Measuring Loss — Data Questions Riker on Grief
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Data interrupts Riker's solitude in Ten-Forward, seeking conversation.
Data inquires about Riker's familiarity with Lieutenant Aster, probing the nature of human connections.
Riker and Data discuss the varying intensity of grief based on personal connections, touching on human nature and moral implications.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Calm, unobtrusive attentiveness—maintaining the lounge's normalcy while sensitive to the subdued mood.
Stationed behind the bar as background presence in Ten‑Forward; provides ambient service and quietly anchors the space while the conversation unfolds, remaining unobtrusive as patrons and Riker speak.
- • Maintain the social atmosphere and privacy of patrons.
- • Ensure service continues without intruding on private conversation.
- • Ten‑Forward should function as a sanctuary for crew social life and reflection.
- • Discretion and steady service help preserve the dignity of personal moments.
Detachment mixed with earnest curiosity—Data is intellectually engaged and genuinely seeking to model human emotional logic rather than emotionally moved himself.
Approaches Riker politely, asks targeted questions about familiarity with Lieutenant Aster, persists in reframing the inquiry as a broader moral and anthropological question, and listens intently to Riker's answers with clinical curiosity.
- • Gather data to understand the relationship between familiarity and grief.
- • Test whether humans evaluate the moral value of life differently based on personal connection.
- • Learn human emotional norms by eliciting candid responses from Riker.
- • Human emotions can be observed, compared, and logically analyzed.
- • A consistent relationship may exist between familiarity and emotional intensity.
- • Understanding these rules will improve his model of human behavior.
Brooding and privately sorrowful on the surface; controlled, pragmatic resignation underlying his answers—carrying the weight of command and the need to make sense of loss.
Seated at the Ten‑Forward table, staring at the stars with a drink, Riker accepts Data's company, answers questions guardedly, offers a realist moral generalization about grief, and responds when Geordi interrupts by acknowledging him on the com.
- • Maintain composure while privately processing grief.
- • Provide a sober, realistic framing of grief rather than sentimentalizing loss.
- • Avoid letting the conversation become emotionally unmoored or diagnostically invasive.
- • Grief is naturally stronger for those we know well.
- • Acknowledging that hierarchy of feeling is necessary to preserve social and historical stability.
- • Emotional restraint is part of effective command.
Slightly upbeat and matter‑of‑fact—focused on the practical success of recovery rather than the emotional weight of the content he reports.
Present via ship com as an off‑screen voice; La Forge reports back to Riker that they have recovered something ('a souvenier'), interrupting the intimacy of the exchange and redirecting attention toward material evidence and operational follow‑up.
- • Inform command (Riker) of the away team's status and recovered item.
- • Shift the crew's immediate attention to the physical evidence and next operational steps.
- • Physical artifacts are important to understanding events and resolving incidents.
- • Timely communication to command is essential for coordinated action.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The Ten‑Forward meeting table functions as the physical anchor for Riker's brooding—his drink sits on it, he leans on it as he answers Data, and it frames the intimate two‑person exchange against the lounge's communal space.
Mentioned by La Forge over the com as a 'souvenir' recovered and brought back, the token functions narratively as an abrupt, tangible interruption: its recovery reframes the scene from abstract moral debate to concrete evidence and impending operational attention.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Main Bridge is invoked as the site where Riker previously asked Wesley about Jeremy, providing contrast between operational, duty‑bound inquiry and the quieter human questioning occurring in Ten‑Forward; it functions as the origination point for earlier procedural checks referenced in the conversation.
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: How well did you know Lieutenant Aster?"
"RIKER: We spent some time together. Not very well."
"RIKER: Maybe they should, Data. Maybe if we felt the loss of any life as keenly as we felt the death of those close to us, our history would've been a lot less bloody."