USS Enterprise — Orbit Around Mariposa
Detailed Involvements
Events with rich location context
The orbit of Mariposa is the contextual backdrop; the ringed planet’s presence legitimizes the incoming transmission and provides the imminent destination for the away team, compressing beauty and potential danger.
Charged and anticipatory — the planet is both an object of curiosity and a looming unknown.
Geographic origin of the signal and the likely site of the away team's investigation.
Encodes distance and isolation — a world waiting to be reconnected with Federation institutions.
Physical access requires an away team and transporter authorization.
The Orbit of Mariposa provides the visual and strategic setting for the vidlink, compressing beauty and menace into a single panorama and making the distant planet an immediate objective for the away team.
Silent, distant, and portentous — a looming presence that turns abstract history into imminent contact.
Site of origin for the signal and the destination implied for the away team.
Symbolizes the unknown past of the colony and the weight of three centuries of isolation.
Only the ship may occupy orbit; access to the surface requires authorization and transport.
The ringed planet in orbit (Mariposa) is the unseen interlocutor and physical reason for the contact; its presence in the Main Viewer compresses scientific curiosity and diplomatic urgency into a single stage for the encounter.
Remote and quietly charged — a beautiful but isolating vista that heightens the stakes of the contact.
Target of the investigation and origin point of the distress signal.
Represents isolation and the distance between Earth origin and present society.
Externally inaccessible from the bridge; access requires approved away team deployment.
The orbit of Mariposa is the silent external presence that gives stakes to the contact: the ringed planet fills the main viewer and functions as the destination and the source of the signal that triggers the scene's operational pivot.
Distant and beautiful yet menacing by implication — a quiet celestial focus that underwrites anxiety.
Physical objective and narrative focus for the away team's mission.
Represents the unknown origin of the distress and the pull of Earth's lost legacy.
Although the scene physically takes place in the Enterprise's cargo hold, Picard's deduction immediately invokes the Orbit of Mariposa — the likely home of the Mariposan distress satellite — turning a confined, domestic tableau into an operational theater pointing toward that orbit.
Conceptually charged and tensioned: distant, icy beauty of the ringed world refracting into immediate human urgency.
Narrative destination and investigative locus that Picard's realization points the crew toward.
Represents the lost homeland and technological origin of the Bringloidi's protective device; links myth to physical place.
Requires ship approach, scanning, and away-team authorization; not immediately accessible to refugees.
Though the conversation occurs in the ship's cargo hold, the Orbit of Mariposa is the spatial referent Picard uses when identifying the distress satellite; the orbit functions as the conceptual locus connecting the refugees' past (Mariposa) with the present investigation.
Charged and reflective — a juxtaposition of intimate, noisy human presence below and a remote, silent orbital artifact above.
Conceptual bridge between anecdote and artifact; the orbital location provides the physical site for the protective device Picard references.
Represents the interface between human memory and hard evidence; the orbital satellite literally embodies a guardian promised in myth.
The Mariposa cloning laboratory (represented here by the Mariposa setting) functions as an enclosed forensic stage: smoke-filled, sterile yet violated, it houses the illicit cloning banks whose revelation triggers personal outrage and political escalation by turning private violation into a public confrontation.
Claustrophobic, acrid with smoke, tense and horrified — a blend of clinical sterility and immediate moral disgust.
Battleground and evidence chamber where hidden atrocities are exposed and a negotiation's tenor shifts to armed hostility.
Embodies the colony's survival-at-any-cost doctrine and the moral rot beneath technological pragmatism; the lab symbolizes stolen identity and ethical collapse.
Restricted/controlled facility (in practice limited to colony technicians and leaders), but forcibly entered by the Enterprise away team.
The Mariposa cloning laboratory (set on the Mariposa colony whose orbit is in canon) functions as the immediate stage: a confined, industrial research space where containment fails, bodily replication is visible, and ethical lines are violently crossed — its physicality forces choices between evidence gathering and self‑defense.
Claustrophobic, smoke‑choked, tense — a mixture of clinical sterility and acrid emergency, rapidly escalating to hostile confrontation.
Battleground and forensic site: the place where investigation collides with violent moral decision, then becomes the locus of a negotiation under threat.
Embodies the episode's conflict between survivalist pragmatism and individual bodily autonomy; the lab literalizes the uncanny reproduction of identity.
Operationally restricted research area that was breached by the away team; practically controlled by Mariposan personnel until they rush it.
Events at This Location
Everything that happens here
As the Enterprise comes into orbit, Worf intercepts a transmission and Picard opens the viewscreen to reveal Prime Minister Wilson Granger of Mariposa. The bridge pivots from tactical alert to …
The Enterprise answers a long‑dormant Terran beacon and Picard formally identifies the ship, reopening centuries‑cold ties. Prime Minister Wilson Granger greets them with effusive hospitality but wedges in a guarded …
The Enterprise answers Mariposa's distress signal and meets Prime Minister Wilson Granger over vid‑link. Data's offhand genealogical note — identifying Granger as a descendant of Captain Walter Granger — is …
A diplomatic exchange on the bridge turns immediately tactical: after Prime Minister Granger's polished welcome, Picard moves from courtesy to command and orders an away team. Troi voices a quiet …
Cramped among chickens and crying children, Danilo leads the Bringloidi in a ritualized oral history — a comforting origin myth about a ‘butterfly ship’ and a ‘guard in heaven’ left …
Amid the cramped, noisy cargo hold Danilo recites the Bringloidi origin myth — including a promised 'guard in heaven' — while Picard listens, his face shifting as pieces click into …
Riker, Pulaski and Geordi teleport into a smoke-filled cloning chamber and discover half-formed human replicas — one shockingly resembling Riker himself. Furious and violated, Riker retrieves his phaser and, with …
Riker, Pulaski and Geordi beam into the smoke-choked cloning chamber and discover half‑formed duplicates — including a grotesque likeness of Riker. Visibly horrified, Riker fires on the developing copies with …