Throughout Star Trek’s episodes, Starfleet has encountered and catalogued many strange
new lifeforms and occasionally, been encountered in turn. Hi, Ric here and this short video
is exploring just what exactly is Nagilum, the mysterious entity that captured the USS
Enterprise and almost forced the crew’s hand to self-destruct.
This is a rather obscure creature as it only appears in one episode and there aren’t
even many other stories or sources that included the appearance of such a being in the extended
lore, so for the most part, we’re going to have to build off what’s been seen in
the show. It might also be easier to look at what he’s not as a process of elimination.
In a mapping mission to the unexplored Morgana Quadrant, a sector of space unvisited by manned
Federation ships, the Enterprise encounters a strange hole in space. Apparently the first
time that a phenomenon like this has been recorded, however upon being consumed by it,
they begin to experience strange events such as the emergence of enemy combatants and exits
that move. Not long after the entity known as Nagilum reveals itself to the crew.
He claims to be immortal to have no concept of death and this is backed up by his motivations
in the show as he is amazed by the concept of mortality. He describes it as a limited
existence and is rather baffled by the idea that a being simply is here, then not. To
this end, he kills off the Conn officer and decides that he will kill a further third
of the ship in order to study it more. Eventually his plan is thwarted when Captain Picard initiates
the self-destruct meaning that none would remain for Nagilum to study. Nagilum concludes
that humanity is rather more militant and they stubbornly attempted to defy the inevitable,
letting them begrudgingly go. This encounter also makes clear a number of
things. Nagilum was capable of much within the pocket of nothing that made up its realm.
It could manifest form and substance such as a Romulan Warbird and facsimiles of the
USS Yamato and it not only was telepathic, but could kill with but a thought.
Deanna Troi used her empathic abilities to eventually detect its presence, originally
having trouble conceiving of its existence she describes it as vast. Betazoid abilities
do not require a biological brain from which to gather readings, instead they perceive
anything that could be counted a conscious thought, formless or not. At the very least,
this shows that Nagilum’s thought processes were alien enough to be unreadable, but not
so different. Not only was it able to simply kill crewmembers at a whim but it also could
seize control, or at least impair the functions of the body in order to examine its effects.
It also exhibited curiosity and a desire to learn of the crew it had captured, however
its intent could be described as malevolent. This is because it was effectively experimenting
with death against the will of the captured and despite Nagilum being initially unaware
of the tragedy of death, such a drive to continue to toy with the crew could be described accurately
as malevolent in my opinion. Maybe unintentional, if I was being lenient, but still it persisted
in its study even after it became aware that death was not a pleasant experience. So Nagilum
was a dick. It first became aware of the idea of death from the minds of the crew, essentially
reading their minds to learn of their concepts. In this way too it picked up the names of
the senior staff even before it fully understood them. For example it learned their names before
it learned about androids and genders. After being told of the differences, it claimed
it now understood so while Nagilum is very powerful, intelligent and psychic, it was
not omniscient. It had to be made aware that there was information to pursue before it
could pluck the answers from the minds of its captives.
It seemed to be formless and incorporeal but could manifest itself in a number of different
ways. It appeared to the crew as a face, proportions distorted, but in an effort to provide a reference
point for the crew to commune with. This image was presented on both viewscreens and later
on Picard’s personal computer and it also appeared in the forms of Data and Troi at
one point. These manifestations could have simply been
illusions by its immense psychic powers, but it should be noted that Riker and Worf were
able to beam over to the false USS Yamato and take readings of the ship’s hull. They
concluded that it was not made from standard Starfleet materials, but in fact made from
a substance foreign to their understanding and they did not die in the vacuum of nothingness
so there really was a ship there. Also the torpedoes from the Romulan Warbird were real
and damaging to the Enterprise. The thing is, it manifested both a Romulan
Warbird with cloaking signature and an accurate representation of the Yamato within minutes
of the Enterprise being within the void. Sure, this information may have been plucked from
the minds of the crew, but with such precision as to fool the Enterprise into thinking these
readings were genuine? I think it far more likely that whatever mental powers Nagilum
had, also allowed it to search through the information of the computers and draw out
both a convincing adversary and ally for its subjects.
Its ability to interface with the ships systems is supported by the fact that at one point,
it simply shut off main power, however the Galaxy class starship merely switched to reserves.
Even after the Enterprise was released, it contact Picard via the terminal in his office,
showing that in some regards Nagilum’s powers were not entirely limited to the confines
of its strange realm. Speaking off which, the void itself, the hole
in space was mentioned to be unique by Data as nothing similar to it had ever been encountered.
It was recorded as nothingness but despite those claims, there have been similar instances
of void. In 2268 the original Enterprise NCC-1701 and the USS Intrepid encountered a giant single-celled
life form shrouded in a zone of darkness. Initially, no readings could penetrate it
and all probes and scans were absorbed by it of resulted in some very nasty interference
and noise. However, despite not being any state of matter,
ship’s shields registered it so therefore it was likely some form of energy. Also, the
mystery of this cloud of “errrr” was eventually solved and recorded by the Enterprise.
Similar to this is the existence of Null-Space, a realm of intense fields of gravity, energy
and such that absorbs any energy entering it and although it lies beyond a threshold,
much as Nagilum’s realm did, it was also discovered in 2368 and was nothing like the
void. We also have other realms such as fluidic
space, which I’ve already done a theory video on but sufficed to say, no. Nor is it
a realm of subspace such as the Solanagen-based lifeforms realm as seen in “Schisms”.
These beings shared the experimental nature of Nagilum, but their layer of the universe
is a rather well understood one by Federation science, being the bedrock of much FTL technology
in Star Trek so it’s very unlikely that the Enterprise would not recognize subspace
when they saw it. This also rules out the void encountered by Voyager in the Delta Quadrant
as this was a subspace pocket too. Honestly, the closest thing I can think of
is the interphasic realms between universes that the USS Defiant disappeared into before
crossing over into the Mirror Universe. In Kirk’s brief time there he described the
void as an endless nothing and a terrifyingly lonely existence. Exposure to the interphasic
rifts however causes all sorts of problems such as insanity however, so if Nagilum’s
void was a form of interphasic rift, he’d have to have done something about that.
Then again, Nagilum did show the ability to alter and bend space within his realm. With
the Enterprise D engaging up to warp 6 within the pocket void only to find itself back where
it started and the strange special phenomena encountered on the false Yamato, Nagilum seemingly
could fold this pocket at whim. Again, it could all have been an illusion, but we are
shown shots of the Enterprise actually flying around, the ship’s instruments say so and
no-one contradicts the claim that they are in motion in the show, so I’m going to say
Nagilum could alter its realm as it desired. This also makes sense if it was trying to
create a laboratory environment. In such a setup, you want to control as many of the
variables as possible to prevent unforeseen outside interference so a dimension that you
were in complete control of would be perfect. What made Nagilum’s realm unique however
was the seeming lack of dimension. Quite how a 3 dimensional ship, let alone one in linear
time could exist in a dimensionless plane baffles me. And to be fair, it baffled the
crew too. Communication through the boundary of this zone is impossible however, even when
there was an opening present back to “real space”. I’d suggest that this might be
because subspace simply isn’t present here or something, this could explain why the Enterprise
could not communicate outside of the tear nor warp out of it, but again, they never
find out, so nor do we. What is apparent however is that this opening
did have a boundary that could be controlled and withdrawn as seen when it consumed and
eventually released the Enterprise. And as Data puts it, the very fact that it has discernible
edges and that they entered it means that it is very much real.
In conclusion, Nagilum itself is a mystery but more understandable than the realm that
it created. The void defies everything the crew understood of space and the nearest thing
that they could compare it to was another dimensions. We’re not even one hundred percent
certain that this is the native realm of Nagilum or merely some pocket lab that it was able
to pop into existence to snare curious passers-by. It could open, close, manipulate and create
at will within its confines like some sort of advanced holodeck, but nothing within the
Federation’s sensors, which are some of the best around, could make head nor tails
of it. This leads to three conclusions in my eyes. One, Nagilum is truthful in its claims
to be immortal and without death, making it an extra-dimensional entity looking to pry
into the perceivable universe, perhaps even formed from, (or actually be) the void around
it. Very weird and eldritch, full of contradicting concepts that the puny mortal mind cannot
understand and therefore, very fun. Two, Nagilum may not be as esoteric as all that and Federation
sensors just could not identify anything it was using as it’s far to advanced. This
is supported by Riker’s claim that the fake Yamato’s materials were far beyond anything
they could do. Or three, Nagilum is merely a very powerful illusionist and psychic. This
last one is undeniably true as we witness it first hand in the episode. However, as
mentioned in my opening, this episode is never referenced again, so we have no reason to
assume that the Enterprise’s logs and sensor data were wrong. Making the idea that everything
from the void itself to the crew’s interactions an illusion, rather hard to swallow.
Unless the experiment never ended… in which case, the sensors are an illusion too… and
that’s why Nagilum appeared to Picard after the “left” the void! They are still in
the illusion! They never escaped, the rest of the shows were a lie! Star Trek isn’t
real! I mean, Star Trek isn’t real. But Star Trek isn’t real! Ahh!
Anyway, I’ve been Ric, thanks for watching this vid and until next time, Goodbye!