Writer: John D.F. Black
Director: Marc Daniels
Producer: Gene Roddenberry
"The Naked Time" is one of the quintessential episodes of the Original Series, a must-see. Which makes it surprising when you watch it and the moments its famous for are so small, and so much time is spent on other things, that don't work quite as well.
The premise is simple, and basically a clever writer's cheat. The crew beams down to a dying world, picks up a mysterious new disease there basically because one of the landing party members straight doesn't understand what hazmat suits are for, and then it spreads quickly through touch. The disease is a form of space madness -- it basically makes you drunk without alcohol, without staggering or slurring or the common cliches of drunkendom. But it does render you without inhibition. Unforunately the ship needs to maintain a tight, careful orbit around the planet as it breaks up, else they risk getting caught in its changing gravity well. So of course a mad crewman turns the engines off, and the ship is doomed if they can't cure the disease, restore the engines, and break out of orbit in time.
It's a fine premise, but it's not really what we're here for. The conceit is that the disease basically means we get to see a glimpse of who each of our crewmen is "deep down", what hidden desires and impulses they keep locked away. However, several of our main cast are never affected -- Scotty, who instead has the impossible task of restarting the engines from cold in far less time than is physically possible; McCoy, who has to cure the disease; Uhura, who instead gets accosted by Sulu; and poor Rand who has to deal with being followed by all these horny crewmen. It's a bit of a shame, especially because this is now the third episode in a row with characters basically sexually harassing Janice, and having her get the disease would have been a nice insight into what she thinks about all this -- ie, treating her like a character instead of a sex object.
Instead the crewmen we do see affected are mostly new with the exception of Sulu, Kirk, and Spock. Of the new crewmen the most prominent are navigator Kevin Riley, and Nurse Christine Chapel. Someone, maybe Black, clearly thought Riley was charming. He gets the "wackiest" stuff to do and a large share of screen time. I guess in many TOS circles he's a fan favourite character, but I find his antics about as annoying as Kirk does. He's clearly meant to be a new recurring character, but ends up only appearing again in one more episode. Maybe he could've been more, but I prefer Chekov.
As for Chapel, well, she may be under a blonde wig but Roddenberry couldn't hide that he'd given one of his mistresses another role on the show, after she'd been booted from it after the first pilot's rejection. Network execs apparently remarked "look who's back!" She's fine as Chapel and giving McCoy a nurse is a good idea, but the revelation that she secretly loves Spock doesn't really land anywhere when we just met her. And no offense to her performance, but I think she was better suited to Number One than Nurse Chapel.
That said, the idea that she loves Spock, who can never love her back, does lead us to this episode's most effective exploration: Spock himself. Continuing on from the fine character work for him in "The Enemy Within", Spock gets a star turn here, as we continue to explore the inner turmoil his character feels, having to lock away his emotions lest they get the best of him. It elevates Spock to a tragic, almost Byronic, figure, and his cool unavailability but stirring sympathetic plight I think also makes him a sex idol for the first time in this episode.
Yes, Leonard Nimoy reportedly saw his fan mail increase by several orders of magnitude.
Significantly, the showcase scene for Spock here was, like the famous Vulcan Neck Pinch, something created and adlibbed by Nimoy when he wasn't satisfied with the original script's depiction. It goes to show you just how important Nimoy was to the growth and popularity of Spock, who basically officially became the show's breakout character in this episode.
Sulu gets an excellent bit of fun, with his fencing hobby exploding into a full-on Musketeer impression. In a nice bit of continuity, Riley complains about Sulu's fickle hobbies by complaining that "last week it was botany!" George Takei of course had a blast doing these scenes, and it's a real shame that basically Sulu was forgotten as a character over the course of season 2 for a variety of reasons.
Finally, we have Kirk. All we really learn about him is that he yearns for the freedom of not being a Starship Captain, resents his ship for its hold on him, and wishes he could live a normal life, perhaps with Yeoman Rand. Which is funny, because whenever he does retire from ship captaining, he immediately becomes unhappy and needs it back. Also, as I mentioned a few reviews ago, the well on the "I wish I could be with Rand" idea has really already been somewhat poisoned. Shatner plays the wistful yearning quite well, but it really doesn't work for me.
The ending of the episode is where things start to fly off the rails. While Spock and Scotty working together against the clock to achieve the impossible is fantastic, and gives a great sense of our heroes all having different skills that when added together provides the solution, the episode spends way too much time on the aftermath of this solution -- namely, that it somehow propels the Enterprise back in time three days!
It's a bizarre non sequitur, this accidental invention of time travel, stuck at the end of the episode and not used for anything in particular. It's clearly there to potentially set up new episode premises -- but jeez guys, the infinite expanse of space wasn't enough? And besides, time travel on Star Trek will I think never be done using this method again? I dunno.
"The Naked Time" was really created as a character showcase for the cast by John Black, who was at the time serving as the show's story editor. It's just a shame that a lot of time in it is spent on characters and situations that don't really matter? That said, what it does accomplish is memorable, and classic.
Rating: 3 out of 4
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