“Where Silence Has Lease”
Written by Jack B. Sowards
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Season 2, Episode 2
Original air date: November 28, 1988
Star date: 42193.6
Mission summary
Worf invites Riker to the Klingon’s ultraviolent “calisthenics program,” a lengthy and pointless opening sequence that winds up being the most exciting part of these 44 minutes. The actual plot1 begins2 when the crew stumbles upon a “black void,” or what Data calls “nothing”: no sensor readings, no life signs, just a “hole in space.” This threatens to be interesting but it’s actually just Act I of an absurdist tragicomedy featuring a bridge with no exit.
They send some probes, which disappear. Eventually the nothingness consumes the Enterprise3 and attempts to flee are futile4. No matter how fast or far they appear to travel, the Enterprise and her crew “remain like a fly in amber, trapped in the void5.” Suddenly a Romulan ship appears and fires on the Enterprise, but our heroes6 dispatch it with a single shot–too easy! Then a Federation ship appears, the USS Yamato. It seems to be empty so Riker and Worf beam over to check it out. The ship is whack! There are no people, but multiple bridges and an unexpected, contrary-to-facts layout. They decide to return to the Enterprise but lose contact for a while until they don’t anymore because that’s what tension means. They beam back and on the Enterprise bridge the crew has been noticing gaps that keep appearing in the void-prison. However, every time Wesley lays in a course, the gap disappears. Suckers.
Pulaski, who is on the bridge for some reason, is a one-woman sensitivity training seminar waiting to happen. She calls Data “it” and a “device” and then laughs about how she did read his little Facebook profile that said he was alive, but that’s just too quaint for her. Luckily she makes up for it by being the only useful being on the ship, theorizing that some alien intelligence is treating them as rats in a laboratory and playing games with no intention of letting them go. This is correct, and Troi is pretty embarrassed that she missed it. A creepy space douche head appears onscreen and asks questions about mating7 and then says it wants to learn more about death and kills poor, doomed Ensign Redshirt. The screaming and stuff was pretty cool so the alien–Nagilum–decides about ⅓ to ½ of the ship is going to die so he can fully explore the proud human tradition of bloodsport.
Picard doesn’t want to play, so he initiates the auto destruct sequence with Riker before peacing out in his quarters to listen to some tunes8. Data and Troi join him and try to convince him not to kill them all–but he sees through their totally unlikely instinct for self-preservation and calls them out as illusions of Nagilum. He tells the void that “it won’t work!” and heads up to the bridge for the final moments of the countdown. Only at the very last second does he cancel the self-destruct. Wesley jokes that it was a close bluff but Riker doesn’t think Picard was bluffing at all. This is a Serious Character Moment in which we Learn Something.
Finally, Nagilum appears as Picard’s laptop screensaver and says humans are too violent and militaristic for his tastes, but at least they’re both curious so hopefully both Picard and Nagilum will go around poking wasps’ nests for time immemorial.
1 “Plot.”
2 “Begins.”
3 And our souls.
4 For this reviewer as well.
5 If it’s like amber, the void must be devoid of…void?
6 In dark times we cling to bright memories.
7 Why write new jokes when the old ones work just fine?
8 It sounds kind of like this.
Analysis
These are the things I did while watching this episode, in this order: (1) Checked my watch; (2) Realized I needed to buy some milk; (3) Checked my watch; (4) Looked up the Memory Alpha summary of Miles O’Brien’s confused rank history; (5) Argued with myself that it doesn’t make sense for Starfleet to have enlisted men anyway because it’s a class system that doesn’t translate to this future; (5) Read up on the U.S. military ranking system; (6) Checked my watch; (7) Stared at the ceiling with my mouth open.
I also made this face.
This was the single most tedious episode of Star Trek I’ve ever sat through. (I can’t really say “watched,” given the previous paragraph.) Once we got through Riker pole-dancing in Worf’s little exercise program I was primed to dismiss the black spot on the viewscreen as a dirty windshield and wait for the real episode to start. Of course, it never did, and they wasted over half an hour sending probes and fooling with the space equivalent of trying to drive out of a ditch. Ladies and gentlemen, compelling television! “Quick, more pressure on the gas! Wait, that doesn’t work? Try it again! Did you check the oil levels? What about the tire pressure? Well gee I guess we’re stuck. Doot doot doot.” You could have interrupted this episode with Jersey Shore Shark Attack and it still would have been dead in the water.
It’s not like the parts that weren’t boring had any redemptive qualities anyway. We finally get a chance to see the private side of Worf, and he’s actually just a brute animal whom Starfleet has rightly caged. The “calisthenics” program is one thing–having him attack Riker and then lose his shit on the USS Yamato for no reason was another. There is a nuanced and sophisticated approach to showing that Worf’s two identities are reconciled only with difficulty; this is not that approach. Similarly, Pulaski’s hatred for Data goes beyond all sense and reason. She calls him a device, but then acknowledges that she has read his bio and the conclusion that he is a living being. She’s trolling. “Oh Frank, can you–oh I’m sorry, it’s Francine now, isn’t it? I did know that, yes, of course, Frank–Francine.” It’s a shame she’s the only one who figures out what’s going on. I especially liked that Picard calls out Troi on that front. She has to be prompted by him–“Are you SURE you didn’t sense ANYTHING?”–to sputter up an admission that she’s incompetent.
Finally, the big self-destruct standoff is complete amateur hour. We never believe for a moment, especially at the beginning of the new season, that Picard is going to blow up the ship. So it’s a huge “reveal” that Picard wasn’t bluffing. So what? I’m more troubled by his instant resignation in the face of difficulty. As a captain, who wouldn’t take 50% odds over 0%? How is he not court-martialed for needlessly endangering every life on board? Nagilum is powerful, sure, but so was Q and they didn’t turn tail and light themselves on fire there. Shouldn’t they be concerned that if they kill themselves, Nagilum is just going to find out where they’re from to finish his experiments on other humans? If your rats die, you don’t take up accounting–you find more rats.
Torie’s Rating: Dead in space (on a scale of 1-6)
You will kneel!
Thread Alert: There are basically no costumes in this episode (not even a funny hat or weird scanning device) so I guess I’ll go with Skeletor.
Best Line: PICARD: Abort auto-destruct sequence.
COMPUTER: Riker, William T., do you concur?
RIKER: Yes! Absolutely! I do indeed concur! Wholeheartedly!
Trivia/Other Notes: The title is from a poem by Robert Service called “The Spell of the Yukon“:
There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.
The name Nagilum is “Muligan” backwards, referring to Robert Mulligan, who was originally going to play the role. Earl Boen, who did play the role, is best known as Dr. Peter Silberman from the Terminator movies.
This is a strict bottle show, and the director’s first Star Trek outing. To make things “interesting,” Kolbe had the actors constantly moving and tried many unusual camera angles.
Picard is listening to “Trois Gymnopédies” by Erik Satie, a Dadaist. Perhaps that’s not a coincidence.
Patrick Stewart quoted the conversation he has with (fake) Data on death at Gene Roddenberry’s memorial service three years later.
Previous episode: Season 2, Episode 1 – “The Child.”
Next episode: Season 2, Episode 3 – “Elementary, Dear Data.”
Oh Lord. Not only a space douche, but a space douche that’s trolling the ship. “Oh look it’s a way out over here… oh no wait it’s over here…” This was about as interesting as listening to the older brother “not touching you! not touching you!” in the back seat of an interminable car ride: there’s nothing interesting about the journey, you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not excited to get there, but you desperately want it all to be over.
Yeah, basically it’s like watching the neighbor’s kid out front using a magnifying glass on ants. Only the ants threaten to ruin his fun by…well okay that analogy falls apart right there.
I did like the idea of using the holodeck to kill scary monsters like skeletor. But I think that’s the only bright spot in the whole episode and as Torie points out, it’s to Worf’s detriment.
Yeah, just… wow. There’s really nothing you can say about this episode at all, is there? It was pointless, it was boring, the ship’s situation was a perfect metaphor for the episode itself (an absolute void of nothing) and absolutely nothing else. This season got off to a terrible start. At least TOS put “The Enterprise Incident” and “The Paradise Syndrome” between “Spock’s Brain” and “And the Children Shall Lead”.
Next!
Another manipulative space douche, sure, but perhaps a more forthright one than we’ve seen before. Not cute like Q or Trelane, not even particularly inquisitive.
“What happens when I twist your head around on your neck like a screw top and pull real hard? Ah, the Human Experience.”
The captain’s response strikes me as particularly weak: “To prevent you from killing us all slowly, I will kill us all quickly.”
It’s not even presented as some kind of stratagem, or means to a larger negotiation or bargain. What if it didn’t work? And, frankly, I don’t quite understand why it does work, why it would shift the plans or responses of Nagilum one iota. Indeed, as presented it was not intended to.
Kirk, at least, would have incorporated a threat to self-destruct into some larger scheme: “We will die, and you will lose the secret of butterscotch.” “What is this thing, butterscotch?” “Release us and I’ll tell.”
Picard just decides, screw it, dynamite the ship, absent any ulterior plan. Challenged by an omnipotent intelligence, Picard just puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. In the end, unbidden by anything, Nagilum proves the humane one.
Weak.
An utterly forgettable episode. I know because I forget it. It reminds me of the time I read a novel and had the moment when I relaized I had read it before but forgotten the entire thing.
A thought that occured to me during the pointless teaser– that teased nothing — was that one fo the reasons Worf became a popular character and a favorite for writers to go to was that he was allowed to be flawed. All the ‘bad’ emotions and desires could be safely dumped intot Worf and accepted because he was a Klingon. That exercise routine, had a human did that every morning he’d be in front of Troi so fast as a patient it would have broken warp barriers. The aline in the show were always the safe repository of ‘base’ human emotion while the humands were allowed to coar above them as perfected angels.
Pulaski asserts her usefulness early. She also makes a compelling case that Data is a toaster. Oh God, it was so refreshing to hear people disagree!
I understand from a character perspective Pulaski’s comfort, as a physician, with the biological over the mechanical. “I’m a doctor, not an engineer!”
But there simply is no in-series basis for any doubt that Data is a sentient being—capable of suffering, of expression (even when he mimics it is of a conscious choice to do so), of receiving harm, of risk of material loss or termination. There is no basis for doubt, therefore her doubt must only come—as others have suggested—out of some cruel streak.
“You’re retarded, and I want everyone to know I know it!”
Yet there is also no basis that her Hippocratic Oath would not apply. She is more unprofessional than inappropriate.
Pulaski making cruel sport of an emotionless being reminds me a bit of a derogatory picture of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles that appeared on the cover of an old National Lampoon. The editors joked it was “cruel, but—heck—they’ll never see it.”
I don’t know that “class structure” is a sufficient basis to dismiss the officer/enlisted model hierarchy, either. Officers should be removed enough from their specialties to be able to coordinate the activities of others. It shouldn’t be LaForge’s job to fix broken things or Worf’s to personally phaser potential threats for the same reason it isn’t Picard’s job to do any of those things–they’re supposed to be supervising teams of people. If the Chief Engineer has to pick up a wrench, something has gone seriously awry in that ship’s organization.
@7 Lemnoc. When was any proof actually offered for Data’s sentience? It always seemed to be just asserted as a matter of course.
@8: Data’s status as property gets explored fairly extensively in later episodes. And that is an interesting question.
But I would submit that his rank and his ability to issue commands aboard a Federation starship distinguishes him from the computer or tricorders or automatic boot polishers. Clearly it must have been established, someone must have decided or understood some time in the past that he had discretionary and sensory powers that made him fit for rank and command.
It’s also clearly established that Data is, in fact, a “he,” that he is endowed with make characteristics and signifiers that imply a gender intent by his creator. Pulaski applying the reference pronoun “it” is just being obtuse.
You know, there is the kernel of an idea in here that could make for very interesting SF. Of course how they went about it is stupid. The writers clearly have no concept of how science is performed. Let’s say the Enterprise crew are the subject of an experiment, so who is and where are the control group?
That doesn’t get you a compelling story, not by itself. We don;t poison and kill lab rats for no reason, we have speicific questions we are trying answer, sometimes really really inportant questions, lke will this molecule kill us if we use it to treat a disease. So, make you sapce-douches have a question that is vitally important and they they need answers to, something that has space-douche lives in the balance.
Now put the experiment and ethical questions to PIcard. Is it right to escape the experiment and doom the space-douches to their problem, or do you stay pu and sacarfice a portion of your crew to helping them solve their terribly important question?
(If you are a PETA type you can even use this to explore the bethica of live experimenation.)
@10:
Although the episode was highly despised by many (not by me, actually), “The Empath” more or less gets right to this. The Vians were engaged in some experiment they considered vital (it even had some weirdly humane aspect) that was terribly inconvenient to the survival of our TOS trio. Interesting to compare solutions and options explored there to this Mulligan stew.
8. Officers should be removed enough from their specialties to be able to coordinate the activities of others.
I’m with this. A superb example of how a chief engineer shouldn’t be was shown on NewBSG, when Pegasus‘ new commander turned out to be happier – and far more effective – when he did have a literal wrench in his hands. As a commander, he was awful. As a working engineer, he was brilliant.
This argues strongly for such a man to have been a warrant officer, or a senior NCO: commanding, but also able to get dirty, and to teach all the accumulated knowledge.
Scotty would have been PERFECT as a Master Petty Officer in charge of the enlisted members of engineering, and Doohan would have known perfectly well what an M(W)O was like, from his own days in the Canadian forces. They could have had an engineering officer, the person responsible for the section, but that person would have a technically-qualified person – Scotty/LaForge – to turn the orders from on high into actions by teams under their command.:
Capt: Set course for $PLANET. Engage.
Helm transmits those commands to the computers.
Computers tell Eng O, “We need to take this course and reach HERE by THIS time” for each leg of journey.
Eng O says “Chief, make it so!”
MPO/Chief says: “Alright, first up, we need to make turns for Warp 3.74 for 73124.3 seconds.”
MPO says “Okay, Stokers, I need twenty minutes of hard shoveling the No.2 grade dilithium into the warp core, Gaugers, keep your eye on the valves for the overpressure conduits that have been fluctuating, Balancers, give us 1.5% more on the starboard nacelle until I say, to bring her onto the new course. Alright, hop to it, let’s see some movement here, ya lazy bastards, do ya want to live FOREVER?”
See?
Already more interesting than every single thing in this episode, put together.
Nagilum might be the most Lovecraftian of space douches in Star Trek.
Can’t think of one more Lovecraftian. Could be forgetting one.
When you think about it, the Star Trek gestalt is almost the exact opposite of Lovecraft’s vision of a cold, indifferent, impenetrable and ultimately hostile universe of profound alienness. Nothing is profoundly, horribly unknowable in ST, and the universe is invariably receptive to the “human experience.”
Most space douches are curious about the metaphoric human heart, not the pumping bag of circulatory fluids that delivers some quantifiable spatter analysis upon impact. Some (Organians, Metrons) have a high morality upon which humanity may be measured and found promising or wanting. Some are either somehow jealous of the human experience or trying to conceal their alienness from humanity in order to “walk among us” as mentors or lovers. Others set up experiments to try to glean something of the human mind or experience. Humans are the metric upon which their ambitions are written, and in one way or another they can be appealed to on that basis.
Not even Robert Bloch, who might arguably be the writer most inclined to explore Lovecraftian tropes in ST, declines to do so in episodes he wrote.
I’m not saying Nagilum is clearly off the spectrum of ST alien douchebaggery I’ve outlined, but in a weird way Nagilum is largely off the spectrum of ST alien douchebaggery.
He neither seeks out human contact or seems interested in continuing it or gleaning lessons from humanity. His interest lies more in cataloging what those odd facial expressions mean as he methodically tears the limbs off a creature. But ultimately, the thing torn limb from limb no longer moves enough to interest him and he can toss away the mangled mess away and shamble on with indifference. Even the catalog is of little interest.
Like the honey badger, Nagilum doesn’t give a shit.
The way the Old Ones accidentally knocked over a test tube and the putrid smear gave rise to life on earth, Nagilum seems indifferent to outcomes.
Even his “face” seems some kind of cobbled together analogue, not really giving enough of a shit to assemble something better….
Lagging behind the ongoing discussion a bit just to get my initial thoughts out…
I was shocked that I didn’t remember this episode being so terrible. First of all, I always confuse this one with “Loud as a Whisper,” because “Where Silence Has Lease” seems like a much better title for a show about a guy who can’t speak. Anyway. That teaser actually pissed me off because it was a complete waste of time. It was an obvious attempt to create false tension, and while you could justify its existence as “characterization,” a scene needs to do more than just accomplish that one thing–and poorly at that. During that pointless action sequence, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about why anyone is worried about them when the holodeck supposedly has safety protocols, then I wondered how the holodeck knows what constitutes something dangerous for the user. I also hate Riker’s judgey face, the one he gives Worf after he loses his shit, like he’s thinking, “Silly Klingon.” But then I had the same face when Worf flipped out on the other ship.
This episode is far more literally about “nothing” than any episode of Seinfeld ever was, and it kept hitting us over the head with rat in a maze/trap references. We get it. And it’s a flimsy premise. I don’t mind the basic conceit of them having to figure their way out of a dangerous situation, but their solutions are actually kind of obvious ones, yet they act like Wesley and Data are geniuses for coming up with them.
There are a handful of things I remembered vividly: the wacky bridge on the fake Yamato, Riker’s enthusiastic cancellation of the self-destruct (I’m very fond of that one, but I thought it was used in “11001001”), Skeletor, and of course Nagilum himself. And I liked a lot of the direction throughout the episode, which added some energy to an otherwise static show. But wow, everything was just so poorly planned and executed, and I did feel a surge of hatred for Pulaski. She waltzes in thinking she can solve everything by just magnifying the image more better, then she blames Data and insults him when it doesn’t work. Go back to Sickbay, doc. This episode is dying and no one can save it.
Also, did anyone not know what was about to happen when Wesley was suddenly replaced by a black guy we’ve never seen before? Come on.
Rating: Full Stop.
—well–here i am –someone who has been involved with star trek since my bed time was 10pm–i am 50 btw—and this episode reminds me –despite it’s obvious flaws–of what “trek” is all about—exploring the unknown and dealing with it’s dangers—not fighting bad guys like it is now—call me a geek please–but i cant help but enjoy the further fleshing out of these characters, still teething, painfully at times–and how they depend on each others expertise to solve this problem–at the end the most satisfying point in this–is the exchange between the captain and this powerful but unenlightened alien—a brief conversation–that represents the hallmark of mr. roddenberry’s fiction.
Lemnoc @ 13: That’s a good point about the Lovecraftian nature of Nagilum. I hadn’t thought about it in that way before. But that actually makes the episode even worse for me because it could have been such an interesting change of pace to have a Lovecraftian antagonist on the show if it had been done well. Instead we got the crap we got.
Once again, what bothers me most about the episodes like this one that fail so completely is how much potential is lost in the process.
I ‘m with Lane that this episode was one of the few, so far, that have actually dealt with meeting the unknown, the ( potentially ) frightening and the inscrutable. Although it isn’t handled particularly well, I kind of like that the alien’s reasons aren’t particularly logical by our standards. It makes him….well, ‘Alien’! I get the feeling that the original draft might have been better, until certain meddling typewriters got a hold of it.
I hate the teaser. I always hate teasers that have nothing – at all – to do wth the following story. I swear someone said ” We’re two minutes short this week. Quick write a scene we can stick at the beginning. I remember, when this episode first aired, thinking that our local affiliate station had started the episode in the middle because of that damned teaser.
As others have noted, Pulaski is particularly unlikeable in this outing. She’s almost douchier than Nagilum. I realize that if she had remained with the series, they would have ( predictably ) evolved her into Data’s closest ally ( the signs were all there ), but making her so grossly hostile towards Data from the outset was a huge mistake. She should have insulted the Klingon while she was at it..after all; he’s ‘different’ too.
Speaking of different, I thought it was odd that Nagilum singled Pulaski out as “different” for being female. I’m sorry, but wasn’t Deanna there too? Last time I checked she was female. Maybe Pulaski’s different because she’s post-menopausal? I don’t get it. Why didn’t he single anyone else out? For example Worf? Again; he’s ‘different’ too.
And on a nerdier note, even the first time I watched this I was irritated…nay, infuriated by the fact that when Data is asked to find any reference to any other vessel encountering anything REMOTELY similar… EVER… that no mention was made of the “hole in space” encountered by Kirk’s Enterprise in “The Immunity Syndrome”. Come on! In “The Naked Now” Riker remembers an incident of someone taking a shower with their clothes on, but he doesn’t remember a giant space amoeba found hiding in a “hole in space”? And the fact that Data doesn’t come across that vital nugget just strains credulity.
Speaking of that teaser, I noticed how incredibly devoid of dialogue the opening of this episode is. Cold opening (no Captain’s Log entry), coupled with some slow shots of the bridge and all that — it’s like someone took this “Silence has Lease” thing way too seriously. When it’s over two minutes and your characters are still speaking slower than a syllable a second… yeah.
Oh the teaser is terrible. The purpose of a teaser is the catch your interest and make it so you do not swucth channels during the credits and commericals, it should be a quiestion or puzzel that is unanswered until the show come back.
Here someone has confused action with tension, and very poorly at. Of course have a a decnet teaser in this episode means throwing out the first half of the scrip.A good teaser fucntions like a good onpening sentence, something I struggle with mightily.
@13 Lemnoc
Your comments over Naglium’s actions put him(?) into place for me. Naglium is a child – a young teen with a mean streak. You know the type. Starts off stepping on bugs, moves onto pets and other small animals then grows up to be a serial killer. In this episode, Neglium was still in the bug or small animal stage.
I’ve never read Lovecraft but it seems to me that the episode where select members of the crew have experiments carried out on them while they sleep (one even had blood replaced with a resin fluid) could fit with what I’ve heard of his writing. (I thought it was Night Terrors but when I looked at that one I saw that I was wrong.)
And Bobsandiego. We may have discussed this before but I’ll say it here. What’s wrong with ‘The night was moist’ as a first line? :) Seriously. I agree with what you’re saying. Star Trek has given us some very poor teasers but I think you’ll have to admit that they gave us the best teaser of any show with that opener for “Cause And Effect.”
I recall from “The Making of Star Trek” that the entire crew was officers, reflecting the contemporary fact that every person in space had been an officer. There weren’t supposed to be any enlisted, non-coms, lesser ranks, etc.- which made me wonder who the coveralled folks were and if they did the cleaning.
On my nuclear powered cruiser, the ChEng wasn’t in the plant that often (and only on the bridge once or twice, if ever); he was trying to ensure we would pass our next ORSE. The only person who acted directly to speed changes was the E-4 or E-5 throttleman, everyone else was making sure the plant was running correctly or doing secondary tasks like electrical distribution.
Still, on military aircraft and some warships, there are officers working without a staff. Roddenberry’s bomber navigator was probably an officer working alone. Maybe automation was seen as a replacement for most staff.
CaitieCat- sounds like you’ve been there and done that.
@21 sps49
…And yet, in that first season TOS, there were plenty of them, skulking around the crowded corridors. Kirk beat the hell out of one in “The Enemy Within.” At least two were dinner for the Salt Vampire in “The Man Trap.” IIRC Spock pinches one senseless in “The Menagerie.”
CaitieCat- sounds like you’ve been there and done that.
Master Corporal (two ranks above private, top one below sergeant) sig-pig in the Canadian Forces, 1983-1987. Four-time Soldier of the Month, member of the regimental rifle team (submachine gun specialist), small-arms instructor. :D
Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 1992 that Canada changed the rules on being non-heterosexual and in the mlitary, so I got out just ahead of a DD, basically by threatening to go to the Toronto Star and tell my story if they DD’d me, cause, what the hell, I’d have nothing left to lose. They gave me a medical for my knee, so I went back to university. They didn’t want to have to explain why, when the military was complaining about a lack of qualified material to be made into soldiers, they were throwing out someone with my record.
I do miss shooting, I really enjoyed range work, and teaching people to shoot, and I was pretty good at it. And being a radio operator was pretty cool, doing ciphers and authentications and EW and everything, sometimes being tasked as senior officers’ drivers, which was hilarious and bizarre. Senior officers are, more or less, little boys, for the most part. They would do things like order us to drive while they’d do drive-by shootings on one another with Super Soakers. It’s a very strange world they live in.
That said, I’d have sure as shit not wanted to go to freaking Afghanistan to die in some stupid pointless occupation army. :/
Super Soakers? If my zeroes did that, it was without our involvement.
This T-shirt is US specific, but the sentiment isn’t:
http://babesinopen.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-ears-are-burning.html
Oh the officers on my ship got into food fighter with each other in the wardroom, so yeah Caitie I know where you are coming from, even if we populate different nations.
Hey sorry for the delay, guys. Things have been crazy enough that I haven’t commented on my own post. My baby sister graduated from high school this week.
@ 4 Lemnoc
I don’t understand why it works, either. Why wouldn’t Nagilum just fly off to the next space dock and try his experiment there?
Re Pulaski @7, I agree. You can have her try to make a case for his lack of sentience, sure. But she never does–it’s just taken as a given that a side to that argument exists, despite compelling evidence to the contrary.
@ 5 bobsandiego
I don’t respond well to main characters being treated as animals in cages.
@ 8 Lemnoc and @ 12 CaitieCat
On the subject of officers in Starfleet: I don’t argue that their depiction in the show is realistic (hoo boy it isn’t), but that the structure seems to be set up to exclude the concept of enlisted men. All of the officers have risen through the ranks to where they are because of competence and intelligence in a specific team or group. You get promoted for excellence at your job, NOT for any particular managerial excellence. The best antimatter repairman becomes chief engineer. They don’t separate out management/command as a separate skillset, as we do in our military. It’s taken as a given that the best man for the job will be the best man to coordinate the job, too. To me that’s a very socialist/class-neutral idea–anyone can rise up if they’re good enough, and there is no separate track for command (seeing as any officer can take the command/bridge test, which we discover later when Dr. Crusher and Troi discuss it).
Whether that’s truly a useful setup, well, I don’t know. Personally I prefer it when my bosses have familiarity and experience with the details of my work, and all of the management-only types have been terrible bosses. But that’s civilian life for you.
@ 13 Lemnoc and @ 17 dep1701 on Lovecraftian total alieness:
You’ve already imagined a much better episode than what we have here. I’m interested (potentially) in a story about cold, alien life, But the interest has to come from how our characters react to it, not the life itself. It’s Picard and his crew who really fail here.
@ 17 dep1701
I’m glad you brought up the bridge thing with Pulaski being “different.” Maybe because Troi is half-alien? But yeah I thought it was a menopausal reference (which would have been weird), too.
@ 21 sps49 and @23 CaitieCat
Wow, we have a lot of vets here! You guys, Bob…
Cait, it sounds like you made the right choice. Glad you’re here with us instead!
This was when I stopped even pretending that I was watching the show. I hadn’t been watching it after the first two episodes, then the next time I flipped past it they were having “Justice”, then I saw “Angel One” and gave up completely.
But I hadn’t let on to my “give it a chance, give it a chance” friends. Most of whom confessed to me later that they bailed after this. Omnipotent Space Menace #375. Click.
I found this an interesting but certainly flawed episode, at least up through the huge head showing up. I don’t know that I would rewatch it. There really isn’t any deeper meaning to it, no achievement of a goal beyond “get out of here”, no brilliant scenes. As @15 lane arnold said, there is some value to be found in watching the crew try to deal with the unknown. There just isn’t any big payoff to be had in this case.
Poor Worf. He keeps trying to think ahead, just to take basic precautions, and Picard and Riker just stare at him like chickens being told about quantum mechanics.
Picard chuckles over how crews used to threaten to hang their captains if the captains recklessly put their lives in danger, and Data goes Hmm and files that idea away for further consideration. Watch your back, Picard.
We may know Picard won’t take the chance to escape when there’s an away party (with two main characters) still on the fake ship, but Patrick Stewart does a good job showing the conflict in his mind. He doesn’t want to leave anyone behind, but he has to consider his duty to those still on the Enterprise. The second such scene, when the hole starts to close, felt redundant in that respect, but at least the extra got another line or two out of it.
I liked this episode considerably more than the rest of you–I’m watching in order, with little previous exposure to TNG, and this episode represented a fairly dramatic step forward in the characterization of Worf, Picard, and Riker, and a big step forward in dramatics compared to all of Season One and “The Child.” I wrote in my review:
On the other hand, I hated “Loud as a Whisper.”