The Outrageous Okona

The Enterprise picks up a colourful ladies man named Okona. Data wants a sense of humour.

One of my favourite second season episodes as it just sort of seems wonderfully out-of-place with the rest of TNG. This sort of story could have been done at sea on a ship when you think about it. Not much sci-fi here.

As another poster noted, it is too bad that Okono did not return to the series every so often, like Harry Mudd, as he would have given us some welcome laughs.

The Data-subplot is less pleasing to me, but that story does not take up too much screen time.

This TNG story leans to the humorous side as the Enterprise aids a Han Solo like captain of a cargo ship working a run of various humanoid settled planets in a sector of space.

Billy Campbell plays the roguish captain who Captain Picard picks up and he makes himself right at home on the Enterprise. But a pair of outraged fathers from two different planets are chasing Campbell, one of them saying he's left his daughter in a family way. It's a delicate diplomatic mission that Patrick Stewart undertakes to arrive at the truth of the situation.

A subsidiary plot has Data trying to understand that elusive human past time of humor. In his endeavor he enlists the help of Whoopi Goldberg and as a holodeck creation, Joe Piscopo. Can't get better help than that.

This one is unique and rather funny in the annals of the Star Trek franchise.

After too many bad memories, I took to skipping this episode each time it showed up in the Season 2 sequence. I recently watched it again just to remind me why. I've always considered this the worst ST:TNG episode (with the exception of "Shades of Gray," which barely counts as an episode at all).

I keep listening to the clunky dialogue and thinking of the script red-penciled by the author's Writing 101 teacher: "SHOW, DON'T TELL!" From Deanna Troi's pronouncement, and everyone else's constant elbowing reminders about what a charming, dangerous rogue Okona is, to Guinan's explanation about how funny her droid joke is (it isn't), to the who-cares resolution to the conflict, there isn't a plot point that isn't highlighted and triple-underlined for our edification, and there ain't a believable moment in any of it. Unfortunately, Bill Campbell, a charming actor in other circumstances, is too puppy-dog huggable to be the center of the machinations of the plot. On the other hand, it could be that no one short of John Barrowman (Jack Harkness from "Doctor Who") could pull of this underwritten placeholder of a role.

(Zero points, by the way, to the Data subplot. While I think Joe Piscopo stopped being funny decades ago, he and Brent Spiner had nothing to work with here. Although the Jerry Lewis bit was funny in a stupid way.)

On a good day, you may be able to think of this as a charming little homage to a lesser Original Series episode. Me, I'd rather skip ahead to "Time Squared" or "Q Who."

Pretty much everything involving the titular Okona is fun, the crew's surprise at being targetted with lasers still cracks me up. It's also refreshing to see a sex-positive episode that isn't creepy as hell.

On the other hand, we have Data trying to become more human (sigh) on the holodeck (double sigh). It's painfully unfunny. The scene where the Comic imitates Jerry Lewis is probably the worst scene in all of TNG.

I seem to enjoy the episodes where Commander Data goes on a quest of understanding of the human mind. In this one, he enlists the help of Joe Piscopo (what ever happened to him?) to figure out how to be funny. Of course, he would have the capacity to memorize every joke in the universe if he wished, but this doesn't explain why some people get laughs and others are silenced out. He is so diligent, trying to copy old routines and tell stale jokes in front of a holodeck audience. Meanwhile, a really worthless major plot is going on. Some young stud, zooming around in a cargo ship, has found himself aboard the enterprise when his ship breaks down. He is a free spirit and starts to put the make on every interplanetary fashion model on board the ship. He starts to become a real nuisance, when it gets worse. There are leaders of two warring planets that are after his hide. It seems that he may have impregnated a beautiful young woman, the daughter of one of the planet's emissaries. The other leader accuses him of stealing an heirloom gem of great value. Picard is caught in the middle of a fight he has no interest in. However, Okona, who is jumping from bed to bed, is on his ship and, he feels, his responsibility. This could have been a hillbilly drama or a nouveau Romeo and Juliet. The main story is much weaker than the comedic Data.