Shields Up, Hold Fire: Riker Chooses Restraint
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Riker blasts a hail across all frequencies; Data completes the sweep, reports silence, and Riker clocks the snub as deliberate.
Riker drives the sensors to maximum; Data locks the setting, sharpening the crew’s vigilance for any hostile move.
Worf arms phasers and Riker snaps, "Shields up," driving the Enterprise into a hardened defensive stance as Worf brings the screens online.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Clinically neutral outwardly, with an implied concern in service of mission accuracy — focused on delivering reliable data to enable command decisions.
Data executes ordered diagnostics: runs a frequency search and confirms negative hails, then validates that sensors are set to maximum sensitivity — delivering precise technical readouts that inform Riker's choices.
- • Provide accurate, timely sensor and communications data to command.
- • Ensure the bridge has maximum situational awareness for any tactical move.
- • Objective sensor data are the best basis for tactical decisions.
- • Confirmation or absence of signals materially changes the appropriate response.
Focused and impatient for a clear, forceful response; urgency and readiness color his actions, with a low tolerance for perceived delay.
Worf immediately arms the ship's defensive posture, readies phasers at his console and vocalizes the bridge's security posture — urging forceful readiness in case the Mondor represents a direct threat to the Enterprise.
- • Ensure the Enterprise can respond immediately with force if the Mondor attacks.
- • Protect the ship and crew by keeping weapons systems at instant readiness.
- • Immediate preparedness and strength deter or respond to threats most effectively.
- • Failure to prepare weapons invites danger to the ship and crew.
Calm, authoritative surface masking urgent concern; a controlled urgency that prioritizes saving a shipmate over immediate retaliation.
As acting commanding officer, Riker issues rapid procedural orders — hails, shields, sensor sweep — then overrides the aggressive momentum with a decisive 'hold fire' to protect a crewmember known to be captive.
- • Determine the Pakleds' intent and threat level via sensors and hails.
- • Protect Lieutenant La Forge by preventing lethal or escalatory action.
- • Maintain ship and crew safety while avoiding unnecessary conflict.
- • The Pakleds may be deceptive but lethal force risks the hostage's life.
- • Command must balance tactical readiness with a responsibility to preserve crew.
- • Sensors and procedure can buy time to craft a safer rescue.
Concerned and quietly alert — sensing the hostage dynamic and supporting command's human-centered decision despite the tactical impulse elsewhere.
Counselor Troi is present on the bridge, watching the exchange and registering emotional undercurrents; while she speaks no lines here, her presence amplifies the human stakes behind Riker's restraint.
- • Monitor the crew's emotional state and provide empathic input if needed.
- • Support decisions that prioritize preservation of life and crew morale.
- • Emotional context (hostage status) should shape tactical decisions.
- • Command decisions that protect crew lives maintain trust and cohesion.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Enterprise defensive shields are explicitly ordered raised by Riker and confirmed by Worf; narratively they become a containment tool that prevents the Pakled ship from boarding or beaming and give the crew a non‑violent buffer to plan a rescue.
Boarding phasers are readied by security (Worf vocalizes 'Phasers ready'); they function here as visible evidence of lethal potential and restraint — a deterrent held in readiness but held back by command to avoid harming a hostage.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Main Bridge is the operational theater where authority, procedure and moral choice meet: officers cluster at consoles, giving and executing orders. The bridge frames the shift from aggressive posturing to disciplined restraint and is the nerve center for the rescue decision.
The Pakled ship Mondor is the remote locus of danger and the implicit hostage environment; its silence and failing systems register as a vulnerability and a trap, prompting the Enterprise's protective response and framing the moral dilemma.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Worf urges an attack; Riker restrains fire because Geordi is aboard, maintaining his protective command ethic."
Key Dialogue
"RIKER: Hail on all frequencies."
"DATA: Running frequency search... negative response."
"RIKER: Hold fire. Lieutenant La Forge is on that ship."