Object
Captain's Ready Room Intercom
A compact, wall‑mounted brushed‑alloy intercom roughly palm‑sized with a shallow circular speaker grille and a faintly luminescent capacitive activation rim. Low‑profile and integrated into the ship's priority voice network, it emits a sharp alert chirp and projects a clear, amplified channel that slices through ambient Ready Room discussion. Crew reflexively snap to controls when it rings; here the unit becomes an intrusion point when Ralph Offenhouse seizes the channel and Picard silences the line to restore command control.
24 appearances
Purpose
To open a priority, ship‑wide voice channel that broadcasts authoritative messages, alerts, and recorded logs directly into the Enterprise's communications network so commands and urgent reports penetrate ambient noise and force immediate crew response.
Significance
Functions as an operational fulcrum and intrusion vector: when hijacked it ruptures a tense tactical briefing, exposes security and cultural vulnerabilities among 20th‑century survivors, tests Picard's command authority, and catalyzes subsequent confrontations and plot escalation.
Appearances in the Narrative
When this object appears and how it's used