Data's Recursion — Troi Reframes Riker
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Data cites Riker’s Academy and Potemkin exploits to mark a pattern of unconventional gambits, then locks it to a number: only twenty-one percent traditional tactics. Troi presses for the takeaway and Data delivers the quantified conclusion.
Data paces and warns the captain must brace for extreme cunning, then spirals into a recursive loop—he knows that we know that he knows—about Riker adapting to their analysis. Troi cuts through with a hard check on over-analysis, pivoting the frame toward human nature.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Clinically curious but unsettled — outwardly dispassionate while revealing a subtle anxiety about unpredictability and the limits of computation.
Data stands and paces while delivering a statistical profile of Riker's tactics, then articulates recursive hypotheticals about mutual anticipation, exposing limits in purely logical prediction while seeking a definitive command posture.
- • Provide the captain (via counsel) with an actionable, predictive assessment of Riker's likely tactics.
- • Reduce Riker's behavior to analyzable probabilities so command can anticipate and prepare.
- • Resolve uncertainty by modeling higher-order anticipatory scenarios to recommend a course of action.
- • Human behavior can be meaningfully approximated by statistical patterns.
- • Anticipating an opponent requires modeling their anticipation of us (recursive reasoning).
- • Command decisions should be informed by rational, probabilistic assessment rather than anecdote alone.
Patient and slightly firm — mildly exasperated with over-analysis but composed, using empathy and moral clarity to steer the conversation back to human reality.
Troi listens, challenges Data's abstract extrapolations, reframes the question to focus on Riker's character, interrupts the analytic spiral, and exits having anchored the assessment in human qualities rather than pure calculus.
- • Prevent analytical paralysis by reframing the tactical question in human terms.
- • Ensure command considers character and moral implications when preparing for Riker's unpredictability.
- • Protect the crew from being reduced to abstractions that could impede decisive action.
- • Human nature and character often override purely logical predictions.
- • Knowing a person's character is crucial to predicting their behavior.
- • Over-analysis can paralyze command and must be tempered with human judgment.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The Potemkin is referenced as a real-world precedent where Riker disabled power and used a planet's magnetic pole to confuse sensors — an illustrative object of prior tactic that anchors Data's statistical claim.
The Tholian vessel is cited by Data as a concrete past example demonstrating Riker's tactical cleverness (a sensory blind spot exploited during an Academy simulation). It functions as evidence supporting a probabilistic assessment of Riker's unconventional options.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Observation Lounge serves as the private, quiet setting where senior staff candidly dissect tactical and psychological matters. Its relative privacy allows Data to lay out cold analytics and Troi to intervene with intimate, human-focused counsel without public pressure.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
No narrative connections mapped yet
This event is currently isolated in the narrative graph
Key Dialogue
"DATA: Only twenty-one percent of the time does he rely upon traditional tactics."
"DATA: But knowing that we know that he knows that we know he might choose to return to his usual pattern."
"TROI: You'll have to decide that for yourself."