Contagion, Demand, and Anya's Violent Transmutation
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
PULASKI conducts a medical scan of HENNESEY while ANYA watches with a suspicious scowl, establishing an immediate clinical focus and Anya’s unease about the situation.
PULASKI names the diagnosis — Andronesian Encephalitis — and links it to a transporter-filter disruption caused by a cosmic ray burst, converting background worry into a specific biological threat.
ANYA presses the contagion risk, warning that everyone could be infected; PULASKI argues the ship’s air filtering minimizes danger but concedes the probability isn’t zero, ratcheting moral and procedural tension.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Righteously furious and panicked — protective desperation that erupts into uncontained rage and animalistic violence.
Starts the scene suspicious and protective, vocally demands immediate destruction of the infected patient, physically lunges toward the cot in fury, resists Worf's restraint, then undergoes a violent transmutation into a roaring, monstrous form.
- • Prevent any theoretical contagion that could threaten Salia by eliminating the perceived source.
- • Override Starfleet judgment and assert unilateral protective control over Salia's environment.
- • Starfleet technology and protocol cannot be trusted to protect Salia.
- • Immediate, drastic physical action (even killing) is justified to safeguard her charge.
Unconscious and unaware — the locus of risk and protection around which others act.
An unconscious patient who is scanned and diagnosed; Hennesey is the passive focus of the ethical dispute and the immediate target of Anya's violent intent and eventual monstrous approach.
- • (As a passive patient) Receive medical care and be protected from harm.
- • (Narratively) Serve as the immediate catalyst for the ethical and physical conflict.
- • N/A — unconscious and not acting, but implicitly dependent on the crew's care.
- • N/A
Professional and steady turning to alarm and fear when the situation becomes physically violent and uncontrollable.
Performs a medical scan, states a clinical diagnosis linking the infection to a disrupted transporter filter, calmly argues statistical improbability of a shipwide outbreak, attempts to defuse Anya's demand, and screams in terror when Anya transmutes into a monster.
- • Protect the patient and provide appropriate medical care.
- • Prevent unnecessary violence and ensure crew safety through reasoned medical judgment.
- • Medical protocols and shipboard systems (filters, air handling) reduce contagion risk effectively.
- • Killing a patient without scientific justification is unethical and avoidable.
Alert and protective, with rising incredulity and concern as protocol fails and violence erupts.
Stands by as a security presence, observes Pulaski's scan, intervenes physically when Anya lunges at the patient by taking her arm to restrain her, is caught off-guard by her surprising power as she spins away and then witnesses her transmutation.
- • Prevent physical harm to the patient and medical staff.
- • Enforce Starfleet order and contain threats to the ship.
- • Security intervention can de-escalate violent confrontation.
- • Starfleet rules and physical containment are the correct response to threats.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Andronesian Encephalitis is the diagnosed pathogen that catalyzes the ethical debate; its contagious nature is the justification for Anya's extreme demand and Pulaski's insistence on measured medical containment.
The cosmic ray burst is invoked as the initiating plot device that momentarily overwhelmed ship systems and compromise of the transporter filter, providing causal legitimacy to Pulaski's diagnosis and framing the argument over technological reliability.
The transporter filter is explicitly named by Pulaski as having been disrupted by a cosmic ray burst, establishing the mechanistic vector for Hennesey's infection and forming the technical crux of Pulaski's reassurances and Anya's mistrust.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Pulaski's diagnosis and the perceived contagion precipitate Anya's demand to kill the patient, which in turn triggers Anya's violent transmogrification in Sickbay."
"Pulaski's diagnosis and the perceived contagion precipitate Anya's demand to kill the patient, which in turn triggers Anya's violent transmogrification in Sickbay."
"Anya's violent transformation is immediately followed by reversion and the crew's classification attempt (Pulaski invoking 'allasomorphs') — the incident reveals Anya's true nature and forces Starfleet response."
"Anya's violent transformation is immediately followed by reversion and the crew's classification attempt (Pulaski invoking 'allasomorphs') — the incident reveals Anya's true nature and forces Starfleet response."
"Anya's violent transformation is immediately followed by reversion and the crew's classification attempt (Pulaski invoking 'allasomorphs') — the incident reveals Anya's true nature and forces Starfleet response."
Part of Larger Arcs
Key Dialogue
"PULASKI: "Andronesian Encephalitis. He contracted it when our transporter filter was disrupted by a cosmic ray burst.""
"ANYA: "I cannot rely on your primitive technologies. Kill the patient!""
"PULASKI: "If you mean mathematically... Yes, the probability is not zero.""