Where Silence Has Lease
- FIRST SHOWN (US)
- 28 November 1988
- ON
- First-run syndication
- STARDATE
- 42193.6
- DIRECTED BY
- Winrich Kolbe
- PRODUCTION NO.
- 128
WRITTEN BYWritten by Jack B. Sowards
On a mapping mission, the Enterprise is swallowed by a void of total darkness, and every attempt to escape leads deeper into the game of an unknown intelligence.
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSIS
Charting an unexplored region, the Enterprise encounters a hole of utter blackness in space and is drawn inside. Sensors find nothing, and a ghostly copy of the USS Yamato appears. When Riker and Worf beam across to investigate, they find a ship that makes no sense and barely escape. A Romulan warbird then attacks and vanishes just as easily. At last a face forms in the darkness: Nagilum, a vast being that has no understanding of death and wishes to study it. It kills a crewman, Ensign Haskell, to observe the process, and announces that it will need between a third and half of the crew for its experiments. Rather than allow this, Picard sets the self-destruct. Nagilum tests his resolve with illusions of Troi and Data urging him on, but Picard holds firm. At the last moment Nagilum releases the ship, and Picard halts the countdown.
- 01Writer Jack B. Sowards's previous Star Trek credit was the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
- 02Winrich Kolbe's directing debut on the series. He went on to become one of the franchise's most prolific directors.
- 03Nagilum was first called Nagillum, after Richard Mulligan, whom Maurice Hurley wanted to cast. The title comes from Robert W. Service's 1907 poem “The Spell of the Yukon”.