Ask Not

Stardate not given: Cadet Thira Sidhu is serving at Starbase 28 when it is attacked. Security officers escort a uniformed (but masked) Starfleet officer into the room, hand Sidhu a phaser, and order her to keep the officer prisoner without letting him leave. That officer is Captain Christopher Pike of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and he immediately asks Sidhu to let him contact his ship, to leave and help defend the Starbase – in short, asks her to violate the orders she’s just been given as well as key parts of her oath as a future officer. Whose orders Sidhu decides to follow will be a very real test of her Starfleet loyalty.

written by Kalinda Vasquez
directed by Sanji Senaka
music by Andrea Datzman

Cast: Anson Mount (Captain Pike), Ethan Peck (Spock), Rebecca Romijn (Number One), Amrit Kaur (Cadet Thira Sidhu), Steve Boyle (Security Officer #1), Colette Whitaker (Station 28 Computer)

Notes: Reserve activation clauses remain seldom-used in Starfleet, though they seem to be enacted more often upon Enterprise officers who have retired from (or been relieved of) duty (Star Trek: The Motion Picture). The Enterprise may have tangled with the Tholians long before The Tholian Web (1968), though the events recounted by Captain Pike are part of a Starfleet Academy training simulation, very similar to the “psych test” endured by Wesley Crusher in Coming Of Age (1988), and may have no bearing on reality.