Star Trek TNG's Most DISTURBING Character
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- ‼️ Watch ALL of our discussions on Star Trek: The Next Generation - • Star Trek: The Next Ge... ‼️
The Target Audience are watching Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time! Today we discuss season 2 episode 2 - Where Silence Has Lease
Send us fan mail here:
Target Audience
PO Box 1870
Elyria, OH 44036
Riker: Was he bluffing?
That was pure Beyond Belief Frakes right there
Do you remember the tallest man you ever met? ... Have you ever had the urge to write your name in wet cement?
They weren’t worried about Riker and Worf because they didn’t trust Worf. They were worried because it was the first time anyone has done training with Worf and they knew his program was intense with the holodeck safety very low. Picard was nervous because there was a very serious chance of somebody getting hurt.
One thing to note is that the ship operates 24 hours. Each of the main characters only work an 8 hour shift. That means 2/3 of the time, people we never heard from are at those stations. At the same time, it makes sense that the 'primary day shift' is when they would schedule arrivals to new locations, important activites, etc. And they would call those prime shift people (department heads) to the bridge if anything emergency or unusual is happening. That's why the main characters seem to be there so much, but not always. Probably the guy at the helm was just on his shift, and then Wesley had to fill in the rest of that shift when the guy died.
Neguilum reminded me of the Conan O'Brien comedy bit where they would superimpose a talking mouth over a photo 😛
The direction for this episode by Winrich Kolbe really raises the bar for TNG going forward. This is where you begin to see the look of the show start to improve. When I see Kolbe listed as director for an episode it usually means it's going to be pretty good. He directed 48 episodes over all of Star Trek, Where Silence Has Lease was his first directed episode for the series.
I just have to say how much I absolutely love that you throw in the original TV promo spots. It brings me back to being a kid and watching TNG with my dad. I miss him a lot since he passed several years ago, so thank you for refreshing those little memories I cherish.
Yeah, straight up flashbacks. I love it.
This one, however, completely misrepresents the episode, which is even funnier.
I’m sorry for your loss.
@@jdb101585 I actually kind of like that for this one. Trailer gives away several major plot points but misrepresents them, preventing too much plot spoilage.
The music on the "Yamato" was on point for me. Nagylum was twisted on purpose, not bad CGI, in my opinion.
For me, the one memorable thing about this episode was Riker's "Yes, absolutely, I do indeed concur wholeheartedly! "
"Sarcasm detected. Self-Destruct will continue."
I expect Negilum is not Q because they did not want to go this dark with Q, who has been presented as more of a trickster god archtype. Negilum is both amoral and coldly malevolent in his approach, which would make Q irredeemable.
I suspect this was a script fleshed out from an early Phase 2 story concept, which led to some weirdness when compared to the rest of TNG.
Also doesn’t seem like Negilum is specifically curious about humans just, humanoid life forms as he doesn’t even know basic concepts like death or gender. Q is focused on humans specifically
@russellharrell2747 yea, I think a good chunk of Season 2 is recycled scripts from the canceled Phase II series.
I'd say that nigilum was akin to Loki or a little bit of Armus from "Skin Of Evil"
I enjoy having both parts of the reaction released on the same day. But do whatever makes sense for engagement.
Same here
Nagilum has a definite sadistic streak. Even his appearance seemed to be deliberately designed to creep the crew out and he mockingly references it.
I've always thought of Nagilum as simply not understanding what it's doing is wrong. It has no understanding and simply is curious and wants to see how these "things" live or die. For a being like Nagilum it probably just assumes humans don't mind dying, since if they die now or later, what's the difference.
Like a lab scientist testing makeup on gerbils or something.
Another thing I noticed on rewatch: Nagilum has the same casual indifference to human life that Pulaski demonstrates toward Data. I'm surprised they never explored or developed that angle.
@@My-Name-Isnt-Important I registered a slight mocking tone when he notes the crew is clearly disturbed by his visage and then makes no attempt to make it less threatening.
What’s wrong with how I look? I tried so hard to duplicate your appearance to put you at ease.
Clearly he can as he was able to recreate Data and Troy’s appearances as well as the two starships. He just chose not for some reason. I suspect the discomfort was intentional.
@@kurtl8425 Those things aren't "him", though. Just copies.
@@kurtl8425 The fake Data and Troi were just illusions like the Romulan ship, and were probably taken from Picard's mind like the vision of hell that was created from Pike's mind in "The Cage"
Nagilum's chosen appearance was his own creation.
You will eventually know who Picard is, and yes, he's a much more complicated character than his hard exterior lets on. It's nice that Patrick Stewart starts to reveal it a little bit when he can in the plot-driven episodes. When they switch to character-driven episodes, and you get more Picard off of the bridge, you're in for a real treat. Same goes for a lot of these characters. These first two seasons I can't really blame any of the actors for being frustrated at not getting to do much.
Question about spoilers. Are production crew & writing staff in future episodes also not to be referenced? If Josh or Alex mention they reaĺly liked an aspect of the directing and/or writing, do we pretend we don't know what level of involvement with the show those people subsequently have?
Production crew is fine. Details about episodes or characters is what we’d like to avoid.
@@targetaudienceUnderstood. Winrich Kolbe becomes one of TNG's most frequent and capable directors, even being trusted with the series finale itself.
What I think is amazingly cool about production staff/directors is how cast members directed episodes in other TREK series. Frakes has directed episodes right through DISCOVERY and may have even directed one or two STRANGE NEW WORLDS installments. I'm watching ENTERPRISE right now and LeVar Burton, Roxann Dawson, and Robert Duncan McNeill have ALL directed multiple episodes. I think in their respective TREK series, each of them only got one shot behind the camera (Dawson maybe a few more) but it was enough to get them to want to continue.
Of course Frakes also directed FIRST CONTACT, the second TNG movie.
12:00 My interpretation was that Captain Picard was checking to see if the entity still controlled them because he expected in the final few seconds the entity would use its projections of crew members to object as it had done before. So when he canceled the self-destruct he was taking a calculated risk that they were indeed really free.
The begining was Worf's workout routine and Picard was worried cause keeping up with a Klingon isnt easy andworried Worf might hold back on the program for that reason so Picard is worried for the wellbeing for both of his crew
So excited for what's coming up soon!
So dreading what's coming up soon!
Yep, we're definitely in Season 2!
One of the better episodes of Season 2
Toilet flushes, Wesley steps out of the bathroom. "What'd I miss?"
Haskell: "Damn your tiny bladder!" [croak]
@@ScooterBond1970 To be fair, when he died he looked like he was being squeezed through a tiny bladder.
I love that you post the commentary right after the reaction. It's a lot more continuous ❤
Really like the addition of the episode trailer! How nostalgic! ❤️❤️❤️
I wasn't sure whether Alex meant Nagilum was an awful special effect or that he/it just looked awful, but I think both are true. I found Nagilum's appearance EXTREMELY disturbing. Ironically, the cheapness of the effect actually helped. It's similar to the way Disney's Haunted Mansion is too impressive to be scary, but a two-bit carnival funhouse can give me the creeps.
Oddly enough one of the illusions i ha e found creepiest of all are the inverted masks that are in the entrance museum to Mount Vernon ….. because of their inverted nature the eyes follow you
Still watching the other video :)
One aspect to consider is the opening holodeck scene is connected to the rest of the episode as the Enterprise is essentially caught in a holodeck without an accessible exit. :)
Wow, that Teaser Trailer is just straight-up lying. I'm almost impressed by how the creative cherry-picking of clips from the Holodeck and the fake Romulan Ship make this episode seem completely different from what it actually is. I wonder if they put in those scenes specifically for the trailer.
It's cool how you just immediately picked up on the Pulaski/Data dynamic being a rip-off of Spock and McCoy. I think it's even weaker in this episode because Data is even more passive about it than in the season premiere. I really liked him getting angry (as angry as Data can be) about her blatant disregard for pronouncing his name right in that episode, but here she calls him "it" and a "device," and he doesn't even flinch. It just comes off as bullying.
It also tells us a lot about Picard that he's at least considering blowing up the Enterprise to deny the creature access to the crew for studying. It is an interesting moral dilemma that doesn't get explored here, sadly. One about the responsibilities of a Captain and if he should even be allowed to make such a decision for his crew. They are ultimately revealed as fake, but Fake Trio and Fake Data aren't wrong when they question how Picard can just decide to kill himself and the entire crew in what could be seen as him just denying their captor for the sake of ego.
Ego? He's saving them from whatever torture this unknown being can conjure up. Also, you have no guarantee it'll stop after "1/3 of the crew".
Yes -- this trailer in particular taught me to never take much stock in the trailers. This one was more egregious, but they were often a source of much misdirection.
"Where Silence has Lease"
Or
"Cake and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test."
First, you will be baked. Then, there will be cake
I don’t think this is a spoiler in any way, but I think the next episode is one of the first truly great TNG episodes that show you the caliber of what is possible. I can’t wait to watch you guys watch it.
I think the Pulaski/Data dynamic might have worked better had she been there since the beginning. Maybe not but yeah it definitely did not work here.
The whole point is she is the outsider and isn't used to Data and hasn't yet accepted him as an equal. He's unique. It's not like anybody else anywhere in the galaxy has regular contact with a sentient cybernetic life form. She even references in this episode the bad timing of joining the crew.
@@MichaelJShafferThat is a possible reason however data was completely new to the rest of the crew in season 1 and nobody else reacted to him as anything less than a person.
It does seem like the doctor has a specific bias against machines, it might even be less like a rehash of bones and Spock where it seemed like a sparring match of logic and emotion but more like bones hatred of teleporters where the old fashioned character has a mistrust of new technology.
Pulaski's interaction with Data reminds me more of Spock's interaction with Stiles than Spock's interaction with McCoy.
Also, the Bones/Spock one worked because both got their digs in, and there were moments they both put that aside and actually showed they respected each other. With Pulaski it feels like she's just kicking a puppy.
I don't see any hostility from Pulaski towards Data. More like an indifference. It's like a person who's never owned a pet walking into a household where the family dog is treated like a child. The family sees the newcomer as insensitive, and the newcomer sees the family as a little bit crazy.
The prologue hook wasn't a "test" for Worf. This is just the kind of program Worf runs in his free time to keep sharp and burn off his excess anger. He even calls it his calisthenics.
Riker is just there socially, I assume, because he wants to get closer to Worf in his new role as head of security. They will be working together on away missions more.
The first Negilum appearance when he rotates into view creaped me out in '88 (9 years old), but now all I can see are the skin gaps at the eyes & mouth outside the green paint.
I like this one because I felt they did this haunted house episode well. There's not many episodes of Trek where they do stuff like this, so they're pretty fun for me.
Every time I get upset, frustrated, or angry I say to myself, "One Riker, one bridge!"
6:00 = GREAT observation re the direction and how the director's decisions really elevated this episode.
Yes. I always get something new from the TA reactions and analysis. In this case, it was a new appreciation for the direction and the music.. They were both A+ work on an otherwise problematic episode.
The creature which devoured Klingon vessels is one where V'GER from The Motion Picture for me comes to mind by how a single plasma weapon vaporized each ship one by one could be looked at as being devoured.
Rage is a big factor of the Klingons psyche, but here I feltvthat Worf was kinda flanderized as "Angry Klingon"
This was still early in the TNG-era redefinition of Klingons. Or maybe it’s to show that Worf was trying to be more warrior-like after getting thrown around so much in the first season.
There is a collection of oak knots on my bookshelf that looks like Nagilum. I stare at it while I work out. I'm not sure if it motivates me or scares me.
I personally think Picard was bluffing in this case but had to push it to the last second to maximize the chance Negilum wasn’t bluffing back.
It wouldn’t make sense to kill everyone to spare the crew from possibly dying. Perhaps to spare them from torture but I don’t think he played out all options before getting there, I think a captain would exhaust all possibilities before pushing the button unless he was using it as brinksmanship.
Picard has a pretty unbendable streak though. I could see him blowing up the ship to not be just a passive pawn in someone's experiment.
Nagilum is suppose to be from "outside of the universe." So it has no understanding of anything, such as life or death. With Q, he understands humanity and judges them based on this knowledge. Nagilum simply wants to test and experiment on these new "things" it has come across.
This entity is similar to the one in "Immunity Syndrome" only on the most superficial level.
On TOS, their encounter was with a truly enormous single-celled organism. On TNG, Nagilum was of a higher intelligence from a different dimension.
Other than blacking out stars upon entering, they had almost nothing in common. Wildly different things are happening inside in each case. I'm not sure I'm understanding all the comparisons.
The way I see the Doctor Pulaski and Data dynamic vs that of Bones and Spock is that Pulaski and Data interactions are designed to address prejudice by ignorance, whereas the Bones and Spock dynamic was just two very different characters getting along despite their culture and differences of behavior, ultimately becoming best of friends despite their differences. In societies there are issues of prejudice simply because someone is different and dehumanizing them because of it. Then there are issues of prejudice based entirely on ignorance and a refusal to see things from another point of view, therefore dehumanizing individuals from a different angle. The Pulaski and Data dynamic would be the latter, though the difference being that Pulaski is a doctor, a profession that utilizes objectivity, therefore providing an example of how we should behave when faced with circumstances like those between Pulaski and Data.
YES. Exactly!
As for the crew not knowing of a hole in space before, the intrepid was a Vulcan ship and crew. The Vulcan council could have suppressed the information from star fleet and sworn kirk to secrecy.
A small point, the carrier USS Enterprise was the most decorated American warship in WWII, and the USS Yamato was the lead ship of the Yamato class of battleships for the Japanese, their largest battleships. This episode was filmed 43 years after the war was over, when many WWII vets were still alive and the living memory of WWII was still very much in the public consciousness. As a result, the writers were showing the former enemy ships were now sister ships in the same fleet. A small nod to humanity's future unity.
The aliens in "Schisms" were also very disturbing.
That preview gives too much away. I'm glad I hadn't seen it before watching. Nagilum is therefore a surprise.
The previews were truly awful when you look back on them now, managing to be very misdirecting and spoilerish at the same time.
My favorite part of your reaction to this episode was when the Nagilum announced he was going to kill 1/3 of the crew: "Jesus!"
My favorite part was every time Nagilum appears. "OH GOD--!"
Perhaps the best thing about the death of linear television, is the absence of promo ads and their spoilers.
In the next episode of Star Trek, the crew will be captured by an alien face and be experimented on...
In the next episode of Star Trek, Tasha Yar will be perma-killed, so remember to tune in and feel shocked...
With streaming/piracy we get to watch shows fresh without the spoilers (unless you watch youtube reviews of it too early! :D )
I personally don't think they were actively going for parallels between Pulaski/Data and Bones/Spock
They understood it was uncanny valley and this was using the era's CGI to its fullest.
I will forever love Pulaski ripping on Data, who is just a walking talking computer
I don’t think we get the same type of direction we see in seasons1-2 that we get In the later seasons. It seemed more experimental in these early days.
Speaking of Word, I would have said that it was “Blood lust” he was experiencing, or at least still in Warrior Kick arse mode than just anger.
Nagilum is voiced by Earl Boen who played the psychiatrist in the first two Terminator movies.
Data is the 3. in command of the ship. He outranks everybody on the ship except Riker and Picard. The doctor might have a slightly higher rank but she is in medical and not in command. Treating Data like that is totally out of line. These people are very used to being around weird creatures and wouldn't act like this.
Yes. The line of operational authority is a separate chain of command from specialty corps authority. No one would take tactical or navigational orders from a medical admiral over against a commander of the line. But if the admiral told a crew member how to treat a medical triage situation, they would.
Trying to remember what I originally thought about this episode. I guess I thought that the writers were trying to play it safe by going back to story ideas raised in TOS. And I also felt that they were still trying to develop the main characters and how they related to each other. But I did kinda like the creepiness of the alien entity.
So the other Galaxy Class in this episode was reportedly named after a Japanese Battleship that was sunk during WWII. Famously, this Battleship was the subject of a massively successful 1970s - 80s SF Anime Franchise where it was converted into a spaceship. (By massively successful, I mean when Star Wars made it to Japan, It didn't topple the Box Office record set by the film adaptation of the original series that had been released a year or two prior.) In the 80s it got an English dub named Starblazers and was a touchstone of early anime fandom in the US. However, despite many of TNG's writers and crew being avowed anime fans, they insist they were not aware of this connection when they named the USS Yamato. And in fairness, the English dub renamed the ship to the "Argo" only mentioning the original battleship's name at the very beginning of the series as the source of their salvage material to build their new space battleship. But this strangely specific denial smacks of Paramount's legal department telling everyone to hush up the inspiration/homage for some unknown reason. Other, later anime references made in TNG imply a deeper awareness of the state of 80s anime on the part of the cast and crew, and it seems highly implausible that they would both somehow have a blindspot to one of the most prominent titles of the era, AND coincidentally chose a WWII ship name associated with that title.
It's one of the best directed TNG episodes I think. Really good use of camera movement, lighting and staging. Also the death scene of the young navigator is great and could so easily have been awkward but he's super well directed.
"A surprise attack hurls the Enterprise into a great void"...Well, THAT was misleading, narrator guy
Yeah, that was one epic misdirect. Although I think I would have liked the episode promised in the preview a lot more: A Romulan attack hurls the Enterprise to a planet with dangerous creatures the the crew must fight off.
I wish they had Wesley exit the bathroom at the back of the bridge just after Haskel died.
Your reaction to Dr Pulaski is a common one. They tried to create a Bones-Spock dynamic with Data, but as you said, it lacks that sense of back and forth that Bones and Spock had simply because Data doesn't do snark. As a consequence it simply feels like Pulaski is bullying Data and falls flat with a lot of fans.
Between season 1 and 2, I thought this was one of the better episodes. I liked the mystery of it.
They originally wanted Richard Mullligan to play Nagilium (which is Mulligan in reverse).
I guess RUclips doesn't have a way to let you know how often I check to see if have released a new video.
I still think everything that happens from here on might be Nagilum watching them to see what they will do. Like they never really left.
You beat me to it! I often wondered whether their escape was merely an illusion created by Nagilum and, as such, the rest of TNG (& beyond) could also be an ongoing illusion?
That is always the problem when you have set up a scenario where the characters cannot trust their senses. Can they trust that they have really escaped? It is a premise behind The Matrix movies.
Worf's call last season episode. "the object is not to engage the creature in battle, the objective is the safe return of Counselor Troi and Lt Priado" Picard gives him the exactly look.
Haskell was just taking Wesley's station for a few minutes while Wesley went to pee.
You probably already seen the next episode, but the next one is one of my favorites of the whole series.
Indubitably so.
I enjoyed this episode.
Turns out the next six seasons are just various simulations taking place within this phenomenon. :p
Q was about behavior. Nagilum is more into lab experiments?
I liked the Pulaski/Data dynamic. The makers clearly wanted similarity but not to do a cookie cutter copy of McCoy/Spock. IMHO, it works, but many understandably didn't like it. It eould be worse if Pulaski did McCoy style lines and Data doing predoctable snipey retorts.
Kolbe was a great director in this
the worf and riker scene om the yamato was the payoff for the opener with them in the holodeck
That’s Incredibly Cool! Have a great weekend! 🤗❤️✨
I don't know if someone already said this, but I am not sure I agree that the start of the episode was a "test for Worf". I think Picard was more worried about Riker, but that was just MY take...
I like this one. Not my favorite, but a good tense episode.
When TNG was remastered for blu•ray, various effects shots were recreated and enhanced ... what passed as OK for 19" - 25" NTSC CRTs wasn't going to look so great "upscaled" to 1080p. While doing so they largely remained faithful to the original, making no additions nor performing any recreations. Still, I was surprised that they recreated nagillum so slavishly. still looks the same as it did in the laste '80s, just at higher res.
1.) I think Picard's reaction when Riker comes back, is amusement not at Riker per se but because he SEES what's happening now - normally calm Riker has been sent over the edge by "the rat maze", he sees now that his people are being used as rats in a maze, and he's sort of giving credit to whoever is masterminding it (Nagilum hadn't shown up yet.) 2.) I heard this episode was originally supposed to be a Q ep.
I have a theory as to why they don't know anything about space holes and what not: with all the weirdness that Kirk & co. faced, Starfleet command thought Kirk was bullshiting them, and they buried those logs. We as the audience knows it's true, but the people outside to the main characters are skeptical.
Lol Imagine people don't remember Kirk as this great Captain but as this Munchausen-eque Tall Tale teller.
They would have had sensor records etc as well as the logs to prove it.
@@ivaneames4354 They don't have any sensor records of the Romulan ship or the Yamato.
@@pigs18 True, but I would imagine that everything that appears on the viewscreen is recorded so those images could still be proof.
Plus, in the original series episode where Kirk was court martialed there were cameras recording the bridge. If that is still the case in TNG then that would be proof too. In fact since we know for a fact they were on Kirk's Enterprise, that is extra proof for his reports too so that's another counter to the OP's original theory.
Where TOS would try to present a moral to the story in order to justify what had happened, here... interesting things happen until the run time is filled. This is a model filler episode for TNG.
I get your concern about it being a "Q" episode without Q, but I think this entity isn't about testing humanity. I think you should view it as a general trap. The alien "scientist" basically set a trap out in the woods to capture whatever might come along. Once the trap is triggered, then the behavioral experiments begin. It's simply studying some creatures that wandered into it's trap. Q on the other hand is interested in humanity in general and Picard specifically.
Maybe Wesley had to go to the restroom? Lunch break? LOL!!!
This specific type of hole is unique and the Enterprise explores phenomenon and does general exploration where the main pathways of federation commerical traffic are safe inside the federations zone of control
Really enjoying your reactions to one of my favorite series. I think it would be interesting to see how you rate each episode at the end Like on a 1 - 10 scale. Episode ratings are usually pretty controversial and you coming from a different perspective than many of us who have seen these episodes countless times could provide a fresh take.
Keep up the great reactions, I know I know a lot of people are down on season 2, But it has Some great gems.... Looking forward to see how you react to those!
Q, Armos blob, Nagilum, the Traveller and that old guy face from that episode, lots of characters who are these superior life forms who don't understand us, trap the ship until their curiosity is satisfied or the ship can get away. It does seem like the Q are on a more substantially higher level of intelligence and existence than some of these.
I figured that y'all would like Worf's calisthenics program.
Dr. Katherine Pulaski and Data have a satisfying relationship arc in my humble opinion. She gruff, but I believe it’s towards technology , which Data optimizes.
Cheers!
I remembered this as a bad episode but after watching your review I’d have to rank it as an average to maybe even slightly above average episode of Trek.
Alien face reminds me of Gizmo the Gremlin.
Picard is a great character. Written differently depending on the episode, but you can look forward to many more interesting aspects of his personality.
I ranked this 11th out of 22 for the season, so right in the middle, better than The Child, but still with 10 others that are better. I ranked it 112th for the series. I liked all the things you said you liked about it, too, but it got major points taken away for the insertion of a random redshirt to die in the bridge scene. It's not that I wanted Wesley to be the one, but just that he left and returned with the redshirt in between. A very simple change would make it rank much higher, as in not having Wesley appear on the bridge at all in the episode (perhaps appearing in some other part of the ship, if at all) or at least not until well after the other character's death. Good episode. Not great.
They really didn't do Dr. Pulaski, treating fan favourite Data like that. I think with Bones and Spock it worked better because they have both been there from the start. But here Data is already established and liked by many, then this new person comes in. In retrospect, at least there they allowed some inner crew conflict with that, which was usually a no-go in TNG and imo prevented them from some interesting story potential.
Would a Klingon ever scream?
The Spock/McCoy dynamic worked because both gave as good as they got. When Pulaski first joins the crew, she just picks on Data, and he just takes it. It doesn't come off the same way, and it really doesn’t work.
Wesley picked the right time to take a bathroom break
Could that trailer be any more deceptive about the actual story?
Great discussion! I enjoy the perspectives you both share. Thank you.
The writer of this episode also wrote The Wrath of Khan.
0:21 You gotta love how the promo uses the irrelevant holodeck battle to make this episode look "exciting".
This is the "mystery episode" that neither the crew nor the viewers could figure out until late in the story that y'all were looking for in Season 1.
Seeing these old episode intros man.
I'd point out that like the original Star trek, the special effects were redone for Next Gen in HD. So Nagilum looks terrible in the remaster, not that he looked that great to begin with.
I like this episode and enjoy rewatching it. It's got action, suspense, mystery, and good character moments.
they did though, acknowledging they are both intensely curious. This thing was also clearly from a different dimension, by humanoids is what it meant by humans
I don't think Picard was bluffing.
He knew it could be terribly cruel if Nygel kept the crew, and dangerous if he kept the ship, and dangerous if Nygel thought he could keep getting other beings if he thought there would be no consequences to him.
best series still original