“The Outrageous Okona”
Teleplay by Burton Armus
Story by Les Menchen, Lance Dickson, David Landsberg
Directed by Robert Becker
Season 2, Episode 4
Original air date: December 12, 1988
Star date: 42402.7
Mission summary
As the Enterprise makes its way through a twin planetary system, it stumbles across a class 9 freighter called the Erstwhile. Onboard, a single plucky human is trying to whack the side of his guidance system to get it working again. He makes a few flat jokes and Picard, ever the humanitarian, decides to help out this disheveled, saucy “rogue”–let’s call him Sman Smolo–and asks Geordi to work on replacing the guidance system for him.
Smolo, who goes by “Okona,” beams aboard and immediately tries some lines on the lady at the transporter post:
OKONA: And thank you for beaming me here and enabling me to see a truly beautiful woman. You have the majestic carriage and loveliness that could surely be traced back to the noblest of families.
ROBINSON: Well, I’m sure that you’ve said that to many ladies before, and it was no more true then than it is now.
OKONA: But it’s how I say it that’s really important. The warmth, the attraction that I have for you. The attraction that we share.
Riker and Geordi look at one another meaningfully because it’s always funny to watch your coworkers get harassed by arrogant douches, especially when they use words like “carriage” that are probably best left to auto repair guides and not used on women. (Suspension of disbelief destroyed in 3…) Robinson is successfully seduced (…2…) and gives Okona her room number (…1! HAHA YEAH RIGHT). That lovable scamp is going to turn this place upside down, just you wait!
The second stop on the Charming Rogue Express is Wesley Crusher, who falls so hard for Okona’s winsome personality he’s off assembling a locker collage before the end of the first act. He talks to Riker about how dreamy the new guy is, but Riker is unimpressed. Probably beard jealousy. In Engineering to oversee repairs, Okona jokes a bit with Data before realizing the android has a sense of humor about as sophisticated as the nearest Roomba’s, so he breaks off for his booty call with the transporter lady. This sends Data on a depression spiral (I feel ya) because it’s so unsatisfying always playing the straight man (or that…). To fix this, Data goes to Ten Forward and asks Guinan, who for some reason has time for this crap and encourages him to speak with some holographic comedians and see what he can learn about humor (and About Us All). Unfortunately–and I mean that in the truest sense of the word–the holodeck just has 40 channels of Joe Piscopo, and Data emerges an even worse comedian than he was before.
But duty calls, and the android returns to the bridge as a ship approaches the Enterprise. It’s from the planet Altec, and the leader, Debin, demands that Picard turn over Okona (NOOO! Not our lovable rogue!) to face his crimes: impregnating Debin’s daughter Yanar. (Since it takes two to tango, why isn’t she in chains for this “crime”?) To complicate matters, another ship appears, this time from the planet Straleb. Captain Kushell also accuses Okona of a crime (say it ain’t so!): stealing the Jewel of Thesia, which is precious and sparkly and stuff. If Picard gives Okona to either dude, the other will feel slighted and declare war, because interplanetary leaders are petty middle-schoolers. What’s a third party to do? Just let him go on his own path, it seems.
Well it turns out that contrary to his behavior these last (oh so long) twenty minutes, Okona is tiring of his rakish existence and agrees to turn himself over to both of them, aboard the Enterprise. A meeting is called, fingers are pointed, smirks are flung far and wide. Our rascal proves to be as clean as Robin Hood, as it was Kushell’s son Bezan who knocked up Debin’s daughter and stole the jewel, which he intended to use in his wedding ceremony. (Of course he was gonna marry her. He just, uh, wasn’t going to mention it until her dad was there about to beat the space pulp out of him.) Innocent Okona, on the other hand, was just the good-hearted go-between for their star-crossed love. All is forgiven, the dads fight over the wedding, and Okona goes on his puckish way to make trouble for future uptight crews of badly written series.
But wait, there’s more! Data decides to give the holodeck another try, and performs some jokes before a holographic audience. This is so excruciating even Guinan can’t watch. She tries to make him feel better with the knowledge that laughter isn’t the only thing that makes us human:
DATA: No, but there is nothing more uniquely human.
Well said. But don’t go! There’s more! Data makes his way to the bridge and inadvertently makes a joke that’s not even worth repeating here. Now wasn’t that nice? Thank you, Smolo, for bringing such liveliness to our dead fish crew!
Analysis
This episode has absolutely nothing to recommend it. It’s not interesting or even entertaining. It’s not original. It’s certainly not funny. The holodeck sequences are some of the most excruciating in all of Star Trek, and that includes the space lizards AND the brains.
I spent most of the episode feeling badly for Billy Campbell, who was never a great or even particularly good actor but whose superhero was less cliche than Okona1. I hesitate to even refer to Okona as a character, because I feel that gives too much credit to this shallow husk of a personality so inelegantly stuffed with Extruded Television ProductTM. He’s essentially the pink slime of television: grotesque, over-processed filler. He’s the manic pixie dream girl who shakes up the lives of the people in this small town, and gets them to Appreciate What They Have and Understand Each Other Better. Oh, and don’t you love how in the end that way-too-neat-resolution proves he’s not a bad guy after all? It makes me feel ill.
And yet–and yet, my friends–I would have rather watched 52 minutes of Okona sexually harassing various crewmembers than sit through the Joe Piscopo scenes one more time. NEVER AGAIN. Let’s just put aside the fact that these scenes fail to share the same laws of physics as things that are funny. Okay. Now putting that aside (bear with me…), why doesn’t this work? I am no expert on humor (as anyone who has groaned at my puns can attest), but I’ve come up with these two things that I think explain it: 1) Humor can’t be taught, but it can be learned; 2) Humor isn’t about telling jokes.
To wit: there is nothing worse than a joke explained, right?2 Humor isn’t absorbed through instruction, it’s absorbed through immersion. One of the big indicators of someone’s proficiency in a new language is the ability to make others laugh–to be familiar enough with the language to exploit ambiguities in words and be comfortable enough speaking it that one can safely poke fun at awkwardness or mistakes. Making people laugh is a function, then, of comfort and proficiency–and an eye for weakness, irony, and wordplay. These are things Data should have no problem with. He has access to the entire recorded sociological catalog of humanity, and should be able to download in a matter of moments every comic play, movie, song, etc. in the history of our species. As a supercomputer, he should be able to process this information and discover patterns–moments that are frequently exploited for humor, and appropriate funny responses to those moments.3 He’s read Shakespeare, for god’s sake! I’m sure he’s read Austen! He should at the very least be able to recognize a joke, which he’s unable to do here. Now would he be able to make truly original jokes? I don’t know, but there aren’t that many kinds of jokes in the world, so I feel I could be persuaded he could.
Now even if that weren’t the case, and Data for some reason has a bad sector that renders him utterly unable to connect the dots and identify joke patterns, that doesn’t explain why his subject of study is stand-up comedy or why Guinan suggests or encourages this. Stand-up (or really any kind of formal joke-telling) is an extremely artificial construction. Think about your day, your month, your year, and ask yourself about the last time someone told you a joke. On the other hand, if you think of the last thing that made you laugh, I have to hope for all your sakes that it was sometime this past week. We don’t usually laugh at people telling jokes, and people have vastly different reactions to stand-up anyway. (I for one am completely unmoved by Jerry Lewis’ style and never thought Joe Piscopo was funny either, so maybe this episode was specifically crafted to make me scowl.) But people make witticisms or exploit irony or play on words all the time. Humor is so much more complex than a setup/punchline formula.
If Data doesn’t get any of that… well the ability to joke with one another builds camaraderie. To have the crew of the Enterprise always rib Data and have Data never be in on the joke would in any other context be schoolyard bullying, not charming collegiality.
Nuke this one from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
1 So what’s with how people pronounce his name? It sounds like a Schwarzenegger version of “Connor,” as in “I AM LOOKING FOR JOHN CONNA.”
2 To “wit” being a pun! See? I just killed it with this footnote.
3 If any of you have ever played The Secret of Monkey Island, you’re probably familiar with the truly genius pun mini-game†, which is a perfect example of this phenomenon. It takes a bit to figure out what’s going on, but once you recognize the pattern–voila, instant humor!
† And there’s a science fiction connection, because the puns were written by none other than Orson Scott Card.
Torie’s Rating: Warp Core Meltdown (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: Seriously:
That is some bullshit right there.
Best Line: None. I don’t feel any of the jokes are worth repeating here.
Trivia/Other Notes: Much of Joe Piscopo’s act was improvised. Ugh.
Jerry Lewis was approached to play the comic, but he had scheduling conflicts. (Or possibly “scheduling conflicts.”)
Billy Campbell was the number two choice to play number one William T. Riker. He’s perhaps best known among geeks as 1991’s The Rocketeer.
Previous episode: Season 2, Episode 3 – “Elementary, Dear Data.”
Next episode: Season 2, Episode 5 – “Loud as a Whisper.”
I thought maybe the episode title was an anagram that unlocks the episode’s profound mysteries, but the best I came up with was “Eureka, Hot Guano Soot!”
This episode is excruciating. It reminds me of those Happy Days episodes where they introduce a mugging “zany” character for an insufferable spin-off series.
The meta is slightly interesting, I guess: A freetrading freighter in a society supposedly without want or money, severed from issues of supply and demand. How does that work, exactly?
The Federation keeps pretty tight controls on its personnel and NGOs—everyone agrees to a system whereby they supposedly do not muck around with less advanced societies. Apparently Okona—a kind of skeezy mal-Mal, his ship a kind of dung beetle to Firefly—is a free agent free from this restriction. What’s to prevent rogue freetraders like Okona from dropping by some primitive world and setting up trade in high-tech?
—
Why does the crew indulge Data’s theatrical nonsense? It’s like suffering through a stage play where toddlers, none your own, act out the Food Pyramid. I can’t think of anything more ghastly and awkward than watching a robot go through self-induced puberty.
See, it’s episodes like this that make me think fondly of episodes like last week’s. Sure there were plot/ logic holes the size of Grand Central Station in “Elementary, Dear Data” but at least we didn’t have to endure Joe Piscopo.
Yeah… it’s the humor part of this that really kills it for me. The rest is the kind of airheadedly trope-happy writes-itself-on-autopilot drama that Rodenberry apparently licked right up off the plate, about which there’s really nothing much to be said. All’s Well That Ends Well!
But the comedy… hoo boy. About the only thing that makes me doubt that Data ought to get all of this is his habit of apparently forgetting that he knows things. Like, why is it that he has to reference some internal dictionary, and then read it aloud, in order to understand the definition of words he doesn’t often hear? Did he have to insert his original Windows 95 CD-ROM before he could access that sector of his memory banks or something? But given how fast he can read, he could probably skim through Watching the English in about fifteen seconds and learn more about (one particular type of) humor than he’d get from watching the entire career of Joe Piscopo. (Well that’s not fair, I don’t know if the rest of his humor is this terrible, but he was on ’80s SNL, so I’m pretty confident.)
I’m also really confused as to why they let the B plot drag on so much after the A plot was already concluded. Was there really that little to say about Okona? I suppose there is, I mean in a world without conflict among the Enlightened Elect, what can a Manic Pixie really accomplish…?
THAT REMINDS ME — Is Okona explicitly stated to be human? I’d just assumed he was a Basically Interchangeable Humanoid like all the other aliens, but native to the system.
If he’s actually literally human, I wonder how he’d react if he met Harry Mudd. He doesn’t seem the wheeler-dealer type though, more like he’s dickin’ around in space looking for roguish adventure and the chance to break some hearts.
And what’s a Class 9 freighter anyway? No warp drive?
I’m not sure I’d go all the way to Meltdown, but this episode is definitely no better than Impulse, maybe even One Quarter Impulse. Campbell does all right with what he’s given and IIRC Patrick Stewart has a couple of moments, though they’re dressed up in moral superiority.
The B-plot is just horrendous. There was a time when Joe Piscopo was funny, but the more I reflect on it, the more I realize that it was Eddie Murphy who made him funny. The second he struck out on his own, he cratered (*cough*Johnny Dangerously*cough*). Murphy held onto it a little longer. Piscopo was well into his 16th or 17th minute by this point. I think this is probably the first instance of stunt casting for TNG and it fails hard.
On top of that, the only examples of humor we get are vaudeville and Catskills stand-up that was decades out of date. Nobody in the 80s thought any of that was funny. Comedy had already moved on to the children of Carlin and Pryor and we’re given the stuff that Lenny Bruce rebelled against. Just awful.
And what is it with Star Trek and lovable rogues (TM)? TOS pulled it off twice, but try as they might modern Trek never got it. Something in the back of my head says TNG had at least one more, but I can’t put my finger on it. DS9 may have had a couple, but they aren’t coming to mind either. Quark and Garak were rogues, but they stayed away from the lovable part. As for VOY, all I can say is: Neelix.
Smarmy douchebag talks his way into the company of a woman who should know better, and *this* is your suspension of disbelief moment?
Man, I was so bored watching this episode last night. The writers commited the crime of writting comedy when they weren’t funny. It’s why my fiction is not comedy I know I have no talent for it. On top fo that the acting was plain awful. Really it was community theatert crap with people waiting patiently for their cue, stepping forward with their line, and then deflating now that the pressure is over.
As to the awkwardness of the comedic form, ST is well into its knowing wink of finding 20th Century forms baffling, and mined the “ironic treasure” of duplicating them ineptly. Recall, this episode written just months after the release of the box office smash of ST:IV. It’s a riff on the same schtick that found all the TNG crew baffled a few episodes backat the manners and motives of the thawed meatsicles:
PICARD: It’s hard for us to understand from our lofty place of superior being, but barbaric times when people lost their families horribly they sometimes acted depressed and drops of water fell from their eyes.
WESLEY: When that man cut his hand off in the SkilSaw, he made a curious face I’ve not seen before.
TROI: I think they called it pain. I sensed something, briefly, I think. Could be mistaken.
…imagine how much more entertaining this episode would have been if Data had chosen to imprint himself on the comedic genius of Andy Kaufman or Andrew Dice Clay…
@9 Lemnoc
Or Sam Kinnison. Data could probably do a passable Dennis Miller, but I think his best bet would be Bob Newhart. Newhart’s act was originally just him giving the straight lines and letting the audience fill in the rest. He could probably also pull off physical comedy in the style of Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd. Anything deadpan while chaos swirls around him.
Also, regarding Piscopo ad libbing: Spiner was doing the same and getting the better end of the deal. That “A word that ends in K!” response to the mention of Teaneck wasn’t in the script and you can see Piscopo start to lose it.
Oh Torie Torie Torie… what karmic burden do you carry that you got stuck with the rewatch of this episode? At least tell us you got hazard pay for doing this (or workers’ comp for the mental damage).
@4 DeepThought
My guess is Okona would be standing on a street corner wearing nothing but a barrel within 2 minutes of meeting Harry Mudd.
I mistook liking Billy Campbell (largely for The Rocketeer) with liking this episode. His performance is actually one of the best things in the episode, though I’m not sure how much of a compliment it is to say he’s great at being a terrible character. The other high point for me is of course the guest appearance by Teri Hatcher (which I had somehow forgotten!), although I have to say that the way women crew members “socialized” with Okona made me feel a little queasy.
It’s also a little depressing that everyone on the ship is so taken with Okona. They think he’s charming, but it’s so obvious that he isn’t being genuine about it. He knows how to manipulate people and they fall for it. And for crying out loud, you don’t need empathic ability to figure out that he’s “mischievous, irreverent and somewhat brazen”–his dialogue and acting already convey that. (But hey, Okona doesn’t attempt to hit on Troi, even though it seems like she wouldn’t mind, so that’s something.)
This is such a bad episode. The A and B plots are poorly integrated, and the supposed conflict between Okona and these political leaders devolves into a cliched teenage romance between literally starcrossed lovers. You also have to wonder why these kids are so hesitant to reveal their affair, considering how easily their dads accept it once it’s all out in the open. I don’t think anyone has questioned this yet: Do you think Okona was actually going to deliver that jewel? I vote no.
As others have already discussed, the biggest failing of this episode is Data’s search for humanity through humor, which is alternately painful and boring. Joe Piscopo is a low point in the series, though Brent Spiner gets a rare opportunity to show his funny side. Unfortunately, humor is very subjective, and the jokes and gags universally fall flat–especially when characters say, “No,this joke is funny. WHY AREN’T YOU LAUGHING YOU MUST BE AN ANDROID.” I was so grateful when Data sped up Piscopo’s routine. Torie says that there were no good lines in this, but I did kind of like “Take my Worf, please!” Ad-libbed?
I also found it disconcerting when the Enterprise crew again highlights how much better they are than the viewers, this time criticizing “ancient codes involving procreation” and how meaningless they are. What is this, a Heinlein novel about free love? Picard calls it a morality play, but that is an ambitious assessment of this empty story.
So I give this one Impulse power, but only because I like Cliff Secord and Lois Lane.
@ 1 Lemnoc
You know I never assumed he was human, but he obviously doesn’t hail from either planet in this system, so who knows? But in either case, he doesn’t seem to be making any money, since he’s just ferrying some awkward teenagers for illicit booty calls and otherwise has no cargo or assets.
@ 2 Toryx
And Piscopo contributed only one of the two mullets on display.
@ 3 DeepThought
His reading things out is an attempt at a joke. I think the show has proven it is incapable of such things. And now that I think about it… does TNG have any good comedic episodes? I guess “Deja Q”?
@ 5 DemetriosX
I will hear nothing against Eddie Murphy because for all his post-1990 sins he still gave me my tied-for-favorite Christmas movie, Trading Places. (The other is Die Hard.)
Can you imagine a Richard Pryor holodeck program? Now that I’d want to see.
I think Quark and Garak were supposed to be lovable… I certainly loved Garak for a long time, and sadly Quark was one of the better characters on the show because he was at least consistent.
@ 6 S. Hutson Blount
I’m grading on a curve?
@ 7 bobsandiego
Do you blame them for not trying?
@ 11 DRickard
Hahaha, I wish! But you know, feel free to toss a few coins in our Laugh Treks tip jar if you’re really moved to tears for me.
I really got the short end of the stick for both Season 1 and 2. EUUUUGEEEEENE!
@ 13 Eugene
I had totally missed that was Teri Hatcher, wow! That is some hair.
I didn’t think anything Spiner did was remotely funny, sorry.
Now that you mention it, it’s a little weird Picard just throws marriage under the bus as archaic and meaningless. Though to be fair, do we know ANYONE on that ship who is married? I mean Crusher was, once, but that’s it. O’Brien doesn’t get married for years (and we all know how THAT turns out), and Worf deliberately chooses not to marry the kinky Klingon.
Er, sorry, the other way around: the lady Klingon doesn’t want to marry Worf, right? But he wants to? I forget, I’ve blocked that episode…
Another thing that bugged me whiel watching this episode. Okona is supposed to be a fast talking charming rake, but when Picard starts confronting him about his ‘crimes.’ He is nothing but a tougne tied klutz. I have players in my D7D game who think faster on tehir feet and they don;t have scripts to fall back on.
@14 Torie
I believe it has been canonically established Warp works on a logarithmic scale.
…at least, that’s my takeaway from the profound and dignified science babbled in Voyager’s “Threshold” :-/
@14 Torie
I was about to advise you to renegotiate your contract. Then I looked ahead, and realized it is a long slog through a dark, smelly sewer no matter who drew the short straw. My condolences to you both.
Then I looked ahead, and realized it is a long slog through a dark, smelly sewer no matter who drew the short straw.
Hey! That’s my line!
/curmudgeonably
*muttering*
giantsackofrancidllamacrapactingworsethangradeschoolcan’tbelieveiactuallywatchedthiscompletewasteoftimeandpixels…
@14 Torie
I actually like Eddie Murphy, including his more recent voice work, but you have to admit his live action work for the last 20 years or so has left a lot to be desired. But he had a very good run, unlike Piscopo, who crashed and burned immediately. Frankly, the best you can say for old Joe is that some of his schtick paved the way for Phil Hartman, who did it all a lot better.
While both Garak and Quark were lovable, I wouldn’t say they were Lovable Rogues With Hearts of Gold (TM). Garak had far too much condescension and menace and Quark really wasn’t very good at being a rogue; I don’t think a single one of his plans ever really panned out. Han Solo and his ilk are sort of a subset of Robin Hood, and that certainly doesn’t apply to those two. (Or is Robin Hood a subset of the Lovable Rogue?)
And when you say you didn’t think anything Spiner did was funny, I hope you mean in this episode. He has tremendous comic timing and was generally considered the funniest member of the cast. His recurring character on Night Court was hilarious.
Torie @ 14: I love the idea of a Richard Pryor holodeck program. Oh, the missed opportunities….
@ 14 Torie
Yes I do blame the actors for not trying. It doesn’t matter if the script is rubbish you still do your jab to the best of your ability.
Does Q count in the category of cuddlesome rogue?
Q was never that threatening or intimidating, and after a while he served more as comic relief and Teacher of Life’s Important Little Lessons than anything.
@14 Torie
Can you imagine a Richard Pryor holodeck program?
Nooooo… It’s enough that he ruined Superman III. :(
“Nuke this one from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure”
Not only do I agree with this sentiment, I’m LOVING the reference ( given our recent discussion in Ten-Forward, it’s been on my mind )!
The one thing I will say is ( sorry Jonathan F. ) I think Bill Campbell might have made a better Riker ( he would have at least been sexier ). At the very least, I don’t think he would have done the “raise-your-head-and-exit with-your-forehead-leading” thing that Frakes did a lot, especially in the first season ( in fact, when Stewart was on SNL and they did a “Love Boat; The Next Generation” parody, Chris Farley did a dead on impression of that Frakes move which had me laughing out loud…one of the few things in that skit that did ).
We can save this episode. All we need to do is lose a few minutes of the holodeck and stage a new ending with LaForge and Dr. Pulaski revealing that this episode was a continuation of last week’s episode. All that bad stuff – that was all a holo-program devised by LaForge and Pulaski to test Data. Pulaski gets to smirk and say “See, I was right.” Laforge will be guarded in his response – making it clear that he’s unconvinced.
That’s all I can come up with for this one. I guess this heat is taking a lot out of me.
@ 20 DemetriosX
Oh yes, I was only referring to this episode. Spiner is a great comedian, when he has the right material.
@ 25 dep1701
Ha! You know Aliens came on this weekend and even though I just watched it a few months ago (in theaters, with a fantastic audience) I found myself sucked in again. Had to turn it off before it was too late!
Frakes grew on me as the series went on. I can’t really picture Billy Campbell in the role. He’s too young; he wouldn’t make a convincing adviser to Picard.
@ Torie’s footnote: “The puns were written by none other than Orson Scott Card.”
Great. One more thing I loved as a child that I can now feel soiled for having enjoyed.