THE PLOT
The Enterprise is about to rendezvous with a science vessel that is monitoring the collapse of a star. When they make contact, however, a giggly voice from another ship tells them that they're about to have a "huge blowout" - which they do, opening an emergency hatch which results in the immediate deaths of everyone aboard that ship.
Riker, Geordi, Data, and Tasha beam over to the other ship, and find that - as scanners showed - everyone on the ship is dead. There are signs of heavy intoxication, including naked crewmembers frozen to death in their quarters. They beam back... but not before Geordi manages to make physical contact with one of the bodies, becoming infected himself.
Fortunately, Riker watched TOS when he was a kid, and dimly remembered an episode where a guy took a shower with his clothes on. So he's able to punch up the record, which includes a "formula" (er... wasn't the formula in question H2O?) for a cure. Unfortunately, the infection is spreading through the Enterprise crew in the meantime. Tasha finds herself overtaken by enormous sexual urges; Wesley uses his two new invetions to take over engineering, cutting off the ship from its engines; and just as Dr. Crusher discovers that the old cure no longer works, she becomes infected as well!
And with the star about to break up, the Enterprise may be facing imminent destruction...
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: Apparently, has the same level of security consciousness and basic common sense as Enterprise's Capt. Archer. Once the disease starts spreading, does he order people locked in their quarters so that they can't roam the halls and spread the infection? No! He orders Data - who is made up of partially biological parts, and therefore might potentially be susceptible (as indeed he turns out to be) - to physically escort an infected person through the ship to the sickbay, thus potentially infecting multiple people. Simply locking the door to Tasha's quarters from the outside would have been more effective, and more sensible. We also get introduced to one of Picard's most annoying tendencies - summing up the moral of the story for us at the end: "Avoid temptation." On the plus side, Patrick Stewart is still good enough to make Picard work far, far better than he should, and the mutual attraction between Picard and Dr. Crusher does have some potential.
Riker: Proves miraculously immune to this disease. Others show effects almost instantly. But even though Dr. Crusher and Picard were both exposed to it after (in Picard's case, significantly after) Riker was, both of them start substantially falling away from their duties while Riker is still keeping it totally together, with apparently no particular effort. I guess, like the warp engines, the disease moves at the speed of plot. Riker remains completely competent and gosh-darned efficient. He's a 1950's war movie action hero, and at this stage at least, only about half as interesting.
Dr. Crusher: She and Picard might make a good couple. They have a similar lack of common sense. After observing that Geordi is behaving strangely, and ordering him confined to sickbay, she does not place him in any kind of isolation lab. She doesn't even lock the door. Instead, she wanders off to make a report in an adjoining room, leaving Geordi plenty of time to remove his comm badge and just walk out to start infecting the crew.
*thunks head*
Ah, well. At least she's pretty.
Tasha: Denise Crosby appears to have some fun with her part in this episode. Once Tasha gets infected, she becomes a feminine sexual whirlwind, kissing random crew members, trying on seductive outfits, and seducing Data. We learn a bit more about her background - abandoned as a small child, and more or less doing whatever she had to do in order to simply survive. At this point, on the page, she has one of the more fully-developed and potentially interesting character backgrounds... which, of course, is why she rarely got anything to do thereafter. In any case, a fairly good show for Crosby.
Data: And another good show for Data. We see more of his abilities, zooming through huge amounts of text, rapidly replacing "control chips" to allow the Enterprise to escape. Some of his other programming would apparently make him an ideal gift for a lonely young woman, and would probably - once word got out - make him the most popular male crew member on the ship. Spiner continues to be a standout physical performer. Watch the eyebrow twitch when Tasha reveals herself in one scene, or the goofy look on his face when she drags him to her bedroom. "If you prick me, do I not... leak?" followed by a collapse when trying to lean on a surface that isn't actually present is beautifully done. It's easy to see why Data quickly became one of the show's most popular characters. What's on the page is still potentially iffy... but the actor runs with what he's given, and at this point is outacting Patrick Stewart.
IT'S TIME FOR... BRATS IN SPAAACE!
Wesley whines that he's not allowed on the bridge. Apparently, teenage boys should be allowed ready access to the most sensitive equipment on the ship. He invents a tractor beam/repulsor beam and a mockup of the captain's voice, and uses both to take over engineering. This is aided by him telling one engineer that he can look after the engines. Despite there being several crew members walking around in the background - all of whom would have the edge over Wesley of actually, y'know, existing within the chain of command - the assistant chief engineer happily cedes control to Wes, so that Wesley can endanger the ship. Because Wesley finally uses his powers for good at the end, he merits a positive mention in the log... despite the fact that, but for him, the total negative impact of the disease would have been some crewmembers getting it off with each other.
I'd have liked it better if Picard had rewarded Wesley for his actions by blowing him out an airlock. *grumble*
THOUGHTS
The Naked Time was one of the Original Series' best first season episodes. It explored the characters of Kirk and Spock like no previous episode had, and gave strong character beats to frequently-neglected supporting characters as well. At the same time, it used comedy and suspense in such a way that each fed the other. The funnier the episode got, the tenser it became. The more tense the episode became, the funnier it got.
The Naked Now is just a comedy episode. There is no consistency to the rules of the disease. Riker is barely affected, while Picard is amazingly susceptible. Data is affected not for any plot reason, but simply because it would be funny for him to misquote Shakespeare and fall on his face. All of the affected people are affected in such a way that none of them becomes violent or suicidal, and they are all sympathetic with each other - meaning that when Wesley realizes that the situation is bad, he's able to get the assistant chief engineer and Data to help out in salvaging it, since neither of them is affected in a way that would make them more liable to just ignore him.
We do get some light shed on some characters. Picard and Beverly are suppressing a massive mutual attraction. Beverly, in particular, feels sexually neglected; taking care of her son has probably been her focus since her husband's death, at the cost of the other things. Tasha is so busy buttoning herself into the role of tough security chief that she doesn't feel like a woman. Geordie regrets not being able to see like normal people. Wesley would like to be captain.
It's all fairly surface-level and a bit ham-handed. The insistence on this being only a comedy episode means that none of the characters can be taken to particularly dark places. Meanwhile, because it is only the second episode, the characters cannot be explored in any depth - simply because, at this stage, they only exist in nascent form! Had it been saved for later in the season, or even for the second season, more could have been done with it, simply because the writers would actually have known who the characters were. As it stands, "they all get drunk and proceed to do funny stuff" is the full extent of the ambition.
I'm not going to damn it quite as hard as George Takei did when he labeled it a carbon copy of a great episode, "like watching young children put on their parents clothes and try to act like grown-ups," but I'm not going to say his assessment was inaccurate, either.
Also? You're beaming a party over to a ship that you have reason to believe might have been exposed to a form of contamination. Do you: (a) suit them up in decontamination suits; (b) send mechanized probes over instead of a human crew; or (c) just send them over in their uniforms, with no added protection. If you answered "c," then you're probably the writer of this episode!
Rating: 4/10. Amusing in parts, but relies on Idiot Plotting for most of the major characters, and doesn't really do anything interesting with its (recycled) concept.
Previous Episode: Encounter at Farpoint
Next Episode: Code of Honor
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