The Naked Time (TOS)

I am definitely developing a new appreciation for the classics through this project. While Nathan basically panned TNG's sequel to this episode, "The Naked Now," I have a much more favorable view of the original, which basically blew me away. Not because it was about anything, just because it's wildly entertaining and pretty funny. Nathan's complaint was that he didn't feel like he knew the characters well enough for their playing against type to be entertaining, but somehow here it works. 

For one thing, the focus isn't on the decline of the regulars. For most of the episode, it's redshirts and Sulu who get affected. McCoy, Scotty, Rand, and, most notably, Uhura (who is such a badass this episode, more on that later) never succumb to symptoms at all. And Spock and Kirk are only hit at the last moment.

So because it's not regulars, it's not so much about playing against type as doing really ridiculously over the top things -- like the now-iconic shirtless, swashbuckling Sulu, and Lt. Riley locking himself in the engine room singing drinking songs. But the episode never becomes a comedy. All of the ridiculous symptoms are played against effectively built tension as the ship sinks ever closer to its doom. This seems to be a winning formula unique to classic Trek: over-the-top goofiness that inexplicably but impressively co-exists with legitimately compelling drama.

That's what really makes this work and "Naked Now" fail, that balance of goofiness and legitimate tension. TNG's offering, by contrast, trades way too much goofy for way too little tension. A better comparison here is DS9's "Babel" actually, which is another outbreak story with believable tension and some goofy disease moments. Still, I like this the best of the three. It could be that TOS's baseline cheesiness works in it's favor, also.

I love the abstract way the disease is portrayed/presented, with people looking at their hands and the audio cue of a rattle, that's ambiguously either in their heads or just in the score. There's so much art to the directing in this episode; a lot of the story is shown rather than told.

There's some acting by Nimoy and Shatner that straddles the line between good and hammy. I think it's acting that would be good if the emotional beats felt earned, feels hammy because they're not, but sort of bounces back to good because that's the whole point. The writers can't resist to explore Spock's hidden emotions, even when the paint's barely dry on the facade. But a good turn by Majel Barret (Roddenberry?) as Nurse Christine Chapel (her first appearance in that role) does wonders to make this first delve into Spock's emotions meaningful.

By biggest complaint is the weird, random time travel ending, which doesn't fit into the plot at all. Sources suggest this was meant to be part one of a two-parter, with "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (which falls much later in the season.) This makes some sense but, also has problems. One, it would have been less like a two-parter and more like the teasers at the ends of Sliders episodes: kind of pointless. Two, they clearly had time to edit the script to not be "To be continued...", so why didn't they have time to take out the pointless time travel all together?

Oh well, small potatoes. If TOS keeps turning out episodes like this, I predict this franchise will go places. I'm calling it now: 6 movies and a season*!

Random Observations:

- Big episode for firsts: First Vulcan neck pinch, first utterance of "I canna change the laws of physics, Capn," and, as mentioned, first appearance of Nurse Chapel. I am also told this is the only time all three female recurring crewmen (Uhura, Rand, and Chapel) all appear in the same episode.

- This is a big episode for Scotty, who's really doing the brunt of the ship-saving, though, as usual, Kirk gets the glory.

- Meanwhile, Uhura is holding things together on the bridge while pretty much everyone else either goes crazy or runs off to put out fires elsewhere. Real MVPs for the little guys, which is rare and nice to see on TOS, which was never quite as much an ensemble show as it's successors.

- We have now seen all of Mrs. Roddenberry's major roles on this blog: Lwaxana Troi, Nurse Chapel, The Cage"'s "Number One," and, of course, the voice of the Starfleet computers. I'm realizing she was really a very versatile actor. (The only non-Trek role I can recall seeing her in was in Earth: The Final Conflict, where she also played a doctor, but a very different role than any of the above.)

- I love the little references to the ship's gym and bowling alley. It's a home!

- Man, how much would it suck to be Riley after that episode. Like anyone's going to let you forget singing Irish drinking songs, giving unsolicited fashion tips, making vaguely racist comments and, oh yeah, almost destroying the ship.

- Some housekeeping notes: pictures to come tomorrow and next week, double Deep Space Nine to make up for my skipped week.

*3 seasons, but I needed to make my Community reference land.

State of Flux (VOY)

            Star Trek and The Next Generation were both extremely episodic, designed for the casual viewer who watched maybe one or two episodes, maybe not in order. Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, is highly serial – episodes build on the events of previous ones, and its best watched as a complete project. Voyager tries to strike a balance between the two, and “State of Flux” is an episode where this experiment is in full effect. As such, it kind of has to be two different episodes, and it makes some sacrifices to achieve that end. I’m not sure it’s a complete success, but it’s certainly not a complete failure – it’s watchable, and exciting, and it introduces us to one of Voyager’s most memorable recurring villains.

            From an episodic standpoint, “State of Flux” falls a little bit flat. It’s trying to be a mystery story, but there’s no twist. Well, there is a twist, but it comes at the wrong point in the story to be effective. A good mystery story leaves you wondering who’s guilty until the end. I think even if I hadn’t been spoiled, I would never have suspected anyone but Seska. The scene where they interrogate Carey falls extremely flat, like the interrogators are talking to the audience and saying "look, it really could be this guy, see!"

Chakotay makes Carey squirm.

            There’s also some wonderful set up of Chakotay and Tuvok as partners – kind of the classic buddy-cop-movie pairing of the by-the-book cop and the loose cannon who doesn’t play by the rules. There’s even a little acknowledgement of the history between the two characters – Tuvok did gain Chakotay’s trust with the intention of betraying him, and that’s not something you forgive easily. These two needed an episode to get into this stuff, and I can’t help but feel they got shortchanged.

            So a little more time could have made this episode a much better mystery and a better Tuvok/ Chakotay story. Where did that time go instead? It went to developing Seska as a character and making us care about her betrayal. It went to establishing her relationship with other characters like B’Elanna and Chakotay. All of this is extremely important when we realize that Seska is going to be Voyager’s nemesis for the next two seasons. The fact that she lived and worked with these people, that she and Chakotay were lovers, makes her a much more interesting villain. But all of this could have been built up slowly over several episodes.

            Or State of Flux could have been Voyager’s first two-parter. It had enough going on to justify one, and the stakes were high enough. But I understand the writer’s not wanting to take the risk. Two-parters tend to be heavy on the action, which this episode was not. But I can’t help but feel there were a lot of missed opportunities.

But Seska makes Chakotay squirm even more.

            The serial aspect of the episode is more of a success. I especially like how much it draws on not only Voyager’s past, but Star Trek’s as well. On the one hand, we have the most recent past – in the previous episode, both Seska and Joe Carey showed they were willing to bend the Prime Directive to get Voyager home. Now that a more serious breach is committed, making them the primary suspects is excellent payoff for that episode. Going back to the pilot, we see the Kazon make good on their promise to “make Voyager rue the day”, and we see the horrible effect of ignoring the prime directive and giving them technology.

            But what really works for me is the reveal that Lt. Seska is a Cardassian sleeper agent. A Cardassian is the perfect villain not only from a plot standpoint (it makes perfect sense for them to have put a spy on a maquis ship) but also from a psychological standpoint. The Cardassians work as villains on Deep Space Nine because of the stark contrast that their militaristic, collectivist culture poses to the Federation. When you think about what we know about Cardassian psychology, Seska’s actions up until this point make sense. She wants to get home. She’s willing to break rules and make back-handed deals to do it. She also has the Cardassian penchant for speechifying, which helps immensely.

            Seska is not often mentioned when the great villains of Star Trek are recounted – if Janeway has an iconic nemesis, it’s probably Susanna Thompson’s borg queen. But at this point, she has all the hallmarks of being truly memorable, and she really never stops being a thorn in the Captain’s side, even seasons after her death. I’m looking forward to seeing her reign of terror continue to develop, and seeing how Chakotay takes this ever-increasing tide of betrayal.

Random observations:

Seska and Chakotay’s banter is nice. The whole “Mushroom soup” scene did an excellent job of showing how awkward Chakotay’s position is as first officer and Maquis liason.

I hope the gross leola root becomes a running gag. Incidentally, it looks like someone shellacked a piece of ginger.

B’Elanna doesn’t use Scotty’s patented Chief Engineer exaggeration technique. If she says it will be done tomorrow, it will be done tomorrow.

The scene with Tuvok and Chakotay playing gin during the stake-out was amazing. I want to see more little slice-of-life-on-Voyager moments.

Tom Paris hasn’t been involved in a plotline in a while.

Maj Cullah just makes hairdressers squirm.

Maj Cullah is probably even less memorable as a recurring villain than Seska, but I should probably note that we meet him for the first time in this episode.

Despite all the bluffing back and forth, no shots are actually fired in space (no torpedoes expended)

No fatalities, but we can definitely count Seska as a lost crew member.

Terra Nova (ENT)

Enterprise is best when it's embracing its premise. Here, the show turns in a solid episode by cashing in on the recentness of Earth's acquisition of warp drive to create a generation-old mystery story that wraps around to another prime directive tale (although of course there isn't yet a prime directive).

The Enterprise travels to the home of Earth's lost deep space colony, to discover it peopled with savage subterranean aliens. In a twist so predictable you can hardly call it that, the aliens turn out to be the colonists, but the show doesn't rest for a beat on that weak reveal. The why of how the colonists came to live underground and lost the knowledge of their race is slowly revealed: in the midst of a growing political conflict with the homeworld, the colony was hit by an asteroid whose radiation killed all but the children, who inherited the mistaken idea it was an attack by humans.

The now-grown Novans are hostile toward humanity, and they kidnap Malcolm Reed. Archer and company have to build a bridge and teach one of the natives to remember the truth so they can rescue Malcolm -- and so they can rescue the colony, whose noncontaminated water supply is running out.

After last week's plot-holey story that didn't seem to know how seriously to take itself, this is a welcome installment. T'Pol's nagging had been toned down, the crew's chemistry is gelling. Amazingly, Enterprise is a much quicker starter than most of the latter shows.

The guest stars do fine here, even if the native dialect (English with keywords swapped out for other word that are related) is a bit of a scifi cliche.  The aboriginal makeup is another thing that arguably doesn't work. But the writing is solid and the story moves at a good clip -- as I said before, even when the revelations aren't earth-shattering, the plot doesn't need them to be, always moving on to another reveal.

There are some questions raised but never quite answered about what constitutes a distinct culture, and whether relocating a small number of humans one generation removed from their society is tantamount to destroying one. But better good questions that hang in the air than no real ideological meat to speak of.

Random Observations

-- It's high time for a Travis Mayweather episode. Also for a Malcolm Reed episode, which, despite appearances, this isn't.

-- This is apparently Brandon Braga's least favorite episode of the show, which shows he and I have different tastes.

-- Sorry I missed last Tuesday, and this week is so short. I'll be playing catch-up with a bonus post some time this week.

Haven (TNG)

            The Enterprise is looking forward to some peaceful shore leave on an idyllic planet, but this is interrupted by two things – a plague ship from an alien world threatens to infect the planet, and an arranged marriage made when Counselor Troi was a little girl catches up with her. Both of these plots have the potential for being interesting, but the resulting episode is uneven, at best.

            Ten episodes in, Deanna Troi is probably the least developed character we have on the show (Geordi is a close second.) This is her first spotlight episode, and we do learn a little about her, but her show-stealing mother and plot that’s more about the guest stars than the cast keep us from actually learning anything significant about who Deanna Troi is.

            The most important of the guest stars being of course Lwaxana Troi, one of those most divisive recurring characters in the franchise. Personally, I find her extremely entertaining, if just a tad overused. In her debut she’s a little more obnoxious than she is in subsequent appearances – just a little too full-of-herself, a little to presumptuous, a little too rude. All of these qualities I think get toned down in subsequent appearances, but that could just be my memory. Either way, her condescending flirtations with Captain Picard are a lot of fun, and Patrick Stewart plays the comedy of this normally quite dignified man trying to hold onto that dignity in the face of Lwaxana being Lwaxana.

            But entertaining as she is, Lwaxana is also not the main character of the episode. Unfortunately, Wyatt Miller is, and while he’s charismatic in kind of a bland way, we don’t care about him anywhere near as much as we care about the crew, and that’s unfortunate, because he’s actually the character who drives the action of the show, and he’s the only one for whom the stake really feel particularly high.

            Let me put it another way. Wyatt has to face a decision about whether to uphold a tradition and a vow he has made or to follow his heart. If Deanna had to make that decision, then this might have been an episode that showed us who Deanna is. But before she has a chance to decide, Wyatt goes over to the plague ship, absolving her of responsibility. It feels like this guest star cheated a main character out of an interesting story.

            And of course, Troi’s failure to act on the fact that she would clearly prefer to stay on the Enterprise makes her look like an incredibly weak character incapable of fighting for what she wants or even making her own decisions. I keep waiting for the Deanna Troi I remember liking to show up on this show, and I haven’t seen her yet. I fear I will have to wait quite a while.

Random Observations:

The story of the Tellarians and their plague is really interesting, and I wish more time had been spent exploring it.

The costuming in this episode is especially 80’s, and the scoring is extremely heavy-handed, neither of which do anything to sell the premise.

Classic Data: “Please continue the petty-bickering. I find it most intriguing.”

It’s odd that Deanna can hear telepathic communication even though she can’t actually read minds, but then I remembered that Troi can talk telepathically to Riker, so I guess sending and receiving messages is a different skill than actually perusing people’s thoughts.

I love the little bits of Betazoid culture we get, like the Thanksgiving gong and the nudity at weddings.

It’s good that Picard points out the ridiculousness of arranged marriage in the context of 24^th-century woman of mixed species heritage, but I wish it was taken farther. I would really have liked to see Troi stand up for her right to retain her career.

Prime Factors (VOY)

            Most of the time, when aliens are really ridiculously friendly and also pretty and only want to help the crew, it is because they are secretly trying to eat us or involved in some kind of mind-control plot. “Prime Factors” subverts that expected twist – the Salcarans genuinely are as nice as they say they are, pretty much. Ultimately, though, Voyager’s crew gets greedy and screws things up, and in the process B’Elanna finds her loyalty tested.

Lunch room gossip.

            The opening of this episode really captures that “family” feeling that made late TNG so watchable. Tom, B’Elanna, and ascended redshirt Lt. Seska are teasing Harry about a disastrous date he had with Jenny Delaney. Seska calls out that “there are no secrets on a ship this small” and we are happy to see a lighter side of life in the Delta Quadrant. Eavesdropping from a nearby table, Janeway and Tuvok are happy to see Starfleet and Maquis crew members finally coming together.

            Which of course cues us in that that bond is about to be challenged. It’s smart to make Harry and B’Elanna the focus of this episode, because their relationship has been a symbol of the integration of the crews thus far. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Voyager receives a personal invitation from the overwhelming hospital but hedonistic (and inexplicably French) Salcarans. The Salcarans offer the crew shore leave, edible plants for their hydroponics bay, new clothes, etc. They even throw a big party for the crew, and it  looks like  both Harry and the Captain are about to get lucky. But then Harry ruins everyone’s sexytimes when he discovers that the Salcarans have the technology to send Voyager halfway home.

Remember the Prime Directive? The one where we don’t interfere with the development of other civilizations? Where we’re not allowed to share technology? Turns out the Salcarans have it too, and as Janeway points out, it’s not so fun to be on the other side. Still, Janeway is not about to get her crew home by violating the laws of another civilization, so she sets about trying to change the Salcarans’ minds.

The person most likely to screw up Harry Kim's love life.

Which brings us back to our two Junior officers, both of whom face temptation. Harry, the young, impressionable rules-follower, is also the one who most desperately wants to get back to his family. Also, his new Salcaran girlfriend happens to have the black market connections that could get him the technology. B’Elanna, who was all for screwing over the Ocampa to get home back in “Caretaker”, is now in a position of leadership and doesn’t want to betray her Captain’s trust. But she, along with Seska and Joe Carey, has the engineering knowledge to use it.

            It’s great to see these characters conflicted on so many axis – desire to get home, duty to their Captain, observance of Starfleet principles – and their decisions are all in-character and believable. The real twist comes when Tuvok discovers the plot and, rather than turning the mutineers in, covers for them. His rationale – that he knew Janeway wouldn’t be able to defy her principles so he was saving her the decision – is rationale. It’s actually very Vulcan, to be willing to bend principle when it makes logical sense to do so, and his final scene with Janeway works because of the relationship that’s built up between the two.

The dressing down.

            Lots of characters barely appear in this episode – Paris, Kes, The EMH, and CHakotay are all mostly absent. But that gave the writers a chance to really let Janeway, Tuvok, B’Elanna and Harry work through this problem in their own ways. And that’s where this episode shines. Voyager is more full of strong personalities than the Enterprise ever was, and it’s at its strongest when those personalities get to clash a little. Janeway is a mother to her crew, but sometimes you disagree with your mother and you act out, and then you have to deal with the fact that you betrayed someone who cares about you. Janeway sees Tuvok as a mentor. She sees Harry as a son. She’s not sure whether to see B’Elanna as both a pupil or an antagonist, but Kate Mulgrew and Roxanne Dawson have great chemistry so I want to see those sparks fly over and over again.

The ending – we steal the technology, but it’s not compatible with ours and doesn’t work – is a bit of a cop-out. It’s the Gilligan’s Island principle, of course, in that if Voyager gets home there’s no show. But I don’t think the episode is undermined. On the contrary, I think it’s the strongest episode yet – it has a compelling conflict, the tension builds effectively, and the characters actually develop.

Random Observations:

Minor Character Watch:

Seska gets a name and a brother back home who’s birthday she’s missing.

Joe Carey has a wife and kids back home himself, and he’s more ethically flexible than we thought. He also seems to be adjusting well to being B’Elanna’s subordinate.

Jenny Delaney gets name-dropped again as the girl Harry will never make it with.

I love the fact that the Salcarans use stories as currency.

The Salcaran ship does not look like a recycled model. The set of their ballroom, on the other hand, is definitely a redress of the Professor’s house from Ex Posto Facto.

Discussion question: Is Harry Kim Wesley Crusher done right?

That climax sure had a lot of technobabble in it.

I’m gonna go ahead and guess that the reason Tom Paris wasn’t involved in the episode after the first scene is that he was out there nailing as many Salcaran chicks as possible.