The Outrageous Okona

Okona - a somewhat camp grin.	Looks a bit like John Leslie, in fact.	Lt. Teri Hatcher.	Joe Piscopo: apparently, he's famous.
(more images below)

Overview: The crew of the Enterprise encounters a flamboyant space rogue, while Data tries to learn humour from a holodeck comedian.
Writer: Burton Armus
Director: Robert Becker

Anon ²: Right - no one got a single card, although I think there was at least one there: The Outrageous Okona himself.

Anon: He wasn't a card.

Pie: No, he wasn't a card.

Anon ²: I thought he was a card.

Pie: No.

Anon ²: Ah, okay. Fair enough.

Anon: Maybe it was Luca De Vita photocopying Black Holes again.

Anon ²: Okay, Data got told to shut the fuck up at least 4 times.

Anon: Once by Troi; once by Guinan; once by Picard, and the final time they just gave up on the cunt.

Anon ²: They basically just ignored him, which was the first silent shut the fuck up.

Anon: I would say 3.5 times, but we don't do half-points.

Anon ²: (laughs) Yeah, what can we say about this?

Pie: I think there was a lot to dislike about this episode, but the analogy I would make is it was a bit of a triple-fried-egg sandwich with chilli sauce and chutney in terms of the fact that all the ingredients of the episode were wrong, but somehow it came together and became almost watchable.

Anon: I think you're saying that because you haven't watched as many of these recently as we have.

Pie: (laughs)

Anon: I guess I do see what you mean. There is a certain amount of charm to the actual Okona character. A bit of a random fact - I don't know if you knew this - but the guy who plays the Okona character, William O Russell, now known as Billy Russell, was the second choice to play Riker.

Pie: Interesting.

Anon: How do you think he'd have done? It would have been a bit of a different interpretation, I guess.

Pie: Would he still have had that ponytail?

Anon: I don't know about that! I think the haircut was to make him seem more of a rogue. Riker is supposed to be someone who wants to become a starship Captain.

Anon ²: You see, the thing about most of this is Riker gets it off a few times. He certainly tries it on a few times. But basically, Okona turns up, fucks about what... 3 people? In fact, one of them...

Anon: The first one...

Anon ²: Yeah, the first one is Lois from The New Adventures of Superman.

Anon: Yep, Teri Hatcher. Now appearing in that pile of shit, Desperate Housewives.

Anon ²: Basically, she's a total slag but I'd fuck her.

Anon: She was in a James Bond film too.

Anon ²: She was. I'd still fuck her. Actually, no... she died in that one. I don't fuck corpses.

Pie: In a broadly-related subject: women we wouldn't fuck, where was Pulaski in that episode?

Anon: Good point. I think there's only 2 or 3 episodes in the 2nd season that she isn't in.

Pie: She didn't even make a background cameo appearance or anything.

Anon ²: Thank you very much.

Anon: I'd rather have her in it than Wesley though.

Anon ²: I wrote down here "Wesley: FUCK OFF!" Basically every time he speaks it just grates on me these days. I never really paid him much attention when it was originally on, but basically he's just so fucking lame. Fucking ponce.

Pie: Where did he get that gay quiff? Was it somewhere between seasons 1 and 2?

Anon ²: I don't know. He's always had a gay something-or-other though.

Anon: It's a bit like that bit in There's Something About Mary where the guy styles his hair with cum.

Anon ²: (laughs)

Anon: That's what's happened here. He's learnt how to blow his suds out of his nuts and styled his hair with it.

Pie: One other amusing point I noticed was right when they first discovered Okona's ship they said, "Oh, he's got lasers. He can't possibly damage us." For some reason there was this really dramatic music on in the background like it was a major turning point in the episode. He's got lasers!

Anon: There's a whole Austin Powers theme to "lasers" too.

Anon ²: I'm going to mark this episode down as fairly average. They obviously didn't have enough material for 45 minutes and they randomly put in this Data storyline with Guinan about comedy and the ability to tell jokes. That probably filled a good 20 minutes of the episode, but had no bearing on anything else. It was like, "Okay, we've got this storyline. It's not enough to fill 45 minutes. What the fuck are we going to do?"

Anon: They talk about how Star Trek isn't so much a sci-fi show as it is a series about the human condition and in many ways this was one of the first episodes to show Data in his quest to become more human and more part of the crew by enjoying social interaction. But to me, I really enjoy the sci-fi episodes. I think some of the best episodes are the ones where they're having a big fucking kick-arse fight.

Anon ²: Yeah.

Pie: Yeah, it's a matter of opinion, but yeah. I think there have been some good non-sci-fi episodes; but there have been some very bad ones too.

Anon: I think The Offspring was pretty good, for example. That episode was more social than sci-fi.

Pie: I think if I listed my top 20 episodes of Star Trek, or at least The Next Generation, probably 15 of them would have no fighting in them at all.

Anon: Your choice dude. If you want to put a list together like mine, you're welcome to. To me episodes like Yesterday's Enterprise and The Best of Both Worlds are likely to be really close to the top of the list.

Pie: True, yeah.

Anon ²: Alternatively, you could take something like the new Battlestar Galactica which was good sci-fi, but it was good because of the storyline and the scriptwriting. Star Trek had some of this but it was a lot better 20 years later.

Anon: This wasn't a great script. It was just stuff thrown together. It had a very clear A plot and B plot, neither of which had any bearing on anything outside of this episode. I'm not saying that it was necessarily intended to have any but it was just a run-of-the-mill episode for 45 minutes.

Pie: I think this episode demonstrated how much the series came along between seasons 1 and 2. I think if that episode happened in season 1 it would have been absolutely diabolical. But I think by this time the characters had come along a bit more. They were more fixed in their roles.

Anon ²: That's the thing. In the first episode of this season, Geordi got a job at last. He's now Chief Engineer, which he remains until the end.

Anon: It was just a soap opera episode about whether Okona got some bitch up the duff or not. What he should have said was that he only had bum sex with her so it was unlikely that the jizz would've trickled down into her punani. No harm done.

Anon ²: He probably skull-fucked her as well.

Anon: Like the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket: "I'm going to rip out your eyeballs and skull-fuck you."

Anon ²: (laughs) Quality line!

Anon: There's also the Joe Piscopo character as The Comic. He's listed as a Special Guest Star, although I've no idea who the fuck he is. He did the Jerry Lewis impersonation which doesn't really have a great deal of significance outside of North America. It was just another random character - not exactly Vic Fontaine, was he?

Pie: The holodeck's still in its infancy at this stage.

Anon ²: They've been in it a few times, but this is one of the few holodeck sequences where it hasn't got broken. They're not trapped there, fearing for their lives this time. So in that respect, the plotline for the holodeck is it's a fucking dangerous piece of kit.

Anon: We did talk about one thing that made me laugh. When Data goes to the holodeck to put on the Joe Piscopo Comic program, he says, "Make it animated" or something like that. We were talking about how good it would've been if he'd gone inside and it was proper animation. Like if he had gone into a Road Runner cartoon, or Bugs Bunny had turned up and shoved a carrot up his arse then fucked off, saying "That's all folks!"

Pie: That happens all the time in Bugs Bunny.

Anon: Well, it might in Star Trek...

Anon ²: Yeah, he's always asking, "What's up, Doc?" He's clearly having some sort of rectal exam. Actually, I've only skinned a rabbit twice and it's quite quick and easy. You chop its head off, rather than shove your hand up its arse. That would be the wrong way to do it.

Anon: And now we know!

Anon ²: That was a bit random, wasn't it?

Pie: Yeah, interesting tangent.

Anon: So, the next episode is Loud as a Whisper.

Pie: Loud as a Whisper? Is that the Nagilum episode?

Anon: No, that was Where Silence has Lease.

Pie: Ah okay. Which one was Loud as a Whisper then?

Anon: It's the one with Riva.

Pie: Ahhh.

Anon: Let's just have a card for that each already! Diplomacy x3, I believe.

Pie: No, Diplomacy x2.

Anon: Ah okay.

Pie: Yeah, Diplomacy Mission Specialist in fact.

Anon: You could be right, yeah.

Anon ²: Oh my word - I never would have got that! I can't name any of the stats.

Anon: Tough shit then. Me and Pie get one each; you get none.

Pie: (laughs)

Anon ²: I'm quite happy with that. I haven't got a fucking clue!

Anon: We'll be seeing you soon, boys. Bye.

Anon ²: Bye.

Pie: Bye.

- Anon, Anon² & Pie, 05-Oct-2009