Title: Where Silence Has Lease
Airdate: 11/28/1988
Plot Summary
The Enterprise comes across a hole in space. They are pulled in and have weird things happen, ships appear and disappear, the space appears to wrap in on itself, and they can’t find a way out. Eventually they are contacted by Nagilium, a being who is testing them like lab rats. Can they get out?
Make It So
Picard figures out pretty quickly that “Data” and “Troi” are not who they seem. He also holds the auto-destruct to the most dramatic moment possible.
Number 1
Riker has to talk down Worf twice in this episode but when he comes back from the “Yamato” he’s just as unnerved as Worf is. He also is very emphatic about cancelling the auto-destruct.
Fully Functional
Data has to tell the crew in many different ways that there is nothing out there.
Today Is A Good Day To Die
Worf is completely mind fucked by the bridge leading to the bridge. Well, I guess it is weird. He also shows Riker his callesthenics program, nearly losing himself into almost attacking his superior officer.
Phase Inducers
Geordi is pretty stoked when they blow up the “Romulan” with one shot. As an engineer he should know that had to be bullshit.
Counselor Cleavage
Deanna tries to comfort Picard as he is worried about Riker and Worf in the holodeck. Later she can’t sense anything in the nothing. Later on she does.
Doctor Not Bones
Pulaski continues being racist against Data, calling him “it.” I can’t understand why the fans really never took to her. She also figures out they are rats in a maze.
Shut Up, Wesley
Wesley wonders if it were an ordinary hole in space, wouldn’t they be able to see behind it?
Canon Maker
We have Worf’s callesthenic program, something that would appear a few times throughout the shows. They even use the same monsters.
We get to see the self destruct again, even down to Riker and Picard going down to engineering and going through the same process as they did in 11001001.
Canon Breaker
But in that episode, the auto destruct sequence was hard coded to five minutes. Here they get to choose how long. I suppose they could’ve reprogrammed it since that episode to allow more time but no explanation was given why that little detail changed.
Worf loses himself in the program and nearly attacks Riker before coming to his senses. This really goes against what would see from him later and from other Klingons. Sure they love a good battle but they never turn into Wolverine’s bloodlust madness. Worf would many times be in situations far more intense than his holodeck program and never loses his bearings like that.
Wesley for no reason at all leaves the bridge and is replaced by a different ensign who’s only job is be killed. Wesley then returns to his station for the rest of the episode. What does Wesley know and when did he know it?!
O’Brien still isn’t named but he is referred to as “lieutenant.” Since we know he’s an enlisted man, this is retroactively a canon break.
A Little Bloody Nose
We lose a guy at the helm who dies screaming. I’ve mentioned that phrase as a joke here and there, “dies screaming,” but here it really happens. Nagilum is a dick. Still Haskell was bordering on insubordination with Picard a few times so he had to go.
Technobabble
Geordi comes up to the bridge and sits at a rear station. He tells the computer “Transfer engineering to the bridge” lighting up the console. This shows that the bridge has a dedicated station for the chief engineer, and is not accessible when he’s actually in engineering. It’s pretty cool idea and would be used throughout the rest of the series, though less and less.
Please Repeat Your Communication
“Captain, the most elemetary and valuable statement in science, the beginning of wisdom, is ‘I do not know.’ I do not know what that is.” — Data matter of factly explaining that not everything has an explanation on first glance.
I Know That Guy:
Charles Douglass plays Haskell. This is probably the biggest thing he ever did and was out of acting by 1991.
Earl Boen plays Nagilm. He’s been in a lot but of course everyone remembers him as Doctor Silberman in the first three Terminator films.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
This is almost a real good episode but it’s done in by an ending that makes no sense. The mind games and weirdness is great. First they are in this weird nothing space. They put out a beacon to figure out their distance and then run across the same beacon even though they are going in a straight line.
When Worf and Riker go to the “Yamato,” there’s a really weird ghostly sound before Riker hears Worf screaming. But it turns out it wasn’t Worf. Then exiting the bridge onto the bridge was a really well done effect. Trek was doing liminal spaces before Backrooms made it cool.
Finally Nagilum appears and brings a real threat by testing all the methods of death on the crew, taking out about half of them. So Picard decides they’ll die on their own terms by setting the self destruct, causing Nagilum to shrug and let them out. Kind of anti-climatic. Nagilum then gives Picard an assessment of humanity and calls them selfish, aggressive, and just all around jerks. How the hell did he come to that conclusion? He’s the one who sent the fake Romulan ship to attack them, they didn’t attack first. They just were trying to figure out what was going on.
Then when he pretends to be Data and Troi asking about death, Picard gives a very well thought out philosphical answer. But Nagilum just comes to this conclusion that we’re all a bunch of barbarians? What, did Worf wreck the curve or something?
It’s irritating as we get a truly Trek-type episode with weird stuff and it just all amounts to a big ball of nothing. Maybe that’s the point, since that’s all Data could read with his instruments, nothing. Well Nagilum, go back to the Neverending Story and stay out of my Trek.
