“The Naked Now”
Written by J. Michael Bingham (D.C. Fontana), story by John D.F. Black (“The Naked Time”) and J. Michael Bingham
Directed by Paul Lynch
Season 1, Episode 3
Original air date: October 5, 1987
Star date: 41209.2
Mission summary
After receiving bizarre messages from the S.S. Tsiolkovsky, a science ship studying a collapsing star, Enterprise races at warp 7 to investigate. They make brief contact with what sounds like the Tsiolkovsky’s phone sex operator just before someone blows an emergency hatch on the ship, killing everyone on board.
Riker leads an away team to find out what caused the erratic behavior. Apparently they’ve just missed an epic frat party which left a huge mess and a bunch of frozen and naked corpses. La Forge rescues a woman from the shower, but with his usual luck in love, she’s both frozen and fully dressed. Touching her still makes him feel funny inside.
The away team returns to Enterprise for a full medical examination to make sure that what happened on Tsiolkovsky stays on Tsiolkovsky, but La Forge is sweating profusely and unusually ill-tempered, so Dr. Crusher decides to confine him to Sickbay. Quarantine apparently means he can leave whenever he wants, so he walks out sans commbadge to hang out with Wesley, who’s playing with his little tractor beam in his quarters.
Riker remembers seeing something like this on an old science fiction show, so he asks Data to search the database for similar circumstances. Yar finally locates La Forge, now in the observation lounge suffering from melancholy, and delivers him to Sickbay. She’s obviously sweating just like patient zero, but no one notices. Crusher and Troi explain to Picard that the medical scanners show nothing wrong with La Forge, even though he’s acting like a sad drunk.
Data’s Google search finally produces the answer: this same plot was used in the original series episode “The Naked Time.” They send this information to Crusher so she can recreate the last-minute cure the crew of the previous Enterprise discovered, and continue to download Tsiolkovsky’s research data while remaining really close to the star that’s likely to explode. Not to worry, they can easily get out of the way in plenty of time! As long as no one takes over the ship and disables the engines…
Wesley takes over the ship and disables the engines, using his homemade tractor beam to repel people from Engineering. While Riker and Chief MacDougal try regain control, the rest of the crew is getting hot and bothered. Yar seduces Data in her quarters and Crusher, frustrated that the formula for the serum doesn’t work, or just frustrated in general, makes a move on Picard.
The star collapses, sending a chunk of its matter right for the stuck Enterprise. Though MacDougal shuts down Wesley’s tractor beam, they have to wait until Data can reinsert a stack of isolinear chips into the computer before the engines can go online. As the clock ticks toward the end credits, Crusher successfully develops a cure based on the original formula and begins administering it throughout the ship, while Wesley buys Data some time by reconfiguring the ship’s tractor beam to push Tsiolkovsky toward the star mass, giving them a nudge in the opposite direction. The engines switch on just in time and Enterprise warps to safety.
Now that everyone is safe and sane again, things could be a little awkward. Yar tells Data that he should act as though the tender moment they shared never happened. Good advice for everyone, really.
PICARD: I put it to you all. I think we shall end up with a fine crew, if we avoid temptation. So, Number One, let’s go to our next job.
Analysis
This is a dreadful episode in general, but it’s even worse as the second regular episode of a new Star Trek series. Not only does it blatantly refer to the predecessor it’s trying to distinguish itself from—which might have delighted some fans—but it manages to take everything that was wonderful about “The Naked Time” and do it wrong. It essentially “borrows” the plot of that episode, almost beat for beat, but leaves behind all of the real, raw emotion and thoughtfulness of the source material in favor of cheap jokes and uncomfortable scenes. This installment of TNG had to be awkward for everyone involved with it. I’m sure a lot of people worried that TNG was simply going to be a pale shadow of the original series, and it would be some time before fans would be proven wrong.
As I considered whether “The Naked Now” contributed anything to the series, I decided its only “value” is to establish that Wesley is some kind of genius—and even that is better done a few episodes later.
WESLEY: If this were a hundred times more powerful than it is. Why not try it with the real thing? Why not reverse fields on this, Ma’am? If we just need an extra minute–
MACDOUGAL: It would take weeks of laying out new circuits.
WESLEY: Why not just see it in your head? Come off the main lead, split off at the force activator, then, then… If I could just think straight about this.
For a moment I thought Riker was going to make the connection and suggest using the tractor beam, and when he didn’t I was somewhat disappointed. It seems to be a bit too much that Wesley invents a reverse tractor beam—something which should already exist–and has the idea to use it to buy them time, and is the only person who can figure out how to make it work when there’s an android, an engineer, and an experienced Starfleet commander standing right next to him. As a kid I might have enjoyed his moment of glory, but as an adult I’m offended. Meanwhile, the awkward geek in me is embarrassed for Wesley, who proudly shows off the recordings he’s made where Captain Picard treats him like a member of the crew. Wish fulfillment, indeed. Sad, lonely child.
I also can’t resist picking apart this tractor beam he’s made. He shows the device moving around a futuristic chair in his quarters, but does that mean it’s also creating some kind of antigravity field? He wouldn’t be able to lift anything otherwise. But that isn’t the worst oversight. Unless I missed it, I don’t see why they can’t beam into Engineering, neatly circumventing his force field. Or maybe, can they go around him? Or transport him out? Why can’t they fire phasers or photon torpedoes at that star mass, or use their tractor beam to push it away, or beam over to Tsiolkovsky and use it to deflect it somehow? The conflict, the ticking clock, are completely contrived, and I would have liked at least some discussion of alternatives, even if they aren’t thinking clearly. (Incidentally, Riker seems to take a really long time to succumb to the infection after being exposed, doesn’t he?)
The relationships and problems are also contrived. “The Naked Time” used this plot to effectively show hidden conflicts and desires within the crew, but “The Naked Now” uses it to… make women throw themselves at men. Nice. Sure, Geordi gets maudlin over his VISOR, because he’s never seen a rainbow–reading or otherwise—but other than that, not one of them has a problem I sympathize with. They don’t act like people. Yar escaped the rape gangs and now all she wants is “love”…from the only non-human aboard? Really? (And seriously, why is that part of his programming?) Judging from her walk to her quarters, I think she would have responded the same way to just about any other guy who walked through those doors. (Except Geordi, of course. Sad, lonely man.) The other big problem is that almost across the board, the acting is terrible, devoid of the subtlety that graced performances in “The Naked Now.” Half the time they don’t seem intoxicated so much as insane.
The only subtle thing in this episode is that the infection seems to have become airborne, because I don’t think they mention that in the dialogue at all. Crusher comments that it may have mutated, but all we get are some weird close-ups of Geordi audibly exhaling, and the fact that it’s spreading much more quickly than it probably would by touch. And there’s another thing—characters go out of their way to find reasons to touch each other, which thankfully is not often the case, and I just don’t understand why the infection doesn’t spread when they touch objects, like Geordi’s commbadge.
Some elements I did enjoy: the presence of a woman Chief Engineer, which I’d forgotten about; the use of a “sonic driver,” which I can only assume is a callout to Doctor Who; and the scene in the teaser of the frozen dead crewmembers, which was graphic and, ahem, chilling.
I first saw this episode years after it aired, out of order, so I’m interested—at what point did fans realize this was a sequel/remake/homage? When you saw the ad for the following week’s episode? During the teaser? Or was it only when you saw the episode title?
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 1 (on a scale of 1-6)
Best Line: DATA: And there was a rather peculiar limerick being delivered by someone in the shuttlecraft bay. I’m not sure I understand it. “There was a young lady from Venus, whose body was shaped like a–”
Trivia/Other Notes: The original treatment for this episode, written by Roddenberry and titled “Revelations,” had Geordi hitting on Tasha, Data acting like a “perfect little boy” like Pinocchio, Troi complaining about her lack of mental privacy, Riker fearing the lonely life that lies ahead for Starfleet captains, and Picard worrying about the families he is responsible for on the ship. (via The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion by Larry Nemecek)
Previous episode: Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2 – “Encounter at Farpoint.”
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 4 – “Code of Honor.”
Horrible, just horrible. There are a few TNG episodes I don’t relish the idea of watching ever again and this is one of them.
Mind you, I’m not a huge fan of the the original “The Naked Time” either, although upon a little reflection I realize that it’s partly because the bad memories of “The Naked Now” have retroactively spoiled my enjoyment of the old episode a bit. But even I have to admit that there are many great moments in “The Naked Time”, passages of memorable dialogue such as Spock’s admission that he feels ashamed of his friendship with Kirk and the “no beach to walk on” bit. I remember no such moments at all from “The Naked Now”, just lots of Treknobabble and hideously misconceived attempts at in vino veritas character development.
Is it just me, or does Data also act drunk? Why?
I’m not a big fan of Wil Wheaton, not because he played Wesley Crusher (which wasn’t his fault) but because he’s reinvented himself into some sort of Internet uberdork who jumps onto every geek bandwagon. But I do like his sarcastic reviews of TNG episodes and he’s especially funny in treating with “The Naked Now”:
http://www.aoltv.com/2006/09/08/star-trek-the-next-generation-the-naked-now/
He points out among other things that Wesley is such a loser that, having created a device that can imitate anyone’s voice, he uses it not for sexual fantasies but to imagine the Captain fawning over him.
Yeah, there’s just no redeeming features here at all. You may also have to add a category for worst line. Here that would have to be, “I feel strange, but also good.”
I think most Trek fans picked up on what was going on pretty quickly. Geordie’s infection vector was even a little like the original, except he wasn’t so stupid as to take off his glove to scratch his nose in his spacesuit. Not that he had either one. In the modern TV world, this episode might have been enough to get the show cancelled. Certainly, the Internet would have been merciless.
I also really like Wil Wheaton’s reviews. He’s collected the one’s he wrote for AOL and some more, up through the halfway point of the first season, and has them for sale as e-book or POD. He was working on the second half, but his acting career started picking up again and he doesn’t seem to have the time to finish. @etomlins, he’s actually often something of a trendsetter among the geek crowd. Plus he’s able to articulate a lot of geek passions outside the community.
I was always a real fan of The Naked Time so when this episode aired I was horrified. If I recall correctly (and I can’t guarantee I do — it might have been a promo later on) they did have a “Next week on Star Trek: The Next Generation” after the Farpoint episode and I knew right away what they were doing. Initially I was sort of fascinated and concerned by the concept because I knew right away that they were referencing the original episode and was afraid they’d mess it up.
As, of course, they did. The Naked Now stopped me from tuning again again the next week. It was also responsible for my hating Wesley. I know I saw a couple of other episodes from Season 1 on the night it first aired after that, but only here and there.
Trivia/Other Notes: The original treatment for this episode, written by Roddenberry and titled “Revelations,” had Geordi hitting on Tasha, Data acting like a “perfect little boy” like Pinocchio, Troi complaining about her lack of mental privacy, Riker fearing the lonely life that lies ahead for Starfleet captains, and Picard worrying about the families he is responsible for on the ship.
All of which would have actually been better than what they actually did. Well, except for Data’s storyline.
“And seriously, why is that part of his programming?”
Because Soong was a creep-and-a-half. He also made a gynoid version of his wife.
Makes the pilot seem Shakespearean by comparison.
The main notable thing for me is the writers obviously did not have a clear understanding at this point of how Data functioned. IIRC, he makes some babbling allusion to his hydraulic systems functioning as a circulatory system, thereby rendering him vulnerable to the infection.
In later seasons, almost to a trope, Data as a pure mechanoid would be the one to save the day when biological hazards or frailties of the human condition threatened the crew. Interesting that at this time the writers didn’t see that potential.
Also of historical interest is the creators did not cast a representative of the engineering section as a major player in the series. They would later correct that with Geordie’s promotion. It’s an odd omission, particularly as the engineering dept plays so central a role in this episode.
Maybe they understood they didn’t have the budget to do many scenes away from the bridge….
Something I’m glad they minimized in later episodes were scenes of Data operating at superhuman speeds (hitting the fast forward on the video remote).
“The Six Million Dollar Man” would render superhuman scenes like this in slo-mo, and the technique seems brilliant in the comparison.
#2, DemetriosX: That’s cool, that Wheaton has done more TNG episode reviews. I had been wondering why he stopped and it’s good to know it’s because he’s been busy. It might not have come across that way in my earlier comment but I sincerely wish the guy well; Paramount did a number on him and Wheaton deserved better at their hands.
All the same, I remember following him on Twitter for a bit and thinking him a colossal bore after a couple of weeks; he seemed like the kind of guy who would make “the cake is a lie” jokes long after they’d ceased to be funny. And, well, the guy is pretty close to my age (he’s got about two years on me) and guys my age are never going to be all that hip to contemporary culture. He tries, though, and to my eyes he looks faintly ridiculous in trying.
I did see Wheaton speak once; I think it was at an “Emerald City Comicon” a couple of years ago. He wasn’t bad at telling stories but he wasn’t any Garrison Keillor.
Knew what it was right away, but gave up on it somewhere around “fully functional”. This, along with the pilot, “Angel One”, and the bouncy Ferengi, these were why I stopped watching the show for several years. I think it was DS9’s onset that brought me back, as I wanted to find out more about O’Brien’s past (yay for enlisted crew! Up the Other Ranks!, says the former corporal).
Wil Wheaton is a fairly popular figure in the geek community, yes, but his incessant frat-boy-style sexism is really irritating. He played a disturbingly convincing serial killer and rapist in an episode of Criminal Minds.
I remember being primarily irritated at the time that they regarded it as some kind of big deal that a tractor beam could push. They’d already established that the things could work in both directions back in TOS.
@9 S. Hutson Blount
Yes. Whatever magic powers a tractor suggests its reciprocal.
Wasn’t this illustrated in “Paradise Syndrome,” when the Amerind obelisk shoves an asteroid back into space? If Starfleet didn’t have the idea before, they sure had it after. …I am assuming SF is at least bright enough to send a tech team to survey every world that exhibits some new-fangled widget not currently in the Gazetteer of Groovy Gadgets.
I remember having a feeling from the promo and I was sure as soon as I realized Geordi was getting infected. This one didn’t even have a great little throw-away line like The Naked Time’s “No dance tonight.”
@ 4 BSD,
Soong must have also kept his battered copy of A.I. on hand to inspire his research. “Hey Joe. What do you know?” Yes, that character.
What Toryx said. This put me off watching any more TNG for ages, until I started going to semi-regular ‘Trek meets’ in London, where they somehow had copies of episodes that hadn’t been shown yet. They were about Season 3 or 4, I think, and were good enough that I started to take an interest in the series again.
This week’s review reminded me those of sfdebris, though generally you aren’t half as cruel as him. :-) Not as if this episode did not deserve it, because it did.
I just thought of something. Why does this happen when a star is getting ready to explode? Things happen in nature for reasons. Many species of trees drop their leaves when the shorter daylight periods in the fall signal them to prepare for winter. When an early heavy snowfall catches them with their leaves in place the leaves all catch snow that would have otherwise fallen through the empty branches. The breakage from all that extra weight could kill the tree. So. Why should water go all screwy as the star and the fields around it are changing? Could it be part of nature’s way of preparing its life forms for what is about to happen?
If they wanted to revisit the ideas from The Naked Time, could they have done it in a way that added to what was already in place? (And not take away from what the original did have going for it?) Just sitting here I’ve come up with an idea that the science ship could have been there to study just that effect – because the star in a more populated system has started showing signs that it’s thinking about exploding. Even though they were there to study this, it got away from them because it had manifested itself in a different form here. The Enterprise is sent because the data is very important to Star Fleet’s planning on how to deal with the possible threat in that other system. This way, the acting drunk becomes the “B” story – meaning it is no longer an attempt to retell the original story. Oh, what could have been.
The Naked Now? Kill it with fire!
They do have reverse tractor beams- see the main navigational deflector.
Transporting into Engineering might be thwarted by the force field; deflectors are a bar (from A Taste of Armageddon).
I anticipated a reimagining from whenever I saw the title, and thought it would be a good yardstick to compare the two series. Boy, was I right- for a while.
It’s a tossup whether most of the actors were better in the original Star Trek, or were they given better material. Either way, blech.
When did I realize this was a re-do of “The Naked Time”? I think I found out before the episode aired, though I wouldn’t swear to it.
The last time I saw this episode was at a Star Trek con I attended back in the mid-90s. I have no idea why they decided to screen this particular episode.
Rewatching just now, I did actually laugh once — when Worf told Data, “I don’t understand their humor, either.”
I hate hate hate hate hate hate this episode. Almost as much as I hate the next one. Not only is it awful and offensive and stupid and ruins something fantastic from TOS, but it makes me want to airlock all of these people forever. The acting is particularly bad–even Patrick Stewart is hamming it up.
Am I the only one who watches this and thinks, “the writers have obviously never been drunk before”? These guys all seem to have a little voice in their heads telling them to burn things. I can’t say that’s ever happened to me drunk, but maybe I’m doing it wrong.
Most irritating non-character moments: a tie between Wesley’s reverse tractor beam and Data putting in the isolinear chips. There’s already a reverse tractor beam! ARRGH. And his programmable voice recorder of Picard praising him is particularly pathetic. But the Data thing… why does control of the engines require 200+ rectangular chips that aren’t even behind a freaking panel and all look identical?!?! THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
@ 5 Lemnoc
You must be remembering something else, because at no point does anyone explain why Data also gets “drunk.”
@ 8 Cait
I really loved O’Brien, too, until they made him racist for no reason (I think the second season of DS9?) and turned Keiko into a nails-on-chalkboard harpy.
@ 16 Johnny Pez
I also laughed at that line. At least there was one… I suspect I will laugh at nothing in the next episode.
Oh, and my warp rating: Impulse.
Regarding the mutation — no, it is still spreading by touch, specifically hand-to-hand touch. You can tell ’cause there’s a subtle little sound cue when one person infects another, which is always when they have hands-on contact.
Obviously this mutant water virus operates only through palm pores. (What?)
Beyond that I don’t know what to say that hasn’t already been said. This episode is indefensible.
I think in the beginning the writers didn’t really care how Data worked. They just used him in whatever fashion was convenient for them. Someone had the idea that it’d be funny to have a “fully functional” android and therefore he had to be affected by the disease. At that point, any degree of consistency was irrelevant to them.
Nowadays, that sounds pretty ridiculous but back when TNG first aired very few shows really worried about consistency that much. It just wasn’t a big deal to make up the rules as you went along, people actually expected it with tv shows.
Ludon @ 14: Your thinking is exactly the sort of thing I was musing on when the episode first aired. At first, I’d had hopes they’d actually advance the storyline to the point where they discovered that the disease is a product of an exploding star. It wouldn’t make much sense scientifically, but it would have been mildly interesting at least.
But no. Someone else already said, and I agree, that next to The Naked Now, Encounter at Farpoint looks a lot better. Sad, but true. Nowadays, that would be enough to cancel a show; it’s really fortunate that things were different back then.
#17, Torie: “Am I the only one who watches this and thinks, ‘The writers have obviously never been drunk before’?”
Nope. I guess, since it’s space drunkenness or whatever, you can invent whatever symptoms you like for it, which I suppose explains why every single woman on the crew reacts in exactly the same way, by turning into an insatiable nympho, while (unless my memory is quite faulty) none of the men on board get afflicted with cosmic horniness. Well, maybe Data. (Ew!) Let me suggest also that if the first thing that happens when you get drunk is that you turn into a raging megalomaniac, like Wesley did, you should probably seek psychiatric help once you’re sober.
@17 Torie Atkinson
Doesn’t Data say, “If you prick me, do I not …leak ?”
Perhaps that’s what I was thinking of, mind-wrenchingly terrible as it all is.
Lemnoc, you actually weren’t far off. I double-checked the relevant scene (I’m actually that bored at the moment) and Data *does* sort of explain that his “chemical nutrients” are like blood and so he’s similarly affected.
I actually revisited “The Naked Now” and watched some of it. I feel…dirty….the dirt’s not washing off!
@13 enahma
I hadn’t heard of SFDebris before. Interesting commentary! Except for his fake accents.
@19 DeepThought
Regarding the mutation — no, it is still spreading by touch, specifically hand-to-hand touch.
I know it’s originally spread by touch, but how did Captain Picard get it? I think he was already acting oddly before Dr. Crusher threw herself at him. Not that the Bridge crew should notice, since he’s only been captain for what, a week?
@15 sps49
I don’t think they knew what to do with the deflector dish this early in the series. I always thought they should have used it to transfer power to the space jelly in “Encounter at Farpoint.”
@20 Toryx
I agree that if you’re going to recycle a plot, you should at least try to do something new with it and/or be in dialogue with the source. Giving the infection a slight mutation that makes it take a little longer to synthesize a cure is just really lazy.
Some other points… I have no idea what the episode title is supposed to mean, and I’m not sure they did either. They should have just called it “Naked” or “Mostly Naked.”
I also thought it was funny that this episode introduces the first TNG-era tricorders, which apparently Data needs in order to tell him that there are “signs of a wild party.” That’s some advanced tech right there.
I haven’t seen “Code of Honor” in about 11 or 12 years, so the next episode should be quite an experience. It shares a special place in my memory with “The Way to Eden.”
But if they’d just called the episode “Naked” that would’ve raised unwarranted hopes that David Thewlis might’ve popped up.
Sorry for being late to the party. Real life intrudes. (If writing is a real life.)
What si horribly terribly and all sort of other words ending in ‘ly to me is that when this episode aired I tried to defend it. (Yes, go ahead throw your rotten tomatoes. I shall not duck or dodge.) Watching half of it the other night I felt profoundly (more -ly good thing this is not for submission) ashamed for ever saying agood word about this episode. Nothing in it is redeamable,
hmm you just heard the other ship blow out their air and you beam over in shirt-sleeves? You deserve to die. Hmm a strange condition made the other crew go buggy and kill themselves and now one fo the exposed team members is acting buggy and not only do you let him wander around, you don’t confine the whole damn away team, you don;t alert the ship’s crew so they can I don;t knwo avoidn contamination maybe? Nope you just sit and look pretty, good work doctor.
You! Assistant Engineer Jim, you’re called away but you can’t leave your duty station, do you call some poor junior ensign fresh from the academy to watch the board? No, not only do you turn your post over to civilian, you turn it over to a civilian child! (BTW the series Bible stated that there was no engineer main character because the technology was so stable and dependable therw ould be no need for that sort fo characetr. yeah, that lasted.) Oh and a drunk teenage BOY is only concerned with engines and running the ship when *all* the women have been sprayed with the magic space ruffie. ah hem I guess Wesley is gay.
You, Riker! You studied the history of all ships named Enterpeise and al you remember of the original incident is someone in their clothes in a shower? Really? Time Travel just kind of slipped your mind? Brand new matter/anti-matter intermix techonbable and you rmember a shower? Guess you;re the resident teenager.
Of course where the epsisode dies a horribel death is that the idea that this is what the characters are stripped of their offical roles. In the original we glimpsed the real people under the uniforms, here we saw that there was nothing under the uniforms.
(On the subject of data and ‘fully functional’, Roddenberry had wanted Questor to seduce a woman in the pilot for the Questor tapes but the networks nixed the idea, so this is another hand me down given to Data.
Rant over.
@Eugene 24-
We will have to differ on the nav deflector dish. Very early, during the original show (per Whitfield’s The Making of Star Trek) it was described as the main navigational deflector to justify why the ship wasn’t destroyed by every speck of dust in its path during +C velocities. Whether this should apply only during impulse drive or not, and whether Matt Jeffries intended that purpose wasn’t really accounted for, but it was described as such early on. And I feel- with no real world references until we develop that technology- that the supporting subsystems shouldn’t make switching functions a matter of two lines of script and some off-camera moments.
@bobsandiego 26
That reminds me. What kind of spacefaring vessel has 1) no airtight compartmentation and 2) a door easier to open than a 20th century airliner or submarine? Will we evolve beyond the need for failsafes, backups and interlocks?
I can usually overlook bad science and stupidity because “it’s just TV”, but MTV’s Good Vibes cartoon is more internally consistent. This is inexcusably bad.
Raspberry Awards across the board for terrible acting, especially Picard and Geordi! Mein Gott!
@27 sps49
So, the deflector dish is a sort of reverse tractor beam in some cases. Did they just forget about it for this episode? And I didn’t realize until refreshing myself on how it works just how often the writers abused it to do whatever they needed–almost as bad as the transporters!
I liked the fully clothed person in the shower. I do that all the time when I’m drunk.
This episode is awful.
Terrible episode, and even more terrible as a follow-up to a mostly dull pilot. As others have said, this is completely unwatchable today.
I realized that this episode ( although allowing Troi to ditch the space-cheerleader look she sported in “EAF” ) really did a huge disservice to her character by making her pine after Riker ( I generally disliked the re-cycled Decker / Ilia dynamic… too on-the-nose copied from TMP), and making her seem a little snotty ( when she tells Tasha that her clothes wouldn’t look good on Yar…Bitch! Of course, in general, her clothes didn’t look that great on her. She should have been in a uniform from the beginning. That’s when she looked her best – but I digress.
As someone else noted, the touches used to transmit the disease were INCREDIBLY forced. Who the hell walks up to someone they work with and touches the nape of their neck to get their attention? Hello…human resources? I have a complaint about a first officer I work with. Also, is it just me as a gay male, but didn’t Geordi’s friendly little visit to Wesley’s quarters seem … a little off ( again with the touching ). Maybe THAT”S why LaForge never got a girlfriend – Perhaps he wasn’t really that interested…in girls, and just couldn’t admit it to himself ( guess that gay gene eradicating therapy that seems prevalent in the 24th century didn’t quite take on him? remember, in “Hide And Q” he’s the first to appreciatively comment on the ‘grown-up’ Wesley…hmmmm ).
@ 21 etomlins
What makes that Data and Yar scene even creepier is that Data isn’t afflicted by cosmic horniness. He doesn’t become “drunk” until after their… encounter. Yar comes on to him and he goes along with it completely sober. Kind of a weird consent thing there, huh, seeing as she has no idea what she’s doing but he’s in control of his faculties?
@ 26 bobsandiego and @ 27 sps49
The really indefensible part of the teaser is that apparently one airlock evacuated the entire ship. Even old school luxury liners had freaking compartment sealing!
@ 13 Dep1701
The music cue for the touching transmission was just awful. It was right up there with using the title sequence for the saucer separation music in Farpoint.
@Torie #32 re: Data/Yar Consent
…yeah… I hadn’t really thought about that until this viewing through, but he really should’ve been programmed better than that. I suppose he may have some slight out in that Data at this point took absolutely all interactions literally and at face value, so he would not necessarily have had the social awareness to consider the way intoxication could impair the ability to give consent. Yar said she wanted him; ergo she did; anything else would be illogical or something.
…which goes back to Soong being a total pervo for making a “fully functional” android that lacks the social awareness to understand consent. Ick ick ick.
Torie: “He doesn’t become ‘drunk’ until after their… encounter.”
Yeah, you’re right, although I can sort of justify why I remembered it wrong. It seemed like in those earliest episodes Data, even under normal circumstances, came across as a bit manic, just a little too enthusiastic, e.g. when he leaps to pull Wesley out of the water in “Encounter at Farpoint” and treats us to that creepy grin of his. Data’s got the same weird enthusiasm going on when Yar pops in to sex him up and I’d thought that maybe he was already a bit tipsy by then.
Or–another, half-joking thought–Data’s so imitative that he started acting “drunk” just because everyone else was and he figured it was the thing to do.
I’ve already wasted too many words on this lousy episode but, since I’ve been revisiting “Enterprise” a little (yeah, silly of me), I’m reminded that ENT went back to this well again with their own space-madness episode. (I don’t know if either DS9 or Voyager did although I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it.) And I daresay that “Enterprise” actually handled it better. In that episode the lunacy took the plausible form of a progressive exaggeration of already-established tendencies of the characters: Dr. Phlox’s natural enthusiasm for his job turns excessively zealous and dangerous, Trip’s project of redesigning the captain’s chair turns into a grandiose vision of monumental engineering, and so forth. What’s more, the progress of the disease was gradual enough so that for a little while, it was possible to doubt that there was anything worse at work than maybe stress and being in space too long. None of this sudden and dramatic, “Nothing’s wrong, no sir, oh wow I’m flying high and far out and I’m gonna take over the world!” stuff.
Too bad “Enterprise” didn’t do a heck of lot else right….
@29 Eugene: The “in some cases” is quietly, all the time. That’s like it’s actual job. Once someone decided that the navigational deflector had the largest power throughput of any appliance on board (not unreasonable, I guess, given what it’s supposed to do) it became the Energy McGuffin of choice.
My rating on this is space normal speed on friction batteries.
Having just re-subjected myself to this episode via the bluray set, I did come across one amusing tidbit that I had forgotten.
As Data is scanning the records bank looking for the reference to someone showering with their clothes on, a graphic flashes by very quickly of what appears to be a mutated parrot. If you freeze frame the shot you can see that the graphic is a drawing of a bird’s body with Gene Roddenberry’s head on it. This is the… wait for it…”Great Bird Of The Galaxy”.
Back in the ’80s with VHS technology it was very hard to get a clear screen shot of this, but now in Hi-Def, it’s quite easy.