectrogram?"
"DAVIES: Those tanker readings are really faint. It's probably a fool's echo."
"WESLEY: Well, maybe you're right."