Starbase 173
Detailed Involvements
Events with rich location context
The Starbase 173 restaurant provides a publicly neutral, quietly high-tech setting where private and institutional worlds collide. It allows for a casual meal yet is implicitly monitored space, making the reunion both ordinary and liable to become an official matter.
Calm, low-key, quietly formal with the hum of Starbase activity in the background; intimacy laced with institutional restraint.
Meeting point for an unplanned, charged reunion that shifts the scene from private reflection to an incipient public-professional confrontation.
Represents the collision of Picard's private life with Starfleet's institutional world; a neutral surface where personal history is made visible to the organization.
Open to public patrons of the starbase but implicitly monitored; not a restricted briefing room, yet subject to formal expectations of conduct.
The Starbase 173 lounge is invoked as the intended, calmer venue to continue the discussion — a negotiated space offering lower visibility and more diplomatic footing. Picard seeks to move the confrontation there to de-escalate and shield Data from immediate procedural coercion.
Quiet, neutral, and socially oriented — designed for conversation but not immune to institutional pressure from visiting authorities.
Secondary meeting place and de-escalation space where private negotiations and political management can occur off the formal bridge stage.
Represents a softer, diplomatic arena contrasted with the bridge's institutional rigor.
Public but monitored; appropriate for officers and visitors, less formal than the bridge.
The Starbase 173 lounge is proposed by Picard as the next venue — a private, neutral space intended to defuse public spectacle and allow a controlled conversation about Maddox's intentions and procedural requests.
Intended to be quieter and more private — modular seating and low lighting suggest a refuge from the bridge's formality.
Private negotiation room where sensitive, potentially volatile discussions will be moved away from crew witnesses.
Represents an attempt to separate institutional pressure from human dignity and to contain an emergent crisis.
Less formally restricted than the bridge but socially reserved for invited parties and officers.
The Starbase 173 lounge is invoked as the immediately reachable private venue where Picard will continue the conversation away from the bridge's public scrutiny. It is named as the procedural remedy to diffuse a public spectacle and to allow more controlled, diplomatic discussion.
Invoked as quieter and more private — softer lighting and modular seating imagined to support an internal, lower-stakes exchange though the moral stakes remain high.
Intended meeting place for a private, controlled negotiation and de-escalation of public confrontation.
Represents an attempt to move contested institutional decisions out of communal scrutiny and into managerial venues where hierarchy can operate without immediate witness.
Public lounge but situationally semi-private when attended by senior officers; not an open hearing space.
Starbase 173 functions offstage as the detecting authority that first logged the distress beacon. Its sensors forwarded the discovery to the Enterprise, making it the informational origin and procedural staging point for the ship's decision to investigate.
Implied efficient, procedural, and clinical — a bureaucratic node that surfaces anomalies for higher command review.
Information source and logistical staging area; the starbase's detection triggers the Enterprise's investigative response.
Embodies institutional surveillance and archival reach — where old signals are still recoverable by modern systems.
Operationally open to Starfleet vessels and personnel; functions under Starfleet protocols and secure communications.
Starbase 173 is referenced as the viable off-ramp Picard offers Brenna — a procedural, institutional refuge contrasted with the cargo-bay's intimacy. It functions as a hypothetical alternative to accepting the integration plan and thus shapes Brenna's evaluation of personal sacrifice versus communal duty.
Implied as clinical, orderly, and administratively competent — an institutional counterpoint to the messy hold.
Potential refuge or transfer point; represents an exit strategy and the institutional option for those unwilling to accept leadership or integration.
Represents institutional neutrality and bureaucratic sanctuary, contrasting with the messy, moral choices on the ship.
Transfers would be regulated and mediated by Starfleet protocols; not freely accessible without formal arrangements.
Events at This Location
Everything that happens here
Picard's quiet meal on Starbase 173 is ruptured when Phillipa Louvois, now in uniform and radiating professional control, appears unexpectedly. Their terse, barbed reunion immediately layers personal history over the …
Admiral Nakamura's boarding instantly militarizes the bridge: crew tense, eyes flick to rank. Nakamura’s polished courtesy masks a power play as he introduces Commander Maddox—then has Worf tactically escort him …
Admiral Nakamura's visit quickly shifts from ceremonial to coercive: after a polite, performative tour of the bridge he casually installs Commander Maddox as the ship's new 'mission specialist' for the …
On the Enterprise bridge Commander Maddox coldly converts philosophical opposition into a practical threat: he reminds Data he opposed his Academy entry and then bluntly announces, "I'm going to disassemble …
While docked at a starbase, Picard and Riker answer a raspy, centuries‑old SOS whose tone and databanks identify it as an obsolete European Hegemony distress beacon. Computer scans show the …
Brenna confronts Picard in the crowded cargo bay, accusing the men of making grand plans that leave women to shoulder the practical and moral burden. Picard reframes the controversial breeding …