Stardate: 42193.6
Original Air Date: November 28, 1988
Writer: Jack B. Sowards
Director: Winrich Kolbe

“Beyond this place there be dragons…”

This episode opens with Picard worried about Worf and Riker who are locked in a combat exercise in the holodeck –a cheesy fight sequence worthy of TOS that is never really revisited in the episode. The Enterprise is on a “long reach” toward the Morgana quadrant, a section of the galaxy which is yet to be visited by a manned Federation vessel. In the meantime, the ship’s crew are busy mapping the unknown areas when they spot a strange “hole in space,” or a “void without matter or energy of any kind.” The Enterprise fires a probe into the strange hole,

Worf reminds Picard of an old Klingon legend of a gigantic black space creature which was said to devour entire vessels. They launch another probe, this time Class-1 with full sensor arrays, but this probe also disappears. Suddenly, the Enterprise is quietly swallowed and enveloped inside the void and efforts to escape prove futile. They “remain trapped like a fly in amber.” The Enterprise drops a beacon and as they travel away at Warp 2, they strangely arrive back at the beacon signal, as if traveling full circle. Then a cloaked Romulan vessel appears and attacks the Enterprise, but when the Enterprise fires a photon torpedo back it destroys the Romulan vessel yet leaves no debris. Then a Federation vessel appears, the USS Yamato, though no living beings appear to be aboard. Riker and Worf form an away team and land aboard the Yamato.

When they beam aboard, Riker and Worf quickly realize something is amiss –the ship is a jumbled labyrinth of rooms, with strange sounds, the walls are not made of “tritanium” like all other Federation ships. When the away team is finally beamed back aboard the Enterprise, the crew realie they are being toyed with like rats in a maze. And a strange face appears and calls himself “Nagilum.” He asks several questions, and is particularly curious to learn more about the notion of “death” so he kills Haskell and pledges to begin killing a third or half of the crew. Thus, Picard and Riker initiate the auto self-destruct sequence and Picard is confronted by Data and Troi in his quarters, but they behave strangely as they attempt to convince Picard to reverse the auto-destruct sequence. But Picard calls Nagilum’s bet, and the Enterprise is soon released thanks to the ship’s computer informing Picard that the real Data is actually present on the bridge.

Picard waits until the last second to reverse the auto-destruct sequence. As the Enterprise speeds away Picard has a brief interaction with Nagilum and the ships returns to its original mission as Riker informs the crew to ignore any other strange holes they might see along the way.       

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My Thoughts on “Where Silence Has Lease”

“Where Silence Has Lease” is another episode where an inexplicable godlike alien toys with the Enterprise only to be outsmarted by Picard. I found the premise to this episode –a mysterious ship-swallowing black void consumes the Enterprise in altered reality—but ultimately this whole episode struck me as a frustrating, befuddling exercise in toying with us (the audience).

There are some hilariously cornball fight sequences in this episode (such as the opening scenes with Riker and Worf); the cartoonish, unmourned death of Haskell, the random disgruntled appearances of the curmudgeonly Dr. Pulaski, and the anticlimactic appearance of Nagilum. Why does Picard seem unfazed and even bemused by this whole escapade? And what in the world is going with Worf throughout this episode? Why is he occasionally resorting to his instinct to fight Riker?

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Writer/Director

The story for this episode was written by Jack B. Sowards, author of the film Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan.

It was directed by Winrich Kolbe (best known for directing 48 episodes of Star Trek across four television series including the Hugo Award-winning TNG episode “All Good Things…”).

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Star Trek Trivia:

• Apparently, Worf undergoes a calisthenics exercise in the holodeck every day.
• Dr. Pulaski clearly has a problem with androids like Data in this episode (she doesn’t seem to trust him or believe that he is a form of living artificial intelligence).
• Riker notes that the Yamato ship that he and Worf board could not possibly be a Federation ship because the walls are not made of tritanium.   
• When Picard believes he is going to die in twenty minutes, he retires to his quarters and listens to Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies.
• The title of the episode is borrowed from the last stanza of a 1907 poem, “The Spell of the Yukon” by Robert W. Service.
• The character of Nagilum was originally named “Nagillum” after actor Richard Mulligan, whom the show’s co-executive producer, Maurice Hurley, originally wanted cast in the role. Note: “Nagillum” is “Mulligan” spelled backward
• Apparently, Nagilum’s face was created using a filmed image of an actor’s face, extensively distorted with video processing.
• The self-destruct sequence in this episode is considerably different than the one featured in the TOS episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” and it contradicts the Season 1 TNG episode “11001001.”

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