Star Trek 135: Where Silence Has Lease

135. Where Silence Has Lease

FORMULA: The Immunity Syndrome + Encounter at Farpoint + Let This Be Your Last Battlefield

WHY WE LIKE IT: Nagilum is a fairly creepy creation.

WHY WE DON'T: Pulaski is entirely too mean to Data, and the story jerks the audience around.

REVIEW: I found myself constantly frustated by Where Silence Has Lease, from the teaser on. In that teaser, we have Worf and Riker in apparent danger on a planet surface, but it turns out it's all a holodeck fantasy. While on repeat viewings, you would know this is Worf's callisthenics program, it's still a red herring, one of many we'll have to get through watching this episode. And when you see it again, it's an extended fight scene that takes too long to make its point (Worf's bloodlust) and has no relation to the subsequent story.

That story features an intriguing villain, one of many Star Trek godlike entities, this one interested on running experiments on the crew. Unfortunately, it takes a very long time for Nagilum to make an actual appearance, running us through various illusions before doing so. A second appearance for the Romulans on TNG turns out to be nothing at all. And then we have a couple characters running around on a mixed up Yamato. It's one inconsequential set piece after another. Meanwhile, we have Pulaski treating Data like equipment in her most forced confrontation with the android. The dislike many fans feel for her stem from this very scene, in my opinion.

Nagilum should have showed up sooner because once he's there, the episode gets a bit better. He's interesting to look at, and Picard's solution to save his crew from suffering leads to a couple of pretty harrowing scenes. The captain wasn't bluffing either! Unfortunate that Nagilum appears a bit more stupid than necessary when sending illusions of Troi and Data to Picard's cabin, but those illusions make good points. Saving grace: Riker's emphatic agreement to cancel auto-destruct. Still, it takes much too long for Where Silence Has Lease to get interesting, and once it does, it's pretty much all over.

LESSON: That THIS is death.

REWATCHABILITY - Low: The concept, while a bit derivative, had potential, but I don't like being toyed with any more than Picard does.