Data Dispatched — Evacuation Becomes a Command
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Picard asserts critical mission priority: evacuate colonists despite Sheliak treaty rights.
Riker warns of Sheliak's willingness to exterminate humans as trespassers.
Picard dispatches radiation-immune Data alone via shuttlecraft to initiate evacuation.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Thoughtful and grim; quietly alarmed by both the biological cost to colonists and the political danger they face.
Beverly offers medical hypotheses about adaptation and virotherapy, grimly notes likely high mortality, and reacts with visible dismay when Riker suggests extermination—providing the moral and biological stakes behind the evacuation order.
- • Clarify possible biological adaptations so evacuation and treatment can be prioritized
- • Protect vulnerable human lives and prepare medical response plans
- • Radiation adaptation is biologically possible but costly
- • Immediate evacuation and medical intervention are necessary to prevent further loss
Surface calm and dutiful acceptance; internally motivated by Starfleet duty and curiosity about human survival strategies.
Data reports that transporters are inoperable due to hyperonic radiation, acknowledges the order without hesitation, immediately exits to carry out shuttle evacuation—calm, dutiful, and self-sacrificing in function if not in feeling.
- • Execute Captain Picard's evacuation order effectively and safely
- • Gather on-site data about the survivors and the radiation's effects
- • Following Starfleet command and protocol is the correct course of action
- • His immunity to hyperonic radiation makes him uniquely suited for this mission
Resolute calm that carries urgency; pragmatic willingness to risk institutional norms for immediate human safety.
Picard listens to technical and medical reports, reframes the diplomatic problem as a humanitarian imperative, and issues the decisive order sending Data to the planet, accepting legal risk to save lives.
- • Evacuate any survivors on Tau Cygna Five before hostile enforcement arrives
- • Balance legal/diplomatic constraints with the imperative to save lives
- • Human life takes precedence over strict treaty adherence when lives are at stake
- • Data's immunity makes him the only viable option for a shuttle evacuation
Serious and urgent; pragmatic alarm that forces the crew to confront lethal consequences instead of abstract diplomacy.
Riker supplies hard, legal context and the grim tactical inference that the Sheliak view humans as inferior and would not hesitate to exterminate intruders, sharpening the moral stakes for command.
- • Clarify the Sheliak legal position and likely behavior
- • Prompt immediate, practical action to prevent mass casualties
- • The Sheliak will follow their treaty and have no moral qualms about extermination
- • Delay or indecision increases the likelihood of catastrophic loss of life
Calmly factual with a subtext of concern; communicates limits without dramatics.
Worf reports sensor readings and weapons impairment—establishing the technical constraints that make transporter evacuation impossible and phasers unusable, thereby narrowing tactical options to shuttles.
- • Provide accurate sensor and weapons status to inform command decisions
- • Ensure the bridge understands technical limitations so realistic plans can be made
- • Technical reality (radiation interference) should determine feasible options
- • Honest, direct reporting is essential to command decisions in crisis
Calmly factual with a subtext of concern; communicates limits without dramatics.
Worf reports sensor readings and weapons impairment—establishing the technical constraints that make transporter evacuation impossible and phasers unusable, thereby narrowing tactical options to shuttles.
- • Provide accurate sensor and weapons status to inform command decisions
- • Ensure the bridge understands technical limitations so realistic plans can be made
- • Technical reality (radiation interference) should determine feasible options
- • Honest, direct reporting is essential to command decisions in crisis
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The lost survey ship is proposed by Riker as a likely explanation for the life readings; its hypothesized survivors provide a narrative anchor for the evacuation urgency and shape expectations about what Data may find on the surface.
The Enterprise shuttlecraft is designated as the sole viable transport for an evacuation because transporters are inoperable; Data will pilot this shuttle to the irradiated planet to commence direct rescue and assessment operations.
The Sheliak Treaty functions as a legal constraint referenced during debate; it frames the diplomatic risk of removing colonists from territory claimed by the Sheliak and presses Picard to weigh law against rescue imperatives.
The bridge sensor suite provides the primary—but unreliable—evidence of life on the planet; high hyperonic radiation degrades accuracy and forces command to act with imperfect data, driving the decision to send a human (android) emissary physically to the surface.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Main Bridge serves as the command crucible where technical facts, medical hypotheses, and legal warnings collide; it's the site of the decisive order sending Data into danger, and where abstract treaty language becomes an immediate human emergency.
The Conn Station is a peripheral presence—occupied by a supernumerary—underscoring normal ship routine even as command is consumed by an emergency, and physically anchors the bridge's operational layout during the crisis.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Themes This Exemplifies
Thematic resonance and meaning
Key Dialogue
"WORF Human life form readings from the planet."
"RIKER To the Sheliak, humans are a lower life form. They'd have no compunctions about exterminating the intruders."
"PICARD Mister Data. As you are unaffected by hyperonic radiation, you will go to the planet via shuttlecraft and commence evacuation procedures."