The Naked Now

When the crew of the Starship Enterprise find a ship adrift in space, they need to find out not only what killed the crew, but what appears to be affecting their own crew as well....

This episode was actually the first one filmed, and it's certainly a rather intimate one to begin with! Probably why the cast became so tight knit over the 7 year run.

There's humour abounding and several scenes now considered "classic". It was the first ever episode I watched of Star Trek (I never saw Original as a kid) and what an introduction! It led to a love of both the series and Data in particular.

Definitely one not to miss!

Shamelessly borrowing a story from the original series, the Enterprise falls prey to a powerful virus that causes the crew to act and behave as if heavily intoxicated. This results in characters behaving goofily and, for the first time in this series, wanton lust and desires.

Feeling very much like a Roddenberry episode, this is far more comical than most episodes. Spiner makes the most of his character displaying genuine progression but generally speaking, this is a fairly weak episode that exposes the lack of depth the characters possess at this point, especially Yar. Trek can do comedy better than this.

This episode is a sequel to TOS The Naked Time. Although The Naked Time was a very early episode as well, it featured deep character development, most especially with Kirk and Spock.

When Kirk was infected, his fears of losing the Enterprise were laid bare- and indeed the ship was in imminent mortal danger. When Spock was infected, his fears of losing control emerged, and indeed he HAD lost control.

That's pretty good stuff.

The Naked Now, however, pretty much just showed everybody drunk, with little character development. To the extent there was character development, it was mostly bad. Picard looked terrible, like a doddering old man, while Riker looked heroic. Also, the first Wesley Saves The Day episode.

The Naked Now would have been received much better if it came way later in the season, mainly because this early, we didn't know these characters well enough to contrast their behaviors.

Geordi's behavior when Yar finds him is chillingly effective though because we know what it portends when he asks her to not let him give in to the crazy ideas he's having. It's frightening because Yar doesn't know just how dangerous he is at this point.

The Enterprise answers a distress call from from a ship studying the affects of a red giant star about to go supernova. When they get there, the crew is all dead and the ship looks like a wild party happened.

The same thing happened on Star Trek prime in an episode and to my knowledge this second episode is the only one in the whole series that mentions Captain Kirk and his crew.

As it was with Dr. McCoy, responsibility falls on Dr. Crusher ad she's got a problem with Wesley showing abherent behavior an effect of the disease.

Even Data is affected which was unusual. Later on he's imperious to various maladies that strike the human crew.

Look for Wil Wheaton to make one of his strongest performances in the series history.

My heart sank a bit when I saw this recently. It was only the second offering and I would imagine those who thought that the pilot was setting up an intellectual kind of science fiction was suddenly thrust into a kind of 1950's space commando movie. Wesley Crusher is a loose cannon whose character should have been eased into the series a little at a time. Let him earn his stripes. When one considers the expense and seriousness of these missions, for him to be playing around with such dangerous stuff seems awfully careless. He becomes a cause of trouble and then goes into the solution mode. The Enterprise is affected by a viral condition that causes irrational behavior. One would think that there would be some sort of fail-safe in operation. The fact that the crew is still around for the third episode is a credit to incredible chance and luck. I believe that the series is only strong when the interplanetary forces are at odds and invention is at the fore, coming from those carefully trained in their duties and experiences.