Where did Wesley go in "Where Silence Has Lease"?

You know, in that scene with the guy at conn who gets offed by Nagilum. Wesley is there for literally the entire episode right up to that scene, and indeed for every scene afterwards, but at that crucial moment he's very conspicuously f**ked off somewhere else for a bit.

Where do we think he vanished to, then?

My money is on him having needed a toilet break. He probably said to the other guy, "Dude, can you cover me for, like, five minutes? I really need to go to the bathroom." And then when he comes back (I hope he remembered to wash his hands first!), the other guy's lying there dead on the floor.

Sucks to be that conn guy though, huh? Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

Kinda silly. They could have done it by having Wesley at the conn and then having the guy who snuffed it being at one of the aft stations.

Or just leave it with Nagilum offing Wesley.

Yes....

 

It was probably time for Wil to meet his on-set teacher for social studies class.

 

I always wondered this. It was far too much of a coincidence for him to just not be there during the murder of that poor man. He must have had insider information.

It's a silly red-shirt moment that could have been scripted better to allow Wesley to stay on the bridge, but it doesn't take away from the rest of an otherwise excellent episode.

 

It is a superb episode, and one of my absolute favorites. I love the atmosphere of it, the strange sense of phantasmagoria it's got going on. But that moment with the red shirt stands out like a sore thumb, and is made even worse by the ending (Picard has a pleasant little chat with Nagilum and gives it props for it's curiosity, apparently forgetting that one of his crew has basically been murdered!).

It isn't enough to ruin the episode for me though. Just a little niggle.

 

I've always seen that as evidence of Picard's professionalism. As hard as it is to understand for us, I expect a lot of death in space exploration has to be seen as "fish gonna swim, bird gonna fly", aliens do not understand our values, morality or emotions, and therefore might see human life as cheap, or not associate it directly with value. Nagilum seems to not even really understand death.

Therefore Picard is conditioned, although likely hurting inside, to maintain a professional facade with murdering aliens. He is relatively personable with Q, who was responsible in Q-Who for the deaths of 18 of his crew (albeit not directly).

 

Bathroom.