Data Withdraws — Kolrami’s Provocation Undercuts Readiness
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Picard demands Data’s status; Burke reports the android has pulled himself from duty. The revelation spikes concern in the middle of battle prep.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Factual and neutral; performing duty without visible emotion though aware the information is sensitive.
Burke efficiently reports to Picard that Data has removed himself from bridge duty, delivering the fact in a professional, clipped manner that leaves interpretation and consequence to senior officers.
- • Relay accurate status information to the commanding officer.
- • Maintain operational clarity on the bridge so command can make informed decisions.
- • Avoid inserting personal interpretation into the report.
- • Clear, factual communication is essential to bridge function.
- • Chain-of-command decisions rest on accurate status reports from junior officers.
- • Reporting sensitive changes neutrally prevents unnecessary alarm.
Confident and mildly admiring on the surface, but calculating and intentionally undermining beneath; enjoys destabilizing human hierarchies.
Kolrami watches the bridge, offers a backhanded compliment about the crew, and deliberately minimizes the challenge posed by Riker — performing cerebral provocation in public to unsettle command and test reactions.
- • Demonstrate intellectual superiority and unsettle Starfleet command dynamics.
- • Expose weaknesses in human-led decisions, particularly when analytical assistance (Data) is removed.
- • Provoke Picard and Riker into revealing their strategic and ethical limits.
- • Human commanders are fallible and can be outmaneuvered by superior calculation.
- • Public displays of doubt or weakness will alter opponent behavior advantageously.
- • Removing or spotlighting the loss of analytic resources will shift the contest toward intuition and error.
Calm and authoritative on the surface; quietly concerned about the loss of an analytic asset and alert to Kolrami's deliberate provocation.
Picard stands on the bridge observing operations, asks sharply about Data's whereabouts, absorbs Burke's report, endures Kolrami's public slight, and quietly requests a private conversation with Kolrami to contain and reframe the provocation.
- • Confirm the operational status of the bridge and its officers, especially Data.
- • Defuse or contain Kolrami's public undermining while preserving crew cohesion and authority.
- • Reassert control and move the confrontation to a private channel to prevent escalation.
- • Command must balance principle and protection; public challenges should not erode morale.
- • Kolrami's intellect may be weaponized as psychological warfare rather than honest appraisal.
- • Data's presence materially affects tactical confidence and must be accounted for.
Not directly observable in-scene; strongly implied uncertainty or internal conflict given the self-removal from duty and the narrative weight attached to his absence.
Data is physically absent from the bridge; his removal is announced by Burke. His withdrawal functions as an implied crisis of confidence or recalibration though he utters no lines in this moment.
- • (Implied) Resolve whatever internal or analytical conflict prompted removal.
- • Protect ship operations by removing himself if he perceives a reliability issue.
- • Avoid public disruption by stepping away rather than making a spectacle.
- • If my systems or judgment are compromised, duty may require temporary withdrawal.
- • Maintaining operational integrity can require personal sacrifice, including absence.
- • Human command must continue even in the absence of my analytic certainty.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Key Dialogue
"PICARD: Where is Commander Data?"
"BURKE: He has temporarily removed himself from bridge duty, sir."
"PICARD: Mister Kolrami -- may I speak with you in private?"