Skin of Evil

Armus the evil oilslick. The actor's now dead.	Planet Viagra II.	Now Tasha's dying, maybe Worf will get character development.	Lt. Cmdr. Leland T. Lynch. Incredible.
(more images below)

Overview: A vile tar-like creature interferes with a rescue mission and holds Deanna Troi hostage.
Writer: Joseph Stefano
Director: Joseph L. Scanlan

Anon²: Yeah! (laughs) Oh, by the way, the name of the planet they visit in this episode is Viagra II. Picard gets a boner about that one. He is old though.

Anon: It would help with the vinegar strokes, wouldn't it?

Anon²: Just like in that episode where he walked into the turbolift with the stupid face.

Anon: Oh, Too Short a Season, yeah.

Anon²: That's the one, yeah.

Anon: This episode must win an award for the greatest name of a guest character ever. There was a guy called Lieutenant Commander Leland T. Lynch.

Anon²: (laughs) Fucking brilliant! When he said that, I was like, "What?!" We had to pause it and rewind just to hear it again. Ridiculous!

Anon: Maybe one day we'll go back and see what his name is like on a foreign language audio track.

Anon²: It'll probably sound the same, but it'd be...

Anon: Señor Lynch!

Anon²: Yeah, Señor Lynch! Oh, we need to talk about the sets on the planet. Now obviously we understand that they have to use sets again, but this was...

Anon: They were used in The Last Outpost, Hide & Q...

Anon²: Yeah. The Ferengi were there. Q's Vicious Animal Things were there. So, basically along with Data-watch, Geordi-watch and Wesley's-fucking-jumper-being-gay-watch, we should probably do a set-watch. So we've got three set uses alone from that planet. We've got loads. Hmmm, actually, we probably won't do set-watch - it might just be tedious.

Anon: We'll see how we do. We've even had emblem-watch in the captions of previous episodes.

Anon²: Yeah, we have.

Anon: So, I guess we should have a chat about Tasha.

Anon²: Oh, okay. The lesbian that died?

Anon: Yeah, that one. Although she did get boned by Data, so she must like some cock.

Anon²: But then again, how many lesbian films have you seen where a guy hasn't come in and shoved his cock in her anyway?

Anon: That's true. Just the Where The Boys Aren't series.

Anon²: Oh true.

Anon: Good series of movies, them.

Anon²: So, Tasha Yar must qualify as the first non-redshirt to die, ever.

Anon: Well, you get people that die every episode that aren't redshirts, but in terms of people that have a longevity of more than one episode, you're probably right.

(I forgot David Marcus in Star Trek III. He was probably the first as it turns out. Or maybe even Lt. Ilia in Star Trek I.)

Anon: At the time the episode came out, I remember the term "senseless death" being used about Tasha. In fact, her death happened earlier in the episode than I'd remembered it happening. Her death doesn't actually progress the main storyline. She just dies and then she's at the funeral/wake thing at the end.

Anon²: Well, that's obviously quite a good bit of thinking.

Anon: That's the way that Gene Roddenberry wanted it apparently. People were trying to talk him out of it, but he stuck to his guns. It was designed to say, "Anything can happen. None of the regular cast are actually safe." That was something that made Blake's 7 so good.

Anon²: Well, the main guy died very early on it that, didn't he?

Anon: Somewhat. Blake was written out at the end of the second season. From the second season onwards, the "7" were continually changing because people didn't necessarily last until the end of an episode.

Anon²: Ah, well we should potentially watch that sometime. We could do a commentary on Blake's 7.

Anon: Blake's 7 is awesome.

Anon²: I remember it being on.

Anon: It's got 52 episodes, and the majority of them are better than Next Gen's first 2 seasons.

Anon²: It'd be worth chucking on sometime. Anyway, back to Skin of Evil, Tasha Yar gets killed off - she dies - and everyone's a bit pissed off about that. Worf gets promoted to Chief of Security.

Anon: But he acts like a pussy.

Anon²: Yeah, he pusses out. You wouldn't believe it! Riker's forming an Away Team to go down to the planet and he goes, "Come on, Worf," but Worf just sits there like he's shit in his pants and he's acting like, "I don't want to go to the planet. I might die! Can't do that!" He says, "I'd be of more use up here on the Enterprise." Out of harm's way, in other words. He goes, "I can monitor what's going on." This basically translates as "I don't need to go down - my mother wrote me a letter because I forgot my gym kit."

Anon: Maybe he had diarrhoea.

Anon²: Yeah, "I've got diarrhoea. And a zit. It might be exposed! I've got trenchfoot, don't you know? It's really bad. Awful business, awful business. I can't go down there because I get dizzy when I get transported, you see? It sets off my piles badly, y'know? They can really go ripen, y'know? I simply can't do that. It's far below me. You've got a big enough Away Team; you can handle this yourselves. You've got a big enough Away Team. Even though I'm a Klingon, I'm probably better off not fighting, staying safe and maybe having an early night. I might even have a bath before I go to bed about 7pm. I need my beauty sleep very much."

Anon: Erm, thanks man. That'll be a really long rant for me to type up.

Anon²: (laughs)

Anon: What the fuck, dude?

Anon²: (laughing uncontrollably)

Anon: What are you tripping on? Fuck, we haven't even done the card-count yet.

Anon²: Oh yeah. (still laughing.) I got two; you got three. Sucks to be you though - you've got a diatribe of immensive banality to transcribe! (laughs)

Anon: So, we got Armus - Skin Of Evil, Armus - Sticky Situation and my personal favourite: Security Sacrifice!

Anon²: We haven't even mentioned those words together in a sentance for... how long?

Anon: I don't know. At least 5 years.

Anon²: Yeah, more than that for me, probably. Anyway, Picard goes down to the planet.

Anon: Patrick Stewart's good in this again, isn't he?

Anon²: Yeah.

Anon: Without him, the whole episode is tragic.

Anon²: The funeral bit at the end - I just wanted to fucking vomit. There's only the bridge crew at the funeral and they go one-by-one through them all and it's fucking shit, it really is. It's just cheese - it's cheese beyond cheese. In fact, it's so cheesy it's got fucking holes in it and called Edam.

Anon: Denise Crosby ultimately left the show because she felt there wasn't enough character development for Tasha.

Anon²: Or not enough lesbian action.

Anon: What do you make of her reasons for leaving? Valid? She's actually one of the first characters to have her own episode with Code of Honor. Then there's the backstory she gets through the Hunter Gangs flashback, To me, it never really came together for her. Crosby said in interviews that she felt like a Lieutenant Uhura character. She weren't doing nothing.

Anon²: Well, the thing is, you could say the same thing for Geordi and for Worf. Worf's only had one episode.

Anon: Tasha's certainly more developed as a character than Worf at this stage.

Anon²: Oh, absolutely. You'd think that by having a Klingon on the ship, being the odd one out, he'd have had loads of screen time by now. But he hasn't. I don't know if that was planned or not.

Anon: By this stage of The Original Series, Spock, the odd one out, had at least five episodes to himself.

Anon²: Yeah. So basically, Crosby must've been on the blob.

Anon: Hence her card stats.

Anon²: Yeah, Blob x2 and Lezza x1.

Anon: Since Skin of Evil, Crosby returned in episodes like Yesterday's Enterprise with Tasha Yar - Alternate, and as her daughter Sela in seasons 4 and 5.

Anon²: Oh yeah, the half-Romulan.

Anon: But outside of Trek and the documentaries Trekkies and Trekkies II, what has Denise Crosby done? She was in the movie of Pet Semetary, but that's all I really remember.

Anon²: She was in a film where her kid got abducted or something.

Anon: Yeah?

Anon²: Can't remember what it was. It was alright.

Anon: Oh, I've got a bit of good news for you.

Anon²: Really? Go ahead.

Anon: This was the final episode of the first season to feature Wesley Crusher.

Anon²: Hooray! That has got to be some of the best news I've heard for a while.

Anon: Well, since we forgot to have our celebration for getting 10% of the way through Trek...

Anon²: Yeah, that's ironic, because I was reading that commentary last night...

Anon: I think we should celebrate the end of Wesley for season 1.

Anon²: Well, I could go into a diatribe but I don't know if the recording can last that long.

Anon: I think our celebration will involve beer.

Anon²: And much of it!

Anon: So, the next episode is We'll Always Have Paris.

Anon²: Indeed, well Picard will always have Paris.

Anon: You remember that episode then?

Anon²: I do. There was some old blonde girl in it. Can't remember the exact details, but it's a holodeck thing.

Anon: Yeah, I think I remember a couple of cards from it.

Anon²: Well, we'll look out for them then. Okay, ciao for now.

Anon: Bye.

- Anon & Anon², 14-Aug-2009