The Naked Now

Tasha Yar - worth it?	Fucking cold in here	Swine flu mutates	She gave birth to this :(
(more images below)

Overview: A bizarre virus causes impaired judgment in the crew of the Enterprise.
Writers: J Michael Bingham & John DF Black
Director: Paul Lynch

Anon²: A comedy.

Anon: Yeah, a comedy. Shakespearean right down to "If you prick us, do we not bleek?" Over to you.

Anon²: I've got to update on the card score. You got 2, I got 1. You spotted the Supernova, that was impressive. Right, grest episode, very funny. It mentioned drugs quite a lot in there. One major thing that happened quite early on was Riker sat down on the entire, um, command board and it didn't set off anything.

Anon: The LCARS system.

Anon²: Right, the LCARS system. So, he sat down on the command console and nothing happened. One of the other things was that there was a lot of sexual tension, or sexual non-tension going on there where Wesley and Geordi looked like they were hitting it off with the rentboy Jacko sort of thing. By the way, Jacko died yesterday, the fucking paedo. Also, Troi: no skirt. Boo, basically! Yar tried to get it on with Deanna Troi but Yar got it on with Data eventually as you pointed out before the episode. No doubt you're going to ask me some questions now and I'll do my best to answer them.

Anon: Okay, at the end of the episode, Picard thanks Wesley for saving the ship despite the fact that he puts them in the situation to begin with. Geordi still isn't the Chief Engineer at the moment, instead it's Chief Engineer MacDougall who is damn ugly.

Anon²: Yeah, also she's a bit miserable. She didn't smile at any point and it's supposed to be a comedy. It was quite a poor performance, hopefully she'll be sacked soon. Wesley was wearing another shit jumper too, so that's another shit jumper - 100% record so far.

Anon: It was a pretty terrible jumper. Now, one thing I remember when Next Generation started broadcasting here in the UK in 1989 on the BBC, a lot of stuff was made about the differences between this series of Trek and the previous one and how things had changed. They used this episode with the drunkeness and Yar fucking Data, plus another first season episode named Symbiosis which is about drug addiction to talk about the changes between the series. What other differences do you see between this series and one 22 years before it?

Anon²: Well, one of the things that was quite openly mentioned was the drugs. As I said earlier, it's basically pissedness and frankly there was lots of sexual innuendos. I've already mentioned the Wes/Geordi pairing, the Tasha Yar/Deanna Troi pairing, y'know? That's something that back in the 60's... like I said in the last interview with Farpoint, you had the Uhura incident where Uhura kissed Kirk and they went a bit further here - they've got a bit of lezza action, they've got a bit of homophob... homophili... gay stuff. I guess it's got to the step where we like the lezzas, we don't mind a bit of straight sex but you can cut out the nonsense with the boys, you know what I mean? It's Trek! We're all geeks and that. We're Trekkers and the only websites we visit are Trek and porn but I'm sure that 99.999% of all Trekkers are not fucking gay. One or two possible exceptions, but they're lesbians. Bit weird really. Things haven't really moved on that much in other respects, I mean.

Anon: Another thing that cracked me up was the guy in Engineering playing Jenga with the isolinear rods. What do you think the chances are of a big Jenga party in Engineering?

Anon²: Well, to be fair, he was trying to do a sort of tower of cards thing and to be honest, it was kinda less Jenga really. Mah Jong possibly, probably Dominos if he'd actually put his mind to it. I mean, Jenga... he wasn't really pulling anything out, he was just sticking them on top of each other so there's a trade-off there as to whether he was infringing copyright rights to whoever owns Jenga frankly.

Anon: Maybe I overstated the point! Another thing in this episode is there's a lot of touching which they use as a plot device to transfer the virus from one character to another.

Anon²: It was accompanied by a sound effect to indicate it was being transferred, because basically the Americans wouldn't have got the fact that they touched each other and infected each other. They'd have a sound or a gimmick to tell them something had happened.

Anon: You'd have thought that the sound effect would have been a giveaway and the characters would have realised and said "Oh shit."

Anon²: You'd have thought so but then again this show was put out to Americans, so it had to be thick as fuck frankly. Otherwise they wouldn't have got it, it's quite simple. It's just a ploy that the TV show used. They thought the audience wouldn't get it without this sound effect, this cue. Basically, it's piss-poor Americans.

Anon: And now returning to our ongoing series of "Does Geordi Do Anything?" In this episode he did, because he brought the virus onto the ship.

Anon²: And infected Wesley. Gay. It's clear to see. He touched the guy on the neck in a very affectionate manner.

Anon: There's a bit of loving going on here?

Anon²: I think there is. I think there is. That's probably why Wesley wears such a gay fucking jumper all the time.

Anon: Worf was a bit more pointless in this episode. He did absolutely nothing.

Anon²: He just sat there. He moved between two seats at one point. It was obviously "I can't use this console" so he went to another one, decided he was still thick and went back to the other one. But obviously with the sort of boil he's got on his head you'd expect that. The only other thing I've got to mention is that Data did a very good Only Fools and Horses falling-over bit which was frankly great. But y'know it still wasn't as good as ol' Trotter. Anyway, good effort.

Anon: We saw Picard hopping too, and the beginnings of the Picard/Crusher romance that doesn't really happen too much in this series, but we get odd glimpses throughout.

Anon²: Yeah. At the end of the day, Picard's a bit frigid.

Anon: One final general topic of discussion. We talked when we were going over Encounter At Farpoint about how the series was made 22 years ago. To what extent do you think that The Next Generation has dated?

Anon²: Um, I'd say... for me, a lot of the times when I was watching this show, I remember sitting down for dinner with my mum and dad, so for me it's still something that happened when I was a kid. So yeah, I think it still holds up. I know, first season it's finding its shape, but other than that I just remember eating pork chops and chips, y'know what I mean? Brilliant.

Anon: Excellent. Anything else you want to add?

Anon²: Well, 1+1=2.

Anon: (pause) Okay, that's great. The next episode is Code of Honor, episode 4, where Tasha Yar shags Idi Amin.

Anon²: Fantastic!

Anon: See you later.

- Anon and Anon², 26-Jun-2009