Episode title: “The Naked Now”
Season: 1
Importance: 2
Crisis point(s) if any: Everyone goes bats
hit crazy, if that’s not a crisis point then I’m not the most handsome guy on the for - oh. Wait.
Original transmission date: October 5 1987
Writer(s): J. Michael Bingham (D.C. Fontana), John D.F. Black
Director: Paul Lynch
Stardate:* 41209.2
Destination: Some supergiant star
Mission (if any): Find out what happened on the SS Tsiolkovsky
Main character(s) in Plot: Geordi, Data, Riker, Beverly
Main character(s) in Subplot (if any): Yar, Picard, Troi
Villain/Monster (if any): Virus
Deaths: 80
Lives saved (episode): 0 (Technically, all of the ship, but that’s not what this is about)
Lives saved (cumulative): 1
Locations:
Shipboard:
Bridge
Sickbay
Troi’s Quarters
Engineering
Yar’s Quarters
Space:
Orbit of a supergiant star (not named)
Other:
SS Tsiolkovsky
Ships/vessels: 1 (SS Tsiolkovsky)
Space battles: 0
Bodycount
Historical
80 (Crew of SS Tsiolkovsky)
Incidental
Direct
Total:
Running total: 81
Make it so: 0
Engage! 1
Combat factor: 0
Planets visited: 0
Mysteries: 1 (What happened on the Tsiolkovsky?)
Patients in sickbay: 3
Meetings: 0
Data v humanity: Well, Data is the only one who can replace the chips in time, so he wins this first round.
Data 1 - Humanity 0
Character scores (episode):
Picard 10
Riker 20
Troi 20
Bev 40
Geordi 30
Data 15
Worf 10
Wesley 20
O’Brien
Yar 50
Earl Grey: 0
Shuttlecraft: 0
Admirals: 0
Starbases: 0
First contact: 0
Humour: 30
Episode score: -170 (that’s a MINUS score, people!)
Episode rating: 2/10
It’s rather disappointing that after such a good start the show should almost immediately start relying on old scripts from TOS. “The Naked Time” wasn’t, to be fair, even that great an episode, and if anything, gave the actors a chance to let their hair down and act, well, mad. Which is all well and good, but once is enough. When you have an attempt to continue that story - which should have most definitely been a one-off - I believe you’re asking for trouble. When you have a captain as buttoned-down and strict and joyless as Picard, doubly so. It’s interesting though that the second Starfleet vessel we hear of has a Russian name, though I have to ask why it’s SS Tsiolkovsky instead of USS? Yeah, look, you could see this coming maybe at the end of a successful season, chance for everyone to relax and have some fun (does Picard do fun?) with a pretty throwaway episode, but second in the first season? When things hinge so precariously on how this is received? When the entire future of the show could hang on what the audience think of this? Bad move, I feel. Bad move.
I find it odd that Data says “What we have heard is impossible” as he refers to the blowing of an emergency hatch; surely such things blow now and then? Accidents? I mean, yes, he could be saying it’s impossible someone did it on purpose, but again that’s not the case is it? If it’s impossible, it simply cannot happen. A man can’t fly unaided, or walk on the clouds, or understand the plot of a single episode of The Prisoner. But this? This isn’t impossible. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, it is improbable at best. On board the science ship, Riker gasps that the crew were all sucked out into space. Correction, says Data, that’s sucked off. I mean, blown off. I mean, blown out. I like the way the guy in the crew quarters, who is frozen and obviously naked, has still had the decency before he died to position his knee so that his dong can’t be seen. Class!
"Couldn't you have shaved BEFORE coming on duty, Lieutenant?"
Look, I know he probably doesn’t have access to the ship’s communications, but surely Wesley has the use of his mother’s comms in their room? So when Geordi complains of burning up, being the doctor’s son and all, why does he not alert his mother? But he just sits there, looking after him as LaForge leaves. Idiot. Bit pedantic when Picard insists “it’s not an infection” and Troi says “Well whatever it is, she’s got it” - I expect Bananarama to pop up singing “Venus” - “She’s got it, yeah baby she’s got it! I’m your Venus, I’m your fire…” Oh no! I just remembered! This episode features perhaps the single most embarrassing, cringeworthy scene in all of Star Trek, when Yar and Data get it on. Oh god no! The screens, quickly! The screens! It’s a bit annoying that they copy the scene in TOS “The Naked Time” when O’Reilly locked himself in engineering and started making weird announcements and singing; Wesley does the same, though with a lot less panache than the Irishman.
Okay but answer me this: if Data has no emotions - and we’re told he has none; later he gets an emotion chip, to everyone’s acute embarrassment, not least of all his - then how in the name of Jean-Luc Picard can he have a silly grin on his face when Yar pulls him off I mean into her bedroom? Shouldn’t he look like he always does? Could Spiner just not resist making the expression, throwing in a little comedy? How is it that they all only realise halfway into the episode that quarantine procedures should have been implemented before everyone went around touching everyone else? Picard’s attempts to hold in his temper and his normal snappish way when trying to get Wesley to cede control of engineering back to him are comical; you can see how he just wants to tell him GIVE ME MY SHIP BACK YOU FU
CKING LITTLE SNOTNOSED BRAT! But he can’t, and must marshall all the minimal charm he has and his awful bedside manner with kids to try to get what he wants.
"Don't look at her boobs... don't look at her boobs..."
It can’t do much for Picard’s ego when Beverly says she’s experiencing a “lack of good judgement, and therefore she finds him extremely attractive.” Well thanks a bunch! Have i ever told you your bum looks big in that? Down in engineering, as the force field Wesley put up is finally overridden, the kid says he thinks he can get the main viewer on line. After seeing what it shows, a large piece of superheated star heading directly towards them, he probably thinks, on second thoughts, maybe we’ll just leave this off. This is the first time we see Data run at superspeed, as he tries to replace the chips that have been taken out of the computer. Hey, when the chips are down, Data’s your man, huh? Sorry. Sorry. Is it hot in here?
"Um, Will? The threshold is THAT way!"
Annoying how Wesley sort of saves the ship in the end, but I guess it’s worth it for the tres awkward moment when Data and Yar see each other again for the first time after they’ve done the business. Maybe both secretly wish the android had not been able to switch out those chips in time! On a more serious note, while there was a certain amount of intoxication on both sides, and Data is shown clearly aware of what he’s doing and the sex is consensual, there’s an uneasy feelng of, if not quite rape, then sex by two people who are really going to regret it when they “sober up”, and it’s doubly uncomfortable, and not at all empowering, that it’s the woman, who uses her better knowledge of human relationships to all but force the android into sex. Very very dodgy, and notable too that for seven seasons after this, though Data had “love interests” occasionally, he is never again seen, or implied to be, having sex with a human. It just screams WRONG on every level.
Overall, as I say, I think this was a poor episode and very badly timed. At this point, we hardly knew anyone, so the kind of nudge-nudge-wink-wink works now, but back then we had no real idea of the feelings Picard had for Crusher, or Riker for Troi, and much of what happens is taken with a pretty giant shrug. This kind of episode is best used when we know the characters, when we’re either sympathetic with them or hate them, but either way can feel for them, cringe for them, root for them or laugh at them. When I saw this originally it was so what? And now it’s different, but even so, a stupidly bewildering choice for a second episode. Maybe Fontana was trying to humanise the characters for us, but there are better ways to do that, and to my mind this was not one of them. Of course, it takes a while before it gets any better, as we’ll see.