1.02 The Naked Now

Rating: 2.5

The crew is infected by something which causes strong intoxication. While some of the crew reactions are funny, the situation becomes dead serious when a ‘drunk’ Wesley Crusher takes over engineering and a dwarf star is about to explode.

Comments

It’s a fun, decent episode, which is completely derivative of the TOS episode The Naked Time and makes no qualms about it. In fact, the mystery is solved by consulting the Starfleet database and examining the facts surrounded the original incident on Kirk’s Enterprise.

Nits

‘Wesley saves the Enterprise’ is a common plot complaint among Trek fans who find it hard to believe. I don’t have a problem with Wesley being a genius. However, I do have a problem with him figuring out a clever solution while being powerfully intoxicated. In fact, wouldn’t a teenager be even more affected by this intoxication?

I am curious about the reasoning behind showing this episode as the second one of the new series. The characters have just merely been established, and here they are going against a nature to which we are not yet fully familiar. Perhaps someone thought it was an entertaining episode and so it should be put near the front to grab viewers. However, it would have played better later in the series. Because of this, it plays better now (since I do know the characters) than it did when I saw it originally.

Now that Data has twice had problems understanding colloquialisms, it makes you wonder why his creators, realizing that he would have to communicate with humans, and realizing that humans use colloquialisms often as part of normal speech, would not have stocked his database with them. After all, he’s got millions of gigaquads of data, doesn’t he?

Memorable Moments

•    Quite non-PC, but I enjoyed the ‘butt-cam’ perspective of Tasha Yar as she sashays down the corridor ‘under the influence’

Quotable Quotes

Riker: You’re right. Somebody blew out the hatch. They were all sucked out into space.
Data: Correction, sir. That’s ‘blown out’.
Riker: Thank you, Data.
Data: A common mistake, sir.

Data: And there was a rather peculiar limerick, being delivered by someone in the shuttlecraft bay. I am not sure I understand it: ‘There once was a lady from Venus, whose body was shaped like a --
Picard (interrupting): Captain to security! Come in!
Data: Did I say something wrong?
Worf (to Data): I don’ t understand their humor either.