This week I watched my second episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Naked Now." This episode involves the Enterprise investigating a ship that was out studying a red super giant star that's about to turn into a white dwarf. The team of scientists studying the star are acting strange, and when the Enterprise contacts them, we hear someone in the background yell, "Do it! Do it!" and then some hatch is opened, killing the entire crew. Naturally, Riker, Data, and Geordi board the ship to check things out, only to contract some non-disease disease and bring it back to their crew. Almost everyone goes bonkers, the women turn into raging nymphos, Wesley Crusher takes control of the ship, and the few sane people left have to try to get Wesley to relinquish control so that they can get out of the way of the star when it explodes.

Forgive me if I rant a bit here, but I had a lot of problems with this episode, and I’ve got a cold adding to my petulance today. The episode’s biggest problem is that it definitely should not have been the second episode of the series. We've barely gotten to know who the characters are, and they'e already running around like goofballs. This is a pretty big impediment to anyone who's trying to take these guys seriously. We obviously know that they're not always crazy, but by the end of this episode, the TNG characters have been insane fifty percent of the time we've been exposed to them. This makes it really difficult for us to begin connecting with them. And to make things worse, security chief Tasha Yar ends up having sex with Data! This totally undermines any attempt the writers are making to present her as a serious, tough individual and to put her on par with the men of the crew. Now whenever I see her, I’m going to think, Hah, that's the girl that had sex with a robot.

And why was Data created with the ability to have sex, anyway?! He-- You know what? It's not even worth talking about. What I will say, though, is it gets pretty annoying having the writers incessantly reminding us that Data doesn't think like humans do. Every time a character uses a colloquialism or any term Data doesn't understand, he has to correct them in the most pedantic way possible. Then when they walk off, he shakes his head and makes confused faces, as if to say to himself, "Strange humans" (though, in Data-speak it's probably something more like, "organic life forms exhibit such irrational behavior"). I don't need to see this every time he interacts with someone. He's a robot; I get it.

Please, just don't.

This episode also shows us what a dork Wesley Crusher is. I've heard a lot of bad things about this guy, and honestly in episode 1 I didn't think he was all that bad. But if he continues along the path that he begins in "The Naked Now," I may have to join the popular opinion. Near the beginning of the episode, he shows Geordi a mini tractor beam he created (which is what he later re-engineers to create a repulsive force so that no one can get to him in the engine room), and then he pulls out some device that emulates Captain Picard's voice and says, "With this, I can pretend he's ordering me to take the Enterprise anywhere!" I mean, the kid looks like he's thirteen years old. So, is he supposed to have the body of a preadolescent teen, the mind of an aged genius, and the maturity of a six-year-old? Do no aspects of his character sync up with each other? On the bright side, I can at least say that his more mischievous use of the Picard voice device worked well for me. Even though it only lasted a second, it was fun to hear "Picard" order random people to report to random parts of the ship.

The plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either. The dilemma, aside from mass craziness, is that the star they are orbiting suddenly implodes and turns into a white dwarf. On the show, this process lasts a matter of seconds. Now, I'm no astrophysicist, but aren't these things supposed to take untold eons to transpire? And I'm pretty sure that whatever sort of explosion or gravitational shift results in such an event would blow the Enterprise to smithereens. Instead, it incidentally launches one single meteor directly in the path of the ship. That's why it's so urgent that they regain control from Wesley. Of course, they manage to get up and running in the nick of time.

As far as restoring sanity to the crew goes, the characters spend about two seconds half-explaining what's going on by discovering that the collapsing star is affecting water molecules and causing carbon to be extracted from people's bodies, which effectually intoxicates them. This whole scenario is actually a reference to a similar Original Series episode (which, I'm told, is "The Naked Time"), and Data and Riker find a reference to the event in the ship’s historical records (Riker just so happens to remember having read about it). So, they find out what Kirk's crew did in the same situation. Of course this time something's different, so the remedy Kirk's crew used is not effective, and Dr. Crusher has to figure out how to make one that works. This could have been interesting, but no. We get no details as to how the doctor manages to create an effective remedy; she just ... figures it out.

So, yeah, this one didn't do it for me. It was just all-around too ridiculous. The first episode had its problems, but it also had a lot going for it. This one keeps those problems and drops just about everything that was good. The only thing I like about it is one of the characters in general: Deanna Troi, the pseudo-psychic. I think it's interesting that the series would feature her, as if to say that in the future, science finds a place for what we, today, would deem "nonsense." It appears that the only reason she got away without making a fool of herself in this episode was that she was hardly in it. I sincerely hope that subsequent TNG episodes are better than this.

What are your thoughts on "The Naked Now"? Am I being way too harsh on it, or does it really just suck to everybody?

Next week: The Original Series, episode 1.3 – "Where No Man Has Gone Before"