“Ethics” is episode sixteen of season five of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Geordi and Worf enter a cargo bay, talking about Troi and the poker hand Worf lost to her. There’s something leaking from a barrel and they’re trying to find the source. The leaking barrel, stored with Starfleet’s usual disregard for health and safety in the workplace, is stored well above Worf. It causes the barrel below it to slump and then falls off, landing on Worf’s back.
Worf comes to in sickbay and Dr Crusher tells him he’s lucky to be alive. Worf attempts to move and tells the doctor that he will not attempt to leave sickbay without the doctor’s approval; the restraining field is not necessary. The doctor tells him there isn’t one. Worf can’t move his legs, though. He’s told his spine suffered severe damage and there’s no way to repair this kind of injury.
A neurological specialist, Dr Toby Russell, arrives on the Potemkin and Dr Crusher greets her. They talk about Worf; little is known about Klingon neurology. The Klingon medical division usually lets patients in this condition die, so little research has been done. Russell, when Dr Crusher talks about Word, says she wants to maintain a discrete distance to keep an objective opinion.
Commander Riker heads to see Worf, who has a personal favour to ask. He wants Worf to assist him with the ceremony of Hegh’bat. Worf wishes to commit suicide. When a Klingon becomes a burden, it is time for him to die. Worf will not live as an object of pity or shame. Riker will not help a friend commit suicide. Worf says if the commander truly considers him a friend, he will help Worf end his life as he has lived, with dignity and honour.
Doctors Russell and Crusher are looking at a hologram of Worf’s spine; Russell thinks that Klingon anatomy is overdesigned. It has a lot of redundancies, which she thinks means there’s more than can go wrong. Russell has been experimenting with growing replacement parts; they can replicate the entire spinal column and replace it. Dr Crusher was aware of Russell’s work, but had no idea she was already using it on humanoids. She isn’t; this will be the first. She’s done dozens of holographic simulations, with a success rate of 37%. Which Dr Crusher thinks even a holographic patient would consider poor odds; the procedure is too risky, so they’ll try something more conventional first.
Then the captain calls the doctor to the bridge. The transport ship Denver ran into a gravitic mine left over from the Cardassian war. It’s crashlanding. The ship has 23 crew, but was transporting 500 colonists. The doctor needs shuttle bays converted into emergency medical centres and any civilians with medical training to help.
Riker wants a private word with the captain. In the captain’s ready room, he talks about Worf. The captain may have a better understanding; he or Riker might be able to live in the condition Worf is, but Worf cannot. From Worf’s point of view, his life ended when those containers fell. They don’t have to understand or agree, but they have to respect his beliefs. The captain is sure Worf would never have asked the commander for help if he didn’t know he could count on him.
Troi is with Alexander trying to explain why his father doesn’t want to see him. Alexander thinks it’s part of that Klingon stuff; his mother said Klingons had a lot of dumb ideas about honour. Alexander just wants to see his father.
Troi heads to see Worf to talk to him about Alexander’s desire to see him. Doctors Russell and Crusher arrive and explain a manner by which Worf can regain 60-70% of his motor control. Worf doesn’t like the idea, so Russell tells him about her procedure, painting a far rosier picture of it than it probably deserves.
Riker does not want to help Worf commit suicide and Worf doesn’t want to go on living with less mobility. He’s ready to try an untested and highly risky procedure rather than do that, and it’s a choice between letting him undergo the surgery, letting him commit suicide or trying to keep him from doing so for the rest of his life. Dr Russell is a little too eager to try out new, untested, procedures on living patients.