The Naked Now - S01E02

 

This is what I was waiting for, and it happened sooner than I expected. A flood of disconnected memories that I imagined happening in much later seasons and episodes. Let's take a look at this "wacky" episode. Just weeks after the Farpoint incident, the crew of the Enterprise find themselves responding to a distress code from the science vessel Tsiolkovsky, which received a hull breach while observing the collapse of a giant star. After beaming over, the away team discover the entire crew dead, frozen from exposure caused by the hull breach. Something strange was going on though, because one of the frozen crew members seemed to have been showering fully dressed. (Hmm. Didn't this happen in another very similar TV show once?)

According to my visor, this woman needs a blanket.

When they return to the Enterprise, LaForge, who was on the away team, is sweating like mad and complaining that everything is too hot. He's ordered to sick bay where Dr. Crusher tells him to stay put until she knows what's wrong with him, but he sneaks out and goes to visit his little pal, Wesley. This is only the second episode, but it clearly put a "hate me" sign on Wesley's back very quickly. He's portrayed as the ever-eager little kid, excited to show LaForge his homemade tractor field toy. It might also be the episode where Wesley was pegged as "that kid with the ugly sweaters."

LaForge manages to infect Wesley by patting him on the shoulder. You'll notice here that the infection is telegraphed with a chime sound. Was it necessary to make it that clear to the audience that the infection was passing from person to person?

Riker and Data do some research, and discover that the same strange occurrence of a person showering fully clothed happened with the original Enterprise. The disease is passed through physical contact, and makes its victims act like they are drunk. 

Eventually, everyone starts getting infected. Tasha Yar gets especially interested in robotics suddenly, and manages to pass the infection even on to Data, after he famously reveals that he is "fully functional." 

I was completely surprised that this happened in only the second episode, seeing as how it became such a big joke among Trek fans. I remembered this being at least halfway through the first season. Wrong again! Something I completely forgot about Yar telling Data that she was just five-years old when she was abandoned, and she spent her youth trying to survive and avoid "rape gangs." Good god, there's some dark stuff plopped in the middle of this laugh fest. She tells Data that she just wants gentleness and love, and he let's her know that he's been programmed with multiple techniques. Dr. Soong, you sick bastard. 

Fully functional? Can you chop? Can you dice? Can you... julienne?

Clever little Wesley, now running hot with infection, manages to take control of the engine room, and basically commanders the ship using a voice recording of Captain Picard. Drunk with power and the virus, he rigs his toy tractor beam to make a forcefield that prevents anyone from getting into the engineering room. Picard is pissed, and rightly so. Wesley's engineer friend, who he let in, pulled out all the chips from what I assume is engineering's main computer, and plays with them like toys, incapacitating the ship.

I'm helping.

Things get really bad now. The supernova explodes and sends a massive meteor hurtling toward the Enterprise. A crew member manages to disable Wesley's forcefield, and Data starts trying to put all the chips back in place, but says it's impossible to finish it in time, since he's cyber-drunk.
Our little genius Wesley realizes that he can reverse the ships tractor beam which is holding the derelict ship, to give them a push away from the meteor. This gives Data just enough time to finish replacing the chips, and the Enterprise barely escapes the burning fury of a supernova.

Dr. Crusher, having finally found an effective cure, starts administering it to all the crew. Tasha Yar angrily tells Data that this evening of excitement never happened, and Picard begrudgingly praises Wesley for saving the ship.  By using one of the plots of the original episode so soon in the run of TNG, it almost seemed like the writers and producers didn't have faith in the show succeeding on its own merits. On top of that, this episode was pretty silly. 

Considering that we had just met the characters in the previous episode, it was a strange idea to make everyone act "out of character" so soon. This episode would have fit much better near the middle of the season. And again, poor Wesley suffered here the most, since he was probably told to act drunk, and for a 16 year old kid, this is what that looked like...

    

All-in-all, though, this episode had some of the strongest TNG memories for me. 
My rating for this episode: Warp 4.5

Encounter at Farpoint - S01E01

September 28th, 1987 saw the launch of this new series with the double length episode Encounter at Farpoint. I can't remember as a kid whether this was a two parter, or if it was shown all in one evening.

It's been 30 years, but spoilers follow.

A quick recap of the episode is in order. The crew of the new Enterprise-D head to a planet called Deneb IV to open up trade with the local people. Farpoint station is an amazing base on the planet, but there's something odd about it. On the way to Deneb IV, a super being called Q appears out of nowhere on the bridge.  He says he is there to put humanity on trial for being barbaric and uncivilized. Wow, on their first voyage, the crew must solve the mystery of Farpoint station and save humanity from being wiped out of existence by the Q. What a first day.

The episode begins with Captain Picard checking out his new ship, and he seems pretty impressed. Here was Sir Patrick Stewart in all his Season-1 glory. He's been in the public eye so long that I had the feeling "This guy never ages." Well, as good as old Pat looks now, he looked so much younger in this episode. He was only 47 at the time, but probably because of the bald head with a fringe of silver hair, he's always had an air of maturity. This is not a criticism though. He certainly looked strong and ready to command a starship.

As he wanders the ship, we learn through his log entries that they still need to pick up some crew members, namely one First Officer, William Riker. I always remembered everybody being on the ship and knowing each other right from the get-go, but letting the team slowly come together gives us a chance to learn about everybody in a leisurely way.

We even get a very early Colm Meany, before he became a major character.

A standout out scene that really stuck in my mind during my first viewing was when Riker met Data for the first time. Rikei finds Data standing in the branches of a tree, trying to whistle a tune, but unable to hit the right note. Riker reveals himself by whistling the final notes, and Data looks at him in awe, commenting how easily humans seem to be able to do that. Data jumps down from the tree he was in, impressing Riker in return with his agility. I'd always remembered Data whistling If I only Had a Heart, or something like that, when he was actually whistling Pop Goes the Weasel. 

Also, I remembered Data jumping from a much higher tree. In reality, maybe it was ten feet off the ground.

We also get to see Wesley being a klutz right off the bat.

Watch out for leaches!

As the Enterprise continues on its way, we come to another scene I had completely forgotten about. Deforest Kelley, who played Bones on the original series, appears in a short cameo. As a kid, this was one of the best surprises the episode offered. I'd grown up watching reruns of the original series with my dad, and we thought that seeing Bones as an old man, still shuffling around was really cool. 

In the end, we learn that the base was built on top of a giant, squid-like alien, which provided all the power and resources they could need. In doing so, it's mate began to attack the base from space. The crew of the enterprise manage to free the trapped alien and reunite it with its partner, proving to Q that humanity does, indeed, have compassion and civility.

There's wasn't much else in the episode that stood out in my memory. I had a little "ooooh, right" moment when Q showed up and went through several centuries of earth soldiers, especially the coke-sniffing future soldiers.

And I did get a little memory jog by seeing the massive aliens wither slightly Muppet-esque tentacles groping around at the very end. This effect is probably the most "Original Series-esque" moment in the episode. 

It was a much more exciting episode than I remembered, and most of the effects held up really well. I later found out that Netflix is showing a remastered version, but still, it looked great most of the time. I think this was a worthy proving ground for the new Trek series, and people accepted that Picard and his crew would be able to handle their adventures in space.

My only question is did we get to see more of this down the line?

Rating: Warp 8.5

To Boldly Go... Back to the Beginning

I grew up watching ST:TNG. You can already tell how much I liked it because I abbreviate the title just now.

The show started in in 1987, over 30 years ago. I was ten yeas old at the time, and although I had watched reruns of the original series, I honestly probably got into it because of Levar Burton from Reading Rainbow. I spent a lot of fun times attending conventions and getting autographs after I really got into Star Trek. I usually watched TNG around 10:00pm on weeknights, secretly doing homework I had been putting off, just before falling asleep.

I wanted to go back to this amazing series and find the answers to questions I didn't know I had, and to refresh those memories that have gotten foggy over the years.
Like, how exactly was Yar killed off? When did that other doctor replace Crusher? Why the hate for Wesley and his sweaters?

On top of all that, I'm kind of curious to see just how well I'm remembering all these episodes.

The entire run can be found on Netflix if you're eager to watch along. Engage!