Escalation: Tighten the Pattern
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
TROI presses for escalation, asking if they can tighten the pattern further.
Pulaski nods and cranks the device to intensify the current, driving RIKER into a harsher surge as sweat pours. They gamble on maximum stimulation to force a turnaround.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Grimly determined; professional calm that conceals the weight of a morally fraught decision to push treatment limits.
Examines the neural‑invasion wall panel, reads off diagnostics, commands Tricordrazine, injects Riker with the hypospray, then deliberately adjusts the stimulator to intensify its current pattern despite risk; she monitors vitals and tightens control with grim concentration.
- • Reduce the organism's growth and halt neural invasion
- • Stabilize Riker's vitals and buy time for further treatment
- • Believes immediate pharmacological intervention can slow the organism
- • Believes increasing stimulator current is a necessary, if risky, escalation to force the invader back
Focused and steady; performing duties under pressure without visible anxiety.
Hands Pulaski the hypospray promptly and without fanfare, supporting the rapid administration of Tricordrazine and enabling the clinical escalation through competent bedside assistance.
- • Provide timely assistance to Pulaski
- • Ensure medical tools are delivered and ready for immediate use
- • Believes in following medical orders and procedure
- • Believes rapid support enables better patient outcomes
Distressed and physically overwhelmed; survival-focused but largely passive, trusting medical staff while in pain.
Lying on the biobed with every muscle taut and sweating; Riker endures pulsing neural pain as monitors flash wildly. He is the passive, suffering center of the procedure whose body and autonomous systems dictate each clinical move.
- • To survive the infection and remain conscious
- • To give his team and doctors the chance to treat him
- • Believes the medical team can save him if given time
- • Trusts Starfleet medical protocols and the judgement of Pulaski
Concerned and urgent; emotionally invested in protecting Riker and willing to advocate for riskier medical action.
At Riker's bedside, Troi listens and then prompts Pulaski — asking if the stimulation pattern can be tightened — pressing for a more aggressive intervention out of concern for Riker's life.
- • Convince Pulaski to intensify treatment to save Riker
- • Act as emotional bridge between patient and clinicians
- • Believes that more aggressive stimulation might dislodge the organism
- • Believes Riker's life is worth taking calculated risks to save
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Tricordrazine is the emergency pharmaceutical Pulaski orders and delivers to slow the vine‑borne microbe; its administration demonstrably lowers the organism's growth rate but does not restore stable neural function, necessitating further escalation.
Pulaski's handheld hypospray is handed to her by the medical crewman and used to deliver Tricordrazine transdermally into Riker; as a single‑hand tool it enables a rapid, bedside pharmacological response and symbolizes the procedural immediacy of the intervention.
The neural‑invasion wall panel visually tracks the vine‑like growth and provides the diagnostic overlay Pulaski reads to determine the organism's progress; it also functions as the control reference Pulaski uses when she decides to intensify the stimulator current, linking information to action.
The bedside vital signs monitor array provides real‑time waveforms and numeric vitals that drive Pulaski's clinical decisions: erratic respiration, irregular pulse, and near‑nil blood pressure compel immediate drug administration and later inform her risky decision to raise stimulator current.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Enterprise Sickbay serves as the clinical arena where diagnostics, drugs, and ethically loaded decisions collide: technicians and clinicians cluster around a single biobed, monitors and wall displays frame the crisis, and the room compresses into an intense decision chamber for life‑saving action.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"After intensifying the pattern, Pulaski registers the growth rate drop to seven percent."
"Pulaski tightens the current to target pain memories, then escalates to even harsher stimulation."
"Pulaski tightens the current to target pain memories, then escalates to even harsher stimulation."
"After intensifying the pattern, Pulaski registers the growth rate drop to seven percent."
"Increasing intensity sets up the final, all‑in adjustment."
"Increasing intensity sets up the final, all‑in adjustment."
Key Dialogue
"PULASKI: The growth rate's down to seven percent."
"PULASKI: But the organisms are still impairing his neural functions. Respiration is erratic, pulse grossly irregular, blood pressure almost nil."
"TROI: Can we tighten the pattern further?"