Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Naked Now Review (S1E03)
★★☆☆☆ The crew lose their heads in an episode big on laughs, short on originality, and overindulgent in intolerable boy geniuses
The Enterprise is stricken by a mysterious and rapidly spreading illness that causes the crew to lose control of their inhibitions.
Scrambling to find a cure, Picard and his rapidly dwindling crew’s mission is further complicated as young Wesley Crusher usurps control of the ship just as a nearby star begins to collapse…
On its original airing back in 1966, Gene Roddenberry described the polywater spore in The Naked Time as a great way to get us inside the heads of his characters, and to have them reveal their motivations and hopes and fears. It’s not a bad idea in theory, and that original series episode is a lot of fun, but I’ve never been particularly happy with its positioning as such an early episode of the show.
Twenty years later and Roddenberry was at it again, rolling out the “crew gets drunk” concept in what was only the show’s first regular season episode.
I think it's a lazy and unimaginative thing to do. We’ve already seen this before. Why is our brand new shiny Star Trek boldly going where it's already been in only its first proper episode?
Much like Time, The Naked Now adds layers to our new characters by showing us all things in their heads that why wouldn’t ordinarily say or do. It’s not subtle, but I guess it’s effective to a point. Benefitting most from the episode is Data, with Brent Spiner showing his comedic range; a much-improved version of the character following his first appearance, where he came off as a bizarre combination of Pinocchio and a robotic supremacist.
Far less exciting was what happened with Wil Wheaton’s rapidly detestable Wesley. Already established as a prodigious boy genius (it gets much worse), Wesley captures and saves the ship while suffering from the same virus that incapacitated his more experienced elders. An interesting development for him, for sure, but it makes his adult crewmates look like utter buffoons. Thanks, I hate it.
This is a better episode than Encounter, for sure. It’s better paced, and the actors look far more comfortable, beginning to slowly show signs of becoming the iconic heroes we know and love today. Trek loves an episode where characters don’t act like they’re supposed to. Deep Space Nine gave us Dramatis Personae, while Strange New Worlds had a lot of fun with The Elysian Kingdom.
Both of those episodes came in the latter stages of their show’s first season, where the characters had already been solidified. The Naked Now? Should’ve been “The Naked Later”.
