Star Trek Rewatch Discussion Post - "The Naked Time"
Greetings, Trek fans! I’m Mira, your acting captain of the U.S.S. Original Series Rewatch for this episode, “The Naked Time.” Before we set course, you all have permission to take a minute and salivate over the possibilities conjured up by that title.
...Okay, ready for the real deal? No? Too bad. Here we go!
The Enterprise crew is intoxicated by an inhibition-stripping contagion. (Memory-Alpha).
We open with a voiceover by Kirk explaining that the Enterprise is in orbit around Psi 2000 to pick up a research party before the planet disintegrates. Judging by the eerie frozen figure in the opening shot, they’re a little late.
“I don’t think even this Day-Glo Orange is going to melt the ice, sir.”
Spock and a redshirt we soon come to know as Joe Tormalen beam down to the surface in the very same biohazard suits used by the cleanup crew at Woodstock. They discover there’s no sign of any violence or obvious epidemic, but something was clearly wrong with the researchers when they died: one poor fellow’s body is in the shower, fully clothed. So far, so creepy. (No, seriously. If the episode were in black and white, I’d be expecting Rod Serling to turn up and declare that we’ve crossed over into the Twilight Zone. It’s not like Shatner hasn’t visited before.)
Then Spock and Joe split up, and things take a turn for the ridiculous. See, it shouldn’t really take Vulcan logic to figure out that if you’re in a situation which requires a biohazard suit, you should stay in it until you’re out of that situation. But our boy Joey must’ve been too busy tossing around the Idiot Ball during that lesson, because when he gets an itch, he…takes off his glove to scratch it. (Granted, this exposes a severe design flaw in the rest of the biohazard suit, but we’ll overlook that for the moment.)
Joe then compounds the problem by scrabbling about the site bare-handed, leaving him vulnerable to contact from a creeping ooze. Now he’s really got something to scratch. Cue dramatic music, ominous rattle, and opening credits.
The away team returns to the Enterprise. Over in sickbay, McCoy gives Joe a clean bill of health and exchanges a delightful bit of snark with Spock. Crisis averted! So why’s Joe still doing the Lady Macbeth routine? (Well, besides the fact that just watching the crew stand around and wait for the planet to self-destruct wouldn’t be all that dramatic, at least judging by a series of conversations on the bridge that I’m going to skip over.)
We next see Joe in the mess hall, along with a bunch of other listless crewmembers. At first, I thought they’d been infected, but it seems they’re just unenthusiastic extras.
In walk Sulu and his friend, Kevin Riley. Their conversation centers on what may be this episode’s major contribution to the reboot: Sulu’s love of fencing. Noticing that Joe appears a little out of sorts, they inquire as to his welfare.
This turns out to be a mistake. Joe’s angst over the fate of the dead researchers evolves into a rant on the hubris of space travel. Just when you think he’s about to foment an uprising on behalf of expendable crewmembers and/or Luddites everywhere, he turns his silverware on himself. Sulu and Riley subdue him, but the damage is done: Joe’s injured, and that damn death rattle is back.
McCoy and Nurse Chapel perform a surprisingly invasive procedure by 23rd century standards to save Joe, without success; depending on your perspective, the crewman has either lost the will to live or succumbed to the redshirt curse. Interestingly, Nurse Chapel gets to deliver the “he’s dead” line this time around.
While Kirk and McCoy confer, Sulu, under the influence of the virus, sneaks off to the gym. Riley tries to talk him out of it, but soon enough has dubbed himself O’Riley and starts behaving as though he’s ingested the entire Blarney Stone and several boxes of Lucky Charms. Spock sends him off to the infirmary, where he stays just long enough to infect Nurse Chapel before continuing on his merry way.
And Sulu? Well…see for yourself:
“Richelieu!”
For those still holding out for hot, hot, sexxings, I regret to inform you that this is the closest we’re going to come to nudity in this episode. Personally, I’m not complaining, except about the grin. The Joker wishes he could manage that level of creepiness.
Anyway, Sulu charges onto the bridge and attempts to duel the crew, except Uhura, whom he identifies as a fair damsel in need of protection. Uhura, to her credit, will have none of this description. Too bad she doesn’t follow her assertion up by disarming him; instead, it’s Spock and the Vulcan nerve pinch to the rescue.
Eager to get away from the planet before another disturbance - gravitational or otherwise - Kirk hails engineering. Unfortunately for him, the Irishman who answers isn’t Miles O’Brien. Riley takes advantage of his self-appointed status as Captain and newfound control over the comm to demand ice cream for all, declare a dance in the bowling alley(?!), share his opinions on fashion, and subject the ship to repeated earsplitting renditions of “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” (My boyfriend will occasionally threaten to sing this, despite my firm belief that it violates the Geneva Convention. He never gets too far into it.)
While Scotty attempts to weld through the engineering bulkhead, Spock pays a visit to sickbay, where he encounters a besotted Nurse Chapel. This pokes a tiny hole in his earlier theory that the disease brings everyone’s secret personas to the surface, as Nurse Chapel’s crush is pretty much her only defining characteristic, but no matter.
“Nurse Chapel, please. You appear to have mistaken me for a fictional vampire out of your twenty-first century Earth literature.”
She tries to appeal to his human side with words, but it’s her pawing and the accompanying transmission of the virus that manage to fluster Spock. Still, with some unwitting assistance from an irritated-sounding Lieutenant Uhura (smirk away, reboot canon shippers), he manages to escape.
What follows is a neat little insight into the layers of Spock’s mind that probably deserved to be showcased in a more serious episode. He recites a mantra in an attempt to regain control of his emotions. Doesn’t work. Then he reminds himself of his duty to Starfleet. That doesn’t work, either. Then he tries to focus on pure logic in the form of simple math problems. When this, too, fails, he collapses on the table, sobbing.
Meanwhile, Kirk and Scotty manage to retake engineering. Riley bemoans the loss of his ice cream, but Scotty’s discovered a bigger problem: the engines are off, and can’t be powered up in less than thirty minutes. The Enterprise has about eight left before it crashes into the planet. When Kirk reacts in horror, Scotty delivers the line which cements this episode’s place in every variation of Trek canon (all together, now): “Ye canna change the laws of physics!” (Okay, okay, fine. The actual quote is “I canna change the laws of physics,” but close enough.) Kirk insists he try anyway.
Just when all looks bleakest for our heroes, McCoy comes through with a ray of hope: he’s isolated the source of the virus and concocted a cure. Turns out the culprit is…water. As McCoy explains to the audience (since he’s sure not doing it for the benefit of the hysterical crewmember on the comm), the planet’s turned H2O into a “complex chain of molecules” that gets into the bloodstream and acts as an intoxicant. How it does this without changing the water already in the person’s body and killing them, let alone while escaping detection is beyond me, but I’ve given up on trying to justify the science in this episode. Good thing, since it’s only going to get worse from here.
Elsewhere, Kirk finds Spock, explains the situation, and asks him to help find a way to mix the engines’ matter and anti-matter without causing a ship-shattering kaboom. (See what I mean about the science?) Spock is too distressed by his inability to tell his mother he loves her to listen, but Kirk isn’t in the mood to play psychoanalyst.
Of course, Kirk’s efforts to slap some sense into Spock only transfer the disease to him. The resulting monologue, while a classic example of Shatner’s…*ahem* inimitable dramatic stylings, isn’t quite as compelling as Spock’s breakdown. I think the gist of it is that he can’t date Yeoman Rand because the Enterprise has to come first, but he conflates the two so much that it’s hard to tell.
The power of truelove friendship does what the multiplication tables could not, and Spock manages to shake off the effects of the illness. Jim, in turn, musters enough control to give Spock and Scotty their orders and slowly return to the bridge. Once there, McCoy proceeds to rip his shirt off…in order to inoculate him.
Submitted without further comment.
Not that you’d know that was all there was to it from the faces everyone makes as the Enterprise rockets away - and for which, alas, I have no screencaps. You'll just have to take my word for it.
Wait, don’t go just yet; the weirdness isn’t quite over. Seems the reaction from the matter/anti-matter fusion was so forceful that it sends the Enterprise hurtling three days backwards through time. As Spock points out, this discovery opens up the possibility of travel to any era, which sounds pretty darn cool – until you realize that said ability will pretty much never get utilized in this form again, even when it might come in handy (*cough*evacuatingRomulusorVulcan*cough*). I guess you just have to think of it as the Trekverse equivalent of a Time Turner: lots of potential, but limited screentime.
No time for further canon-picking, though. Here come the credits, aaaaand…we’re done!
I’d like to thank all three of you who stuck with me through this entire recap. If you’re somehow still jonesin’ for more, check out TNG’s semi-sequel “The Naked Now” (a.k.a. the episode which reveals Data is “fully functional”), or share your own reactions in the comments. Otherwise, I’ll see you all next week back over at![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
such_heights’s journal for a true sci-fi classic, “City on the Edge of Forever.” "Charlie X." Until then, live long and prosper!
...Okay, ready for the real deal? No? Too bad. Here we go!
The Enterprise crew is intoxicated by an inhibition-stripping contagion. (Memory-Alpha).
We open with a voiceover by Kirk explaining that the Enterprise is in orbit around Psi 2000 to pick up a research party before the planet disintegrates. Judging by the eerie frozen figure in the opening shot, they’re a little late.
Spock and a redshirt we soon come to know as Joe Tormalen beam down to the surface in the very same biohazard suits used by the cleanup crew at Woodstock. They discover there’s no sign of any violence or obvious epidemic, but something was clearly wrong with the researchers when they died: one poor fellow’s body is in the shower, fully clothed. So far, so creepy. (No, seriously. If the episode were in black and white, I’d be expecting Rod Serling to turn up and declare that we’ve crossed over into the Twilight Zone. It’s not like Shatner hasn’t visited before.)
Then Spock and Joe split up, and things take a turn for the ridiculous. See, it shouldn’t really take Vulcan logic to figure out that if you’re in a situation which requires a biohazard suit, you should stay in it until you’re out of that situation. But our boy Joey must’ve been too busy tossing around the Idiot Ball during that lesson, because when he gets an itch, he…takes off his glove to scratch it. (Granted, this exposes a severe design flaw in the rest of the biohazard suit, but we’ll overlook that for the moment.)
Joe then compounds the problem by scrabbling about the site bare-handed, leaving him vulnerable to contact from a creeping ooze. Now he’s really got something to scratch. Cue dramatic music, ominous rattle, and opening credits.
The away team returns to the Enterprise. Over in sickbay, McCoy gives Joe a clean bill of health and exchanges a delightful bit of snark with Spock. Crisis averted! So why’s Joe still doing the Lady Macbeth routine? (Well, besides the fact that just watching the crew stand around and wait for the planet to self-destruct wouldn’t be all that dramatic, at least judging by a series of conversations on the bridge that I’m going to skip over.)
We next see Joe in the mess hall, along with a bunch of other listless crewmembers. At first, I thought they’d been infected, but it seems they’re just unenthusiastic extras.
In walk Sulu and his friend, Kevin Riley. Their conversation centers on what may be this episode’s major contribution to the reboot: Sulu’s love of fencing. Noticing that Joe appears a little out of sorts, they inquire as to his welfare.
This turns out to be a mistake. Joe’s angst over the fate of the dead researchers evolves into a rant on the hubris of space travel. Just when you think he’s about to foment an uprising on behalf of expendable crewmembers and/or Luddites everywhere, he turns his silverware on himself. Sulu and Riley subdue him, but the damage is done: Joe’s injured, and that damn death rattle is back.
McCoy and Nurse Chapel perform a surprisingly invasive procedure by 23rd century standards to save Joe, without success; depending on your perspective, the crewman has either lost the will to live or succumbed to the redshirt curse. Interestingly, Nurse Chapel gets to deliver the “he’s dead” line this time around.
While Kirk and McCoy confer, Sulu, under the influence of the virus, sneaks off to the gym. Riley tries to talk him out of it, but soon enough has dubbed himself O’Riley and starts behaving as though he’s ingested the entire Blarney Stone and several boxes of Lucky Charms. Spock sends him off to the infirmary, where he stays just long enough to infect Nurse Chapel before continuing on his merry way.
And Sulu? Well…see for yourself:
For those still holding out for hot, hot, sexxings, I regret to inform you that this is the closest we’re going to come to nudity in this episode. Personally, I’m not complaining, except about the grin. The Joker wishes he could manage that level of creepiness.
Anyway, Sulu charges onto the bridge and attempts to duel the crew, except Uhura, whom he identifies as a fair damsel in need of protection. Uhura, to her credit, will have none of this description. Too bad she doesn’t follow her assertion up by disarming him; instead, it’s Spock and the Vulcan nerve pinch to the rescue.
Eager to get away from the planet before another disturbance - gravitational or otherwise - Kirk hails engineering. Unfortunately for him, the Irishman who answers isn’t Miles O’Brien. Riley takes advantage of his self-appointed status as Captain and newfound control over the comm to demand ice cream for all, declare a dance in the bowling alley(?!), share his opinions on fashion, and subject the ship to repeated earsplitting renditions of “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” (My boyfriend will occasionally threaten to sing this, despite my firm belief that it violates the Geneva Convention. He never gets too far into it.)
While Scotty attempts to weld through the engineering bulkhead, Spock pays a visit to sickbay, where he encounters a besotted Nurse Chapel. This pokes a tiny hole in his earlier theory that the disease brings everyone’s secret personas to the surface, as Nurse Chapel’s crush is pretty much her only defining characteristic, but no matter.
She tries to appeal to his human side with words, but it’s her pawing and the accompanying transmission of the virus that manage to fluster Spock. Still, with some unwitting assistance from an irritated-sounding Lieutenant Uhura (smirk away, reboot canon shippers), he manages to escape.
What follows is a neat little insight into the layers of Spock’s mind that probably deserved to be showcased in a more serious episode. He recites a mantra in an attempt to regain control of his emotions. Doesn’t work. Then he reminds himself of his duty to Starfleet. That doesn’t work, either. Then he tries to focus on pure logic in the form of simple math problems. When this, too, fails, he collapses on the table, sobbing.
Meanwhile, Kirk and Scotty manage to retake engineering. Riley bemoans the loss of his ice cream, but Scotty’s discovered a bigger problem: the engines are off, and can’t be powered up in less than thirty minutes. The Enterprise has about eight left before it crashes into the planet. When Kirk reacts in horror, Scotty delivers the line which cements this episode’s place in every variation of Trek canon (all together, now): “Ye canna change the laws of physics!” (Okay, okay, fine. The actual quote is “I canna change the laws of physics,” but close enough.) Kirk insists he try anyway.
Just when all looks bleakest for our heroes, McCoy comes through with a ray of hope: he’s isolated the source of the virus and concocted a cure. Turns out the culprit is…water. As McCoy explains to the audience (since he’s sure not doing it for the benefit of the hysterical crewmember on the comm), the planet’s turned H2O into a “complex chain of molecules” that gets into the bloodstream and acts as an intoxicant. How it does this without changing the water already in the person’s body and killing them, let alone while escaping detection is beyond me, but I’ve given up on trying to justify the science in this episode. Good thing, since it’s only going to get worse from here.
Elsewhere, Kirk finds Spock, explains the situation, and asks him to help find a way to mix the engines’ matter and anti-matter without causing a ship-shattering kaboom. (See what I mean about the science?) Spock is too distressed by his inability to tell his mother he loves her to listen, but Kirk isn’t in the mood to play psychoanalyst.
Of course, Kirk’s efforts to slap some sense into Spock only transfer the disease to him. The resulting monologue, while a classic example of Shatner’s…*ahem* inimitable dramatic stylings, isn’t quite as compelling as Spock’s breakdown. I think the gist of it is that he can’t date Yeoman Rand because the Enterprise has to come first, but he conflates the two so much that it’s hard to tell.
The power of true
Not that you’d know that was all there was to it from the faces everyone makes as the Enterprise rockets away - and for which, alas, I have no screencaps. You'll just have to take my word for it.
Wait, don’t go just yet; the weirdness isn’t quite over. Seems the reaction from the matter/anti-matter fusion was so forceful that it sends the Enterprise hurtling three days backwards through time. As Spock points out, this discovery opens up the possibility of travel to any era, which sounds pretty darn cool – until you realize that said ability will pretty much never get utilized in this form again, even when it might come in handy (*cough*evacuatingRomulusorVulcan*cough*). I guess you just have to think of it as the Trekverse equivalent of a Time Turner: lots of potential, but limited screentime.
No time for further canon-picking, though. Here come the credits, aaaaand…we’re done!
I’d like to thank all three of you who stuck with me through this entire recap. If you’re somehow still jonesin’ for more, check out TNG’s semi-sequel “The Naked Now” (a.k.a. the episode which reveals Data is “fully functional”), or share your own reactions in the comments. Otherwise, I’ll see you all next week back over at
such_heights’s journal for
no subject
My post about the episode. I have nothing too interesting to add, since I was basically rambling on very little sleep.
no subject
I like your review, too. Half-asleep's probably not a bad way to approach this episode.
no subject