ST Recap: The Naked Time
I've been taking notes as I watch the episodes, but apparently they weren't good enough for "The Naked Time" - when I started looking through the screencaps, I realized I couldn't remember one of the most pivotal scenes of all. I mean, how often do you see a Vulcan cry? And don't you think you'd remember if you did? So during Andrew's nap this afternoon, I watched the episode again. It at least goes down well on the second go - probably the first of of any of the episodes I've seen that I've been happy to watch again. Better yet, I caught some underlying Spock/Uhuraness, which just makes me happy.
So, without further ado, let's begin.
Summary: Returning from planet Psi 2000, a landing party inadvertently spreads a rampant disease which has a feverish intoxicating effect on the crew. Seemingly harmless at first, Kirk must race to find a cure when Lieutenant Riley seizes control of Engineering and places the Enterprise directly in the path of destruction.
Oh, the Skience of it all....
So, you're on this planet, right? And the people all died mysterious-like, and you're on the surface wearing protective clothing so you don't catch anything that will kill you, right?
So what do you do?
Well, obviously you TAKE OFF YOUR GLOVE.
Seriously, what do they teach these people in Starfleet? I mean, you can sleep standing up, and you can touch the possibly contaminated planets with your bare hands...
Oh, and you can literally spread yourselves to death with a butter knife.
But that's okay, because Dr. McCoy can save you with a salt shaker.
Or not. For his stupidity in removing his glove, Joey dies on the operating table. (Not due to any fault of McCoy's, it should be noted.) At the risk of sounding blase, we must ask ourselves a question: on the planet's surface, where Joey contracted the disease that kills him, he wore red. But back on the ship, in his regular uniform, he wore blue. So, does Joey count as a red-shirt, or a blue-shirt?
Okay, so I totally love George Takei for this episode
I mean, with a title like "The Naked Time", someone had to take their shirt off. And just for a change of pace, it wasn't Shatner. Nooooo, it was George Takei (and you'll remember that at the time, no one knew he was gay - Bill thinks this makes the whole thing funnier, I'm not so sure). Thing is, there is no way anyone can watch George Takei leap into the corridor like this:
...and not realize that this is a man who is having the Time. Of. His. Life.
I love how the two guys in the hallway are so totally blase about the shirtless dude with a sword in the corridor on a spaceship.
NOT BLASE ANYMORE, ARE YOU????
Here because this makes me laugh.
Kirk: You're shirtless! On the Bridge! Don't you know that's MY JOB???
An extremely significant screencap, actually, for several reasons.
So there's a couple reasons why that last screencap is significant:
1. It's the first time we see the Vulcan Neck Pinch, although it's not named as such. Before the creation of the neck pinch, Spock fought like anyone else - in a very early episode (which I did not recap), Spock even hit someone. Well, that's very un-Vulcan like, as we all know, and particularly for this episode, when the writers needed to make a big deal of Spock's ability to control his emotions, which makes his bursting into tears later huge. So...neck pinch.
2. Spock touches Sulu, meaning that he is now contaminated with the virus. Or is he? See, that's the thing: every other person on the ship who is contaminated will immediately show signs of the first symptom, which is that weird musical note and the rubbing of the infected area. But Spock doesn't show those signs after he touches Sulu. In fact, he doesn't show signs for another ten or fifteen minutes, after he's touched a second time, this time by Nurse Christine:
It's not until after Christine touches Spock that he really starts feeling the surge of emotions. Now, there's a couple of reasons for this: maybe his Vulcan chemistry required a more substantial exposure before he could become infected. Or maybe the toxins were just moving more slowly through his blood stream - after all, McCoy did say early on that Spock's blood pressure was practically non-existant, and Spock replied that it was normal for him.
Or maybe the writers just forgot about the neck pinch. I don't think they did, but I do think it's interesting.
And anyway, if you follow Significance #3, Spock may have been feeling a surge of emotion prior to touching either Sulu or Christine:
3. Spock is defending Uhura.
Yes, yes, I'm wearing my Spock/Uhura goggles here. I mean, sure Sulu has taken Uhura hostage, and sure we get a great shot of Spock looking somewhat perturbed, and sure it's entirely possible that Spock is defending Kirk as Kirk is the one being attacked, but I'm thinking my theory here is perfectly reasonable. Spock/Uhura OTP, dudes.
Anyway, it all leads to:
Tears of a Vulcan
Come on, don't you want to give this guy a hug?
Okay, well, I do. And yes, I'm totally going with the theory that he's so upset because Christine was just coming on to him, and then he's got Uhura calling him over the intercom, and he could hear her voice while he was with another woman, and that woman was declaring her love, and poor, unemotional Spock just can't handle knowing that Uhura would be heart-broken to know. And so, infected by the virus, he cries.
*sniff*
God, it's fun to be a shipper. People who don't ship something are definitely missing out on the good stuff.
Kirk/Enterprise
You know, maybe Kirk is a Time Lord. Just like the Doctor, he's got a secret love affair with his ship:
Kirk: Never lose you. Never. (No, really, he says that.)
(Bill would comment that Kirk looks less love-lorn and more constipated in that screencap, but that's him.)
Also, Kirk can travel through time.
SPOCK: We've regressed in time seventy one hours. It is now three days ago, Captain. We have three days to live over again.
KIRK: Not those last three days.
SPOCK: This does open some intriguing prospects, Captain. Since the formula worked, we can go back in time, to any planet, any era.
KIRK: We may risk it someday, Mister Spock.
YOU THINK?
End Credits
Good episode, well worth watching again. We got to see the Vulcan Neck Pinch, and Shirtless!Sulu, and we even had Scotty claim that he couldn't do something without defying the laws of physics, only to end up doing it anyway, so for Star Trek cliches, not bad.
We do have the issue with the body count: do we count Joey as red, or blue? Keep in mind, if we count him as red, he'll make the first red-shirt to actually die in the series.
Poll
Tune in next time when we recap "The Enemy Within", which is the episode that RTD was born to direct. God help us all.
Summary and screencaps from TrekCore.
So, without further ado, let's begin.
Summary: Returning from planet Psi 2000, a landing party inadvertently spreads a rampant disease which has a feverish intoxicating effect on the crew. Seemingly harmless at first, Kirk must race to find a cure when Lieutenant Riley seizes control of Engineering and places the Enterprise directly in the path of destruction.
Oh, the Skience of it all....
So, you're on this planet, right? And the people all died mysterious-like, and you're on the surface wearing protective clothing so you don't catch anything that will kill you, right?
So what do you do?
Well, obviously you TAKE OFF YOUR GLOVE.
Seriously, what do they teach these people in Starfleet? I mean, you can sleep standing up, and you can touch the possibly contaminated planets with your bare hands...
Oh, and you can literally spread yourselves to death with a butter knife.
But that's okay, because Dr. McCoy can save you with a salt shaker.
Or not. For his stupidity in removing his glove, Joey dies on the operating table. (Not due to any fault of McCoy's, it should be noted.) At the risk of sounding blase, we must ask ourselves a question: on the planet's surface, where Joey contracted the disease that kills him, he wore red. But back on the ship, in his regular uniform, he wore blue. So, does Joey count as a red-shirt, or a blue-shirt?
Okay, so I totally love George Takei for this episode
I mean, with a title like "The Naked Time", someone had to take their shirt off. And just for a change of pace, it wasn't Shatner. Nooooo, it was George Takei (and you'll remember that at the time, no one knew he was gay - Bill thinks this makes the whole thing funnier, I'm not so sure). Thing is, there is no way anyone can watch George Takei leap into the corridor like this:
...and not realize that this is a man who is having the Time. Of. His. Life.
I love how the two guys in the hallway are so totally blase about the shirtless dude with a sword in the corridor on a spaceship.
NOT BLASE ANYMORE, ARE YOU????
Here because this makes me laugh.
Kirk: You're shirtless! On the Bridge! Don't you know that's MY JOB???
An extremely significant screencap, actually, for several reasons.
So there's a couple reasons why that last screencap is significant:
1. It's the first time we see the Vulcan Neck Pinch, although it's not named as such. Before the creation of the neck pinch, Spock fought like anyone else - in a very early episode (which I did not recap), Spock even hit someone. Well, that's very un-Vulcan like, as we all know, and particularly for this episode, when the writers needed to make a big deal of Spock's ability to control his emotions, which makes his bursting into tears later huge. So...neck pinch.
2. Spock touches Sulu, meaning that he is now contaminated with the virus. Or is he? See, that's the thing: every other person on the ship who is contaminated will immediately show signs of the first symptom, which is that weird musical note and the rubbing of the infected area. But Spock doesn't show those signs after he touches Sulu. In fact, he doesn't show signs for another ten or fifteen minutes, after he's touched a second time, this time by Nurse Christine:
It's not until after Christine touches Spock that he really starts feeling the surge of emotions. Now, there's a couple of reasons for this: maybe his Vulcan chemistry required a more substantial exposure before he could become infected. Or maybe the toxins were just moving more slowly through his blood stream - after all, McCoy did say early on that Spock's blood pressure was practically non-existant, and Spock replied that it was normal for him.
Or maybe the writers just forgot about the neck pinch. I don't think they did, but I do think it's interesting.
And anyway, if you follow Significance #3, Spock may have been feeling a surge of emotion prior to touching either Sulu or Christine:
3. Spock is defending Uhura.
Yes, yes, I'm wearing my Spock/Uhura goggles here. I mean, sure Sulu has taken Uhura hostage, and sure we get a great shot of Spock looking somewhat perturbed, and sure it's entirely possible that Spock is defending Kirk as Kirk is the one being attacked, but I'm thinking my theory here is perfectly reasonable. Spock/Uhura OTP, dudes.
Anyway, it all leads to:
Tears of a Vulcan
Come on, don't you want to give this guy a hug?
Okay, well, I do. And yes, I'm totally going with the theory that he's so upset because Christine was just coming on to him, and then he's got Uhura calling him over the intercom, and he could hear her voice while he was with another woman, and that woman was declaring her love, and poor, unemotional Spock just can't handle knowing that Uhura would be heart-broken to know. And so, infected by the virus, he cries.
*sniff*
God, it's fun to be a shipper. People who don't ship something are definitely missing out on the good stuff.
Kirk/Enterprise
You know, maybe Kirk is a Time Lord. Just like the Doctor, he's got a secret love affair with his ship:
Kirk: Never lose you. Never. (No, really, he says that.)
(Bill would comment that Kirk looks less love-lorn and more constipated in that screencap, but that's him.)
Also, Kirk can travel through time.
SPOCK: We've regressed in time seventy one hours. It is now three days ago, Captain. We have three days to live over again.
KIRK: Not those last three days.
SPOCK: This does open some intriguing prospects, Captain. Since the formula worked, we can go back in time, to any planet, any era.
KIRK: We may risk it someday, Mister Spock.
YOU THINK?
End Credits
Good episode, well worth watching again. We got to see the Vulcan Neck Pinch, and Shirtless!Sulu, and we even had Scotty claim that he couldn't do something without defying the laws of physics, only to end up doing it anyway, so for Star Trek cliches, not bad.
We do have the issue with the body count: do we count Joey as red, or blue? Keep in mind, if we count him as red, he'll make the first red-shirt to actually die in the series.
Poll
Tune in next time when we recap "The Enemy Within", which is the episode that RTD was born to direct. God help us all.
Summary and screencaps from TrekCore.