Commercial Resurrection: Cryonics, Contracts, and Consequences
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Beverly delivers the cold chronology: each died roughly 370 years ago from an embolism and were cryonically frozen, forcing Clare to confront a void where memory should be and anchoring the group in a grim historical fact.
Data asks why they were placed in a module; Sonny describes the orbital cryonics pitch to avoid 'brown out,' Ralph supplies a dry business history about failing companies, and Sonny admits he paid the 'scam' — the group stitches together the practical, ignoble reasons they survived.
Riker probes who arranged the contracts; Clare names her husband Donald as the guarantor, Ralph boasts about his stock windfall, and Data punctures the nostalgia by labeling cryonics a short-lived mid-twenty-first-century fad — personal narratives meet historical context.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Neutral and methodical, with a small inquisitive pleasure in mapping historical language and concept differences for the confused humans.
Data supplies the factual axis of the scene: he translates temporal data, clarifies terminology (robot vs. android), and researches colloquial terms, providing neutral, clinical context that sharpens the survivors’ disorientation.
- • Provide accurate temporal and technical information to orient the survivors.
- • Fill lexical or conceptual gaps (e.g., define 'android' vs 'robot') so survivors understand the new world.
- • Objective facts will help reduce confusion and ground the survivors.
- • Precise terminology matters to human understanding and will facilitate adjustment.
Measured and authoritative with a paternal undercurrent; calm on the surface while managing potential disruptions.
Riker takes the conversational lead—orienting the survivors to the ship, deflecting panicked impulses, clarifying cultural and procedural gaps, and recommending a paced approach that defers tougher decisions to the captain.
- • Orient the revived civilians to their immediate situation and reduce panic.
- • Contain social disruption aboard the ship and postpone complex legal/political decisions until the captain can be consulted.
- • Clear, paced explanation will reduce chaos and protect ship operations.
- • Command should preserve order by deferring escalation to proper channels rather than letting civilians run the agenda.
Reassuring and steady — focused on stabilizing emotional and physical shock while asserting medical authority.
Dr. Beverly Crusher provides medical reassurance and a brief forensic history: she tells them they are in excellent health, explains the cause of death and that they were frozen, and advocates for a slow, careful adjustment.
- • Alleviate immediate medical fears and establish that patients are physically stable.
- • Encourage a measured acclimation process to prevent psychological or medical harm.
- • Medical authority and careful pacing are necessary to protect newly revived patients.
- • Emotional distress can have medical consequences and must be managed as part of care.
Disoriented and mournful; she seeks relational facts (who arranged this) to reconstitute her life and meaning.
Clare is fragile and confused: she asks who arranged the freezing, struggles to remember the embolism, and names Donald as the likely responsible party — her lines register grief, bewilderment and an attempt to anchor herself.
- • Identify who made decisions on her behalf (Donald) to reconnect with personal history.
- • Understand how and why she was placed into cryonic suspension.
- • Knowing who arranged her freezing will help make sense of her current situation.
- • Personal relationships (husband/family) remain the key to her identity and future actions.
Excited relief over being alive, immediately undercut by anxiety and a need to control financial reality — defensive pragmatism rather than wonder.
Ralph speaks quickly, punctuating the scene with material urgency — seeking verification of his survival then demanding to contact banks and secure his assets, his lines punctuated by a rush between elation and anxious practicality.
- • Confirm his survival and re-establish control over his financial holdings.
- • Obtain information (Wall Street Journal / phone contact) that reconnects him with his pre-freezing identity and power.
- • Monetary assets are central to personal security and identity.
- • If he does not act quickly, he could lose control of his estate or be disadvantaged by the passage of time.
Relieved and curious, with a fragile hopefulness; his flippancy masks vulnerability and a desire for basic human confirmation.
Sonny oscillates between streetwise humor and existential need: he asks simply whether he is alive, offers colloquial context about paying to be frozen, and seeks validation more than explanation.
- • Receive direct affirmation that he survived and is alive.
- • Understand, in plain terms, what happened to him and why he is here.
- • Personal survival matters more than abstract explanations.
- • The cryonics scheme was a gamble and he wants it validated emotionally more than technically.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Ralph's cell phone is invoked as the immediate instrument of worldly reassurance: he wants to call the bank to notify them of his survival. The phone functions narratively as a bridge between miraculous revival and mundane financial bureaucracy.
Ralph's mentalized stock portfolio functions narratively as the motor for his urgency: he invokes stock splits and depressed corporate value to justify immediate contact with financial institutions, converting personal economics into dramatic friction for the crew.
Sonny's restored liver is referred to casually and clinically—his joke about 'the liver that was about to explode' and Beverly's assurance that it is 'perfectly sound' make the organ a tangible proof of successful medical restoration and a narrative anchor for bodily continuity.
The orbital preservation module is the implied origin of the survivors' preservation; it's referenced by the survivors to explain how they were kept safe from terrestrial power failures and functions as the forensic anchor for their revival story.
The cryonics refrigeration system is referenced diagnostically as the mechanical failure that undermined several companies and led to thawing; it functions as the technical cause in the forensic narrative that turned frozen clients into emergent problems for the Enterprise.
The USS Enterprise functions materially as the host environment for the survivors and the staging ground for orientation: its systems, crew and facilities enable medical stabilization, social reintegration and the bureaucratic handling of revived citizens.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Earth is referenced as the survivors' lost homeland and the political member-world that situates the Enterprise's authority; it functions as the destination and point of legal, familial and financial reclamation.
The Guest Lounge is the intimate, quasi-public setting where the forensic orientation takes place: comfortable seating, a public comms console, and a small service replicator create a neutral, domesticized environment that both comforts and exposes the revived people to ship authority and procedure.
The guest lounge is the intimate, controlled space where the revived individuals are processed: its soft seating and clinical calm allow officers to deliver medical facts and cultural translation while containing emotional volatility and preventing public spectacle.
The Cryonics Orbital Storage Module is referenced as the physical site that preserved the survivors; it functions as the forensic backstory explaining their survival and as the locus of corporate and technical failure that led to their rescue.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Ralph’s immediate demands in Sickbay persist into later insistence on calls and control in the Lounge."
"Ralph’s immediate demands in Sickbay persist into later insistence on calls and control in the Lounge."
"Ralph’s immediate demands in Sickbay persist into later insistence on calls and control in the Lounge."
"Ralph's denied access to old power levers propels him to trick the guard and seek answers himself."
"Ralph's denied access to old power levers propels him to trick the guard and seek answers himself."
Key Dialogue
"DATA: By your calendar... two thousand three hundred sixty-four."
"BEVERLY: Well... About three hundred and seventy years ago you died of a massive embolism."
"SONNY: I paid some idiot a lot of money to freeze me when I died. I need to hear the words... Am I alive?"