Clamp and Surge: Riker's Mind Unravels
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Camera bears down on Riker’s anguished face as Pulaski punches up his nervous system display; the highlight creeps into the brain while she checks the vitals, spiking the stakes.
Pulaski flags the failure in hard terms: the induced stimulation has produced random, dangerously erratic wave patterns, turning the cure into an immediate threat.
Troi breathes, "Hang on, Will," her concern sharpening as the moment drops into a tense act break.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Tormented and struggling — physical agony overlaying a fading commander's composure; panic flickers beneath restraint.
Riker is the passive focal point: strapped (or lying) on the biobed, sweating, visibly tormented; his brain is being externally stimulated and his EEG reads volatile activity while he endures increasing neural intrusion.
- • Survive the infection and remain conscious
- • Trust the medical team to save him
- • That the crew will not abandon him
- • That aggressive intervention is necessary to halt neurological collapse
Determined and urgent — professional focus hardening into controlled anxiety as she balances experimentation against immediate danger.
Pulaski actively controls diagnostics and stimulation: she brings up a detailed view of Riker's nervous system (including brain regions), initiates random wave stimulation and monitors the vital signs readout, and candidly reports that the induced patterns are dangerously erratic.
- • Keep Riker's neural circuits active to prevent infection‑induced shutdown
- • Gather diagnostic data from induced activity to guide next treatment steps
- • That active neural firing can slow or confuse the pathogen's progress
- • That controlled risk is justified if it buys time for a cure
Concerned and quietly desperate — calm exterior masking fear that the patient may not tolerate further assault on his nervous system.
Troi stands close to Riker, monitoring his emotional state and offering quiet verbal encouragement; she listens for empathic cues that could inform Pulaski's experimental stimulation and utters a soft, pleading 'Hang on, Will...' under her breath.
- • Provide emotional grounding to Riker so he can endure the stimulation
- • Read affective responses to guide Pulaski's adjustments
- • That Riker's emotional state can influence the infection's behavior
- • That her empathic input can materially improve medical outcomes
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The bedside vital signs monitor provides real‑time EEG and waveform traces that Pulaski uses to judge the effect of induced neural stimulation; its stuttering, climbing alarms and erratic traces are the primary evidence that the procedure is both working and dangerously destabilizing Riker's brain activity.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Enterprise Sickbay is the confined clinical arena where Pulaski escalates treatment, Troi offers empathic support, and Riker endures invasive neural stimulation; the space compresses technical procedure and intimate vulnerability into a single, tense tableau.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Riker’s ‘Hold fast’ under countdown echoes Troi’s ‘Hang on, Will’—endurance as shared motif."
Key Dialogue
"PULASKI: We've stimulated random wave activity, but the patterns are dangerously erratic."
"TROI: (under her breath) Hang on, Will..."