What makes it even worse is that, despite his stupor, his proposals are the ones that allow the remaining sane crew to escape the collapsing star, making him both the villain and the hero of the same episode. Frankly, what with his delusions of grandeur – that are shown even before he becomes intoxicated – and the threat they cause here, it’s almost as though the writers threw the poor kid (and Wil Wheaton) under the bus long before the fans did.
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I had hoped that entering the series with that in mind might allow me to sympathize with the character more than his rabid anti-fandom would allow…but instead, it’s those who hate him who I sympathize with at the moment. That last point deserves special mention, for indeed, Wesley’s reputation of infamy has preceded him in this venture. I get the impression that the writers occasionally confused “drunk” with “being an actual child”. And most unfortunately of all (in more ways than one), Wesley Crusher usurps control over the engineering deck in his bid to take over the Enterprise. Data has sex with Yar (which…I don’t even know how that would work). Crusher begin flirting madly (which is approximately as stiff and silly as it sounds). These revelations simply haven’t been earned yet.Īnd that’s before we even get into what the characters actually do under this disease’s influence. It almost feels like a violation of a stranger’s privacy to hear that Geordi wants to see the way normal people do, or that Yar spent her childhood learning to avoid “the rape gangs” (no, really). Moreover, making the characters so open and vulnerable before we’ve had the chance to familiarize with them in more casual settings isn’t informative: it’s awkward. Even if “Encounter at Farpoint” had flawlessly laid out the groundwork for our sizable main cast (and as was the subject of my rambling earlier, it did not), it would be far too soon to bank on a premise that involves the characters acting “not quite like themselves”. And that might have been a workable goal, had it not been for one little, tiny detail… Creator Gene Roddenberry apparently wanted the “forcibly drunken crew” idea from that episode to serve as a way to further introduce the new characters of The Next Generation, lowering their guards and unveiling their deepest desires to the audience. Sure enough, “The Naked Now” is a blatant, bold-faced “homage” to an episode of the original series entitled “The Naked Time”, with roughly the same concept. We’re a ways out from it, but Denise Crosby will eventually quit from the show as Tasha Yar before the end of the season. And then Data uncovers a historical record indicating that it bears a certain resemblance to an incident encountered by the USS Enterprise, commandeered by one Captain James T. With the ailment now let loose upon the Enterprise, the crew begins to act very strangely. It turns out that the vessel was subject to an infection that emulates heavy intoxication in its hosts, and spreads via physical contact. Here’s the premise: the Enterprise attempts to recover the crew of a science vessel orbiting a collapsing supergiant star and finds them dead. Because this episode is an utter disaster.
It is when occupying such a perspective, and watching episodes like “The Naked Now”, that I’m left wondering just how in the hell The Next Generation managed to survive its first season at all. A time when only the original Star Trek series from nearly twenty years ago would have served as a proper monument to understanding this brave new world of television. A time when each episode represented the fill of its characters and their adventures for an entire week. A time before I could, say, blitz through episodes in whatever quantity I desired through Netflix digital streaming. “Cool party,” I said, affecting my best possible Arnold Schwarzenegger impression.ĭifficult though it may be, I want to at least try to put myself in the shoes of those witnessing this series as it unraveled for the first time in 1987.