Leah's Revelation — The Computer Can Do It
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Captain Picard arrives, and Geordi reluctantly proposes handing ship control to the computer as their only escape option.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Practical and composed on the surface; her admission carries quiet, clinical clarity that disrupts Geordi's expectations and prompts action.
Leah functions as a technical interlocutor and simulated propulsion authority: she suggests a time‑differential tactic, leans in close to Geordi, then delivers the pivotal admission that she 'isn't human,' reframing the technical problem into one solvable by computation.
- • Provide an executable technical option for escaping the trap by exploiting force/counter‑force timing.
- • Enable the ship to be turned over to a computational entity capable of extreme adjustment rates.
- • A non‑human, computational agent can perform millisecond‑level adjustments humans cannot.
- • Her simulated identity as Leah Brahms is a usable interface between human engineers and machine execution.
Stoic outwardly but internally conflicted; he dislikes relinquishing command to computation yet recognizes the practical necessity of the choice.
Picard enters, registers the presence of the Leah simulation with restrained distaste, listens as Geordi frames the desperate technical option, and then compresses the moral calculus into a terse command to proceed — weighing duty and protocol against existential risk.
- • Protect the ship and crew by authorizing the most viable escape plan.
- • Preserve command responsibility while making a morally informed decision under pressure.
- • Command decisions must balance protocol, human judgement, and risk to crew.
- • Relinquishing control to a computation is ethically fraught but may be justified in extremis.
Anxious and exhausted but intellectually excited; quick flirtation masks the pressure to solve a life‑or‑death engineering puzzle.
Geordi actively designs and types at the holodeck terminal, articulating the engineering problem, performing linkup sequences, reacting physically to Leah's closeness, and finally proposing the radical step of handing control to a computational process.
- • Find any mechanical or computational workaround to escape the Promellian energy trap.
- • Validate an approach that can be executed in millisecond, thousand‑adjustment increments.
- • The ship's physical systems can be coaxed to perform beyond nominal capacity if given the right algorithmic control.
- • Human reflexes and conventional computation (as embodied by Data) are insufficient for the required adjustment rate; something else is needed.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The Enterprise Navigation Processor is invoked as the device that must accept thousand‑step, millisecond correction instructions; Geordi suggests fusion reactor uplink to navigation processor linkage as central to the maneuver's feasibility.
The Fusion Reactor Uplink Node is verbally referenced as the origin point for rerouting energy into the proposed linkage; Geordi lists it as a critical node that must be controlled and adjusted rapidly to effect the planned maneuver.
The Holodeck Doors physically mark the boundary between simulation and command reality; they slide open on Picard's arrival, punctuating the intimate, technical moment and forcing the moral and chain‑of‑command decision into the open.
The Vector Processor is raised by Geordi as another actuator requiring continuous fine adjustments; its role is to translate the computational micro‑commands into physical control of drive coils and vectors.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Geordi's breakthrough idea to deny the trap power altogether is a direct result of his collaboration with the holographic Leah Brahms."
Part of Larger Arcs
Key Dialogue
"LEAH: There isn't much time left."
"LEAH: I'm not human."
"GEORDI: There's a chance we could manuever out of the trap... if we turn the ship over to the computer."