Data's Tracking Pitch and Moral Questioning
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Data proposes a technical solution to track the Ansata's dimensional jumps, introducing a potential tactical advantage.
Picard questions Data about the feasibility of their tracking plan, revealing underlying uncertainty.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Calm and controlled on the surface, privately concerned and slightly defensive as he defends institutional morality against a troubling empirical argument.
Picard stands by Data, asks a pointed operational question about jump counts to test the proposal's reliability, then answers Data's moral queries with measured, principled responses that reassert Starfleet's refusal to condone violence while acknowledging the ethical complexity.
- • Assess the practical reliability and limits of Data's proposed tracking method.
- • Maintain Starfleet's ethical stance and prevent justification of violence while keeping options open for protecting lives.
- • Starfleet (and he) should not endorse violence as a tool of political change.
- • Operational decisions must be tempered by moral responsibility and restraint.
Puzzled curiosity with increasing seriousness—Data is intellectually unsettled and intent on reconciling empirical evidence with ethical frameworks.
Data stands at Science One, presenting a technical hypothesis (the magnetosphere faint echogram), explaining subspace pressure modulation and then pivoting into analytic moral inquiry; he questions Ansata's effectiveness using historical precedents.
- • Propose a viable scientific method to detect Ansata dimensional jumps and trace their power source.
- • Understand why Ansata's tactics succeed despite being 'unacceptable' within his operational logic.
- • Empirical data can explain and therefore potentially solve the problem of Ansata operations.
- • Historical precedent is a legitimate lens for evaluating the efficacy (if not the morality) of political violence.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The 'local artificial power source' is referenced indirectly as the potential target Data hopes to trace using the echogram; it functions as the remote objective implied by sensor work, anchoring the technical proposal to a concrete investigative end.
The magnetospheric 'faint echogram' is invoked as a diagnostic readout that could register subspace pressure modulation during Ansata jumps; narratively it represents a fragile technical hope — promising but uncertain and unable to deliver immediate answers.
The Science One console functions as the operational hub where Data frames the echogram proposal; tactile panels and readouts ground his hypothesis in shipboard systems and provide the physical locus for Picard's technical questioning and verification.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The aft Science One station on the main bridge is the immediate stage for both technical exposition and ethical interrogation: its cramped, instrument-filled space focuses attention on data-driven problem solving while the bridge's presence underscores command responsibility.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Part of Larger Arcs
Key Dialogue
"DATA: "The dimensional jump creates a subspace pressure modulation, Captain. By setting up a magnetosphere faint echogram that can monitor each of their movements, we may be able to collect enough data to trace their power source.""
"DATA: "Then, would it be accurate to say that terrorism is acceptable when the options for peaceful settlement have been foreclosed?""
"PICARD: "These are questions that mankind has been struggling with since creation. I am afraid your confusion, Data... is only human.""