TOS Review: "The Naked Time" (season 1, episode 4, original air date 9/29/66)
Fortunately, Kirk is in better form, reminding all of us out in TV land why he and not Spock got this gig to begin with. He immediately considers the mystery deaths in light of the other pressing topic at hand, the logistics of orbiting a planet that’s about to collapse in on itself, and asks his advisers if one thing should make him worry about the other. Spock notes, not all that helpfully, that the imploding planet will be going through the proverbial enormous changes at the last minute, geophysically speaking. Kirk pithily paraphrases: “In a critical orbit, there’s no time for surprise.”
To which Scotty responds, characteristically, “Unless you people on the bridge start taking showers with your clothes on [a reference to the circumstances in which one of the dead Psi 2000 people was found], my engines can pull us out of anything.” The matter-of-fact, don’t-know-about-you-Captain-but-I-at-least-have-my-shit together tone in which he says this vividly reminds one of how reliably awesome Scotty is, and how glad one is to have him on board the Enterprise. Not two seconds after this, Uhura comes over the PA to let them know that the changes Spock mentioned are already starting to happen.
Scotty: I like him.
08:45: Look, three-dimensional chess and checkers boards! I’m adding these to the drinking game, stat.
08:47: Were there ATM machines in 1966? Well, lunch prep on the Enterprise is kind of like using an ATM before (or, actually, two centuries after) the fact: you stick a card in the microwave, and out comes food, or at least something in a silver covered dish. Tormolen is the diner in question, but he’s too distracted by his sweaty, itchy, obviously disease-riddled hands to eat.
09:22: Sulu and another helmsman, a guy named Riley, enter the room in conversation. Riley apparently does not know what a fencing foil is. “So whaddaya do with it?” he asks. “Self-defense? Mayhem? Shish kebab?” Riley’s a little flaky, and flakiness is an early indicator of ERCM-ness; Tormolen has also shown symptoms, although of an angstier variety (existential doubts, etc.). Sulu launches into a commercial for the psychosomatic benefits of fencing, and tries to enlist Tormolen to support his case, not realizing that the latter is already deep in the throes of Space PMS, and quite hostile. Sulu, by contrast, is extremely cute; have I mentioned that already?
When everyone is called to the bridge and Sulu gets up to leave, Tormolen suddenly lets fly with some of that existential doubt I was just talking about: “We’re all a bunch of hypocrites. Stick our noses into something that we’ve got no business…If a man was supposed to fly, he’d have wings. If we were supposed to be out in space, we wouldn’t need air to breathe. We don’t belong here. It’s not ours.” Insofar as Tormolen’s sentiments represent the anti-colonialist point of view, I actually kind of agree with him, which probably means I shouldn’t enlist in any space missions until NASA morphs into the more benevolent, less imperialist Starfleet, and can write mission statements that refer to “explor[ing] strange new worlds” without the understood subtext “in order to claim their natural resources for American consumption.”
Apparently lacking such faith in the Enterprise’s motives, and also lacking a phaser, Tormolen pulls a dinner knife on Sulu, then threatens to turn it on himself. Sulu and Riley subdue him, and in so doing touch his icky, contaminated hands…
12:00: Kirk and Spock on the bridge, Sulu and Riley at the helm. Psi 2000 is compressing more rapidly than expected, Spock notes, then coolly proceeds to compare it to a certain other planet: “Before its sun went dark, this planet was remarkably similar to your Earth.” “Your” Earth? Watch it there, buddy. Kids watching this show might remember your complete lack of identification with your mother’s home planet, grow up to become screenwriters, and take their revenge on you by imploding Vulcan like it wasn’t no thing, then making you utter lines like, “As my mother was human, Earth is now the only home I have left.”
It ain't fancy, but some of us like it.
15:55: Tormolen, for no apparent reason, dies in sickbay, as Bones and Nurse Chapel watch impotently. If Bones says “This man should still be alive!” in one more episode, that phrase will attain drinking game worthiness.
16:09: Spock says more stuff that will sound ironic in 40 years, like “Planet breakup is imminent, Captain. Shrinking in size at an increasing rate.” It is impressed upon the viewer yet again that not getting sucked into this maelstrom will require particularly Swiss precision at the helm. I don’t know why, but all these metaphors involving Obama, George W. Bush, the United States, and a cliff are coming into my mind.
16:52: Our faithful helmsman Sulu remarks, “Don’t know if it’s this planet or what happened with Joe [i.e., Tormolen], but I’m sweating like a…”- you expect him to say “pig,” but he finishes with the equally appropriate but far more classy “bridegroom.” Must remember that one! Five seconds later, he suggests that he and Riley, who is sweating like the other bridegroom at a double wedding, ditch the steering and head for the gym, because “a light workout’ll take the edge off.” Again with the reminders of Dubya!
Shut up! Brush clearing totally counts as cardio!
With Kirk having left for sickbay in order to have the “I’ve lost a crew member and I want to know why!” conversation with Bones, and Spock just plain not paying attention (he’s having an off-episode, long before the crying starts), Sulu abandons his post, over the protests of the still-sane Riley.
18:35: Riley holds on to his brain just long enough to right the Enterprise’s orbit in Sulu’s absence, but when a suddenly alert Spock tries to figure out WTF is going on, Riley immediately starts spouting idiotic nonsequiturs like “Have no fear, O’Riley’s here!” Spock replaces him with Uhura, and Riley takes this just as easily in stride: “That’s what I like! Let the women work too! Universal suffrage!” Star Trek: totes a feminist show, didn'tcha know? Though not one whose characters know what the actual meaning of the word "suffrage" is.
19:47: Riley literally skips into sickbay and responds to the news of his friend Tormolen’s recent death by taking Nurse Chapel’s chin paternalistically in his (contaminated!) hand and telling her, “You have such lovely eyes…pretty lady.” Which, if not exactly germane to the matter, is quite true; though why the hair department thought those lovely eyes would be best accentuated by a gray platinum bird’s-nest wig is a matter best known to themselves.
20:35: Shirtless Sulu spazzes out with rapier! His physical condition is comparable in aesthetic merit to Kirk’s in “Charlie X,” so I ain’t complaining, but ironically he is closer to Asian martial-arts stereotype here than he has ever been previously on the show. George Takei apparently said in his autobiography that this was his favorite episode to film, though, so what do I know?
The inevitable shot of half-naked Sulu. Not that I mind.
21:59: Because this synopsis isn’t long enough already, I’ll take this moment to add extraneously that Uhura’s signature fashion statement - lime green hoop earrings with her crimson Starfleet minidress - doesn’t merely work, it works iconically well. This combination should look stupid. Why does it look so good?
22:06: Spock reacts to the report of Sulu’s sword-brandishing antics with the use of his favorite complimentary adjective. He is soon distracted by an even more fascinating development, however - the fact that the helm of the Enterprise is no longer responding to attempts to steer, warp, or do anything at all useful. When he and Kirk page Scotty to say “Um, WTF?!,” there is only silence.
Sulu then appears on the bridge to brandish his sword in person. He tries to take Uhura as his maidenly ward/hostage, but is dispatched posthaste by an application of the Vulcan nerve pinch. The nerve pinch is as elegantly badass as always, so that Kirk takes a second out of his attempt at crisis management to say admiringly to Spock, “I’d like you to teach me that someday.” Foolish Muggle, one cannot attain mastery of the nerve pinch merely by wishing for it!
23:40: Uh-oh, crazy Riley’s now in charge down at the engine room, plus he went and elected himself captain while Kirk’s back was turned. His first official act as commander of the Enterprise is to order double portions of ice cream for the whole crew. As a morale-building impulse, this is laudable, and if he’d only switch it to double portions of pecan pie, I might really be able to get behind this captaincy.
Waiter, there is too much pepper in my paprikash. But I would be proud to partake of your PECAN PIE!
24:15: Riley’s singing Irish ballads now, and not terribly well either. Scratch that thing I said about his captaincy.
24:37: “Captain, at our present rate of descent, we have less than twenty minutes before we enter planet atmosphere.” “And burn up! I know, Mr. Spock!”
25:00: Here’s Scotty, happily fully mobile and in his right mind, but locked out of the engine room by Riley. The only way to get in is to cut through the wall, and Scotty sends another guy off to get the “plans for the bulkhead.”
25:40: Spock, returning to form a bit, orders parts of the ship sealed off to minimize the spread of the mystery virus, and Uhura puts out the order, but Riley then shuts off the alert channels so Uhura can’t give follow-up details or block the sound of Riley’s voice. He also withdraws Uhura’s ice cream portion altogether for interrupting his rendition of “Kathleen.”
26:18: With seventeen minutes left in the collective life of the Enterprise crew, Riley announces a dance to take place that evening in the bowling alley. The set (or is it just the camera?) then does one of its signature tilts to (quite convincingly) simulate turbulence, and everyone falls on their asses. Bones, in sickbay, checks in to protest the poor steering, as it’s interfering with the tests he’s trying to run on the tranquilized Sulu.
I found this necessary to offset the W. photo above. However, Mr. President: Don't give up the public option, goddammit!
27:05: Riley orders female crew members to wear their hair loosely and ease up on the makeup. Because existing hair and makeup protocols on the Enterprise were obviously so much of the ladies’ own choosing, you know?
27:50: Scotty is seen in some kind of shaft, placing magnet-type things along the walls. What does this have to do with cutting through the bulkhead? I’m sure the meaning will all come clear in a second.
28:04: Oh, they were jumpers, apparently. To give the helm enough juice for the return of some steering capability. Nice to know this technique has such wide applicability; you never know when you’re going to be confronted with a balky starship, do you?
29:10: Spock, on his way to sickbay via Scotty’s bulkhead to check on his and Bones’ progress, encounters on the wall the neatest, politest, least subversive piece of graffiti ever sprayed. In a subtle nod to the times, it admonishes, “Love mankind.”
Spock giving this message the blank stare it deserves.
29:53: Spock to Scotty: “We’ve got 14 minutes, dude. Work faster.” Scotty to Spock: “Can’t. Gotta maintain a safety factor.” Spock: “The calculations I came up with in my abundant spare time, based on my intimate familiarity with this bulkhead and your torch, indicate you’re going to run overtime by a minute and a half. So screw your safety factor.”
30:00: Due to Riley’s commandeering of the communication channels, Bones can’t reach the lab for his biopsy report on Sulu and grumpily goes off to retrieve it in person, setting up Nurse Chapel with the solitude she needs for her big confessional scene with Spock.
31:39: A rather nice moment between Kirk and Uhura. Riley’s rendition of “Kathleen” is still providing the soundtrack for their doom, and a stressed-out Kirk yells at Uhura, “At least try and cut him off!” A stressed-out Uhura yells back, “Sir, don’t you think if I could-,” then trails off, realizing her tone is out of line. They stare at each other. She amends quietly, “Yes, sir, I’ll keep trying.” Kirk, realizing his tone was out of line, says quietly and with obvious sincerity, “Sorry.” She smiles in acknowledgment - just briefly, but the understanding and mutual respect that exist between them are perfectly clear.
32:13: With T minus twelve minutes left, it’s Spock and Chapel in their big emotional tete-a-tete. Taking Spock’s hand in her (contaminated!) one, Chapel starts talking about how Spock transcends Vulcan men’s odd treatment of their women, due to his human blood. It’s kind of a strange argument, given that the real point of what she’s saying is “You’d treat me better than all these asshole human men do.”
Spock turns to go, but looks as if he’s thinking deeply about all this. Chapel then says she’s in love with him, and that she sees how honest he is, and that he hides it, but he does have feelings. All of which accurately expresses one of the two or three great truths of this show, the ironic romantic desirability of Spock - and the reasons for it, apart from his brains: he has integrity, and however repressed he may be, he does at least do emotion the courtesy of taking it seriously.
Although Spock notes, ultra-predictably, “I’m in control of my emotions,” and concludes by telling Chapel gently, “I’m sorry,” he is sitting still for this confession to a surprising degree, and does accede to her wish that he call her “Christine.” Is it the mystery virus already working on him, or is there something deeper here? We’ll never know…
I'm still on Team Uhura, but this was moving, you can't deny.
35:09: Spock is being paged, and leaves Chapel, but is already too het up to respond to the page. What time is it? It’s Spock Crying Time.
35:45: Scotty is through the bulkhead, without getting even slightly electrocuted. Safety factor? He don’t need no stinkin’ safety factor!
35:50: All that angst just to reach around through the hole and unlock the door! It was the equivalent of breaking a window after you’d locked yourself out of your house.
35:55: With phasers set on “present a mildly intimidating appearance,” Scotty and Kirk subdue Riley without a struggle - although the latter does cancel the dance.
36:00: Spock breaks down. I’m embarrassed for him. His "emotional" voice sounds so generic and wrong; not only is he no longer Spock, he’s no longer Nimoy.
37:00: An enjoyably nerve-wracking moment in the engine room: just as Uhura announces they’ve entered Psi 2000’s outer atmosphere, Scotty realizes that Riley had used his brief command to fully turn off the engines. “They’re completely cold,” he tells Kirk. “It’ll take 30 minutes to regenerate them.” Uhura announces, with ridiculous calm, that the Enterprise’s skin has started to heat up.
“Scotty!” Kirk pleads, giving his chief engineer an opportunity to utter one of his hall-of-fame replies: “I can’t change the laws of physics!” He says this with actual, audible dismay, and if Scotty is dismayed, you know you’re about to stare down the décolletage of death. Though I think Scotty is considerably more dismayed about Kirk's failure to give props to the laws of physics than about his own impending doom.
Scotty would almost rather die than have the laws of physics proven wrong.
More physics lessons at death’s door. Scotty: “You can’t mix matter and anti-matter cold! We’d blow up in the biggest explosion since--” Kirk: “We can balance our engines into a controlled implosion!” At least, I think that’s what he said: he speaks softly, the better to deflect audience realization of how little he knows what he’s talking about. Scotty: “That’s only a theory, it’s never been done!” But aren’t you the same Montgomery Scott who postulated the theory of, er, cold matter mixing? No worries: Simon Pegg will be appearing out of the future momentarily to hand you a crib sheet!
38:50: Sulu, screaming, comes out of the Alternate Personalityverse and back to himself. What a relief to have sensible, humorous, personable Sulu back again instead of Bruce Lee. Bones then says some shit that doesn’t really make sense about how water on Psi 2000 changed to a complex chain of molecules, and that therefore the virus was passed on through perspiration. Now that he knows this, he can apparently mass-produce an antidote in under five minutes. This is impressive - maybe Kirk should put him to work on the whole cold combustion problem.
40:00: Kirk walks in on Distastefully Emo Spock, who seizes this chance to make his famous horrified confession that he never told his mother he loved her. Oh God, can we please have Repressed Spock back? I can’t take much more of this.
Kirk, meanwhile, is shaking Spock and yelling about the full-power start it will be necessary for the Enterprise to make, but Spock can’t get home from Irrelevant City just yet, and continues to moan about his mother. Kirk slaps Spock hard across the face, and can you blame him? This at least brings Spock’s relationship regrets back to the here and now: “Jim,” he says. “When I feel friendship for you…I’m ashamed.”
Many more slaps across the face later (the last of which is powerfully - and contaminatedly! - returned), Spock has grasped the real-world problem at hand enough to echo Scotty: “That’s never been done.” Again I say: Get Bones on this! He's already on a hot streak, and as the card-carrying Not-a-Physicist that he is, he won't waste any time citing the laws and precedents of his area of non-expertise.
41:34: Just as Spock is resurfacing in consensus reality, Kirk is leaving it - what a mess if they’d both been incommunicado simultaneously, no?
41:58: That thing Trekkies say about the Enterprise being the most significant romantic relationship of Kirk’s life, did it ever impress you as a sophisticated psychological insight? It wasn’t. The writers have made that subtext into explicit text here, no reading between lines required. Kirk is babbling on about what a harsh mistress the Enterprise is, but really, I don’t think he has it so bad. He gets to be inside the woman he loves most of time, heh heh, so his whole life is like a Pedro Almodovar movie. Plus, there’s no conflict between his love life and his work. They are one and the same: proving his love for his woman by taking care of her and keeping her from permanent harm, but fucking with her a whole lot along the way.
Highly recommended!
42:55: Spock has apparently fully recovered now, without even needing Bones’ antidote. Vulcan blood: it’s got its merits, yo.
42:59: Uhura now reports that the skin temperature of the Enterprise has risen to 2170 degrees. Really, Kirk ought to be able to work through this situation and save his beloved ship without even exiting crazy mode: he can just think of the cold combustion process as a sort of externally imposed, out-of-nowhere orgasm, and it’ll all make sense.
43: 58: En route to the bridge, Kirk encounters another piece of graffiti, this one reading “Sinner repent.” Does this mean that the virus-addled artist (we never learn who it was) is on the road to recovery, having forsaken hippie platitudes in favor of the Puritanism that passes as the American norm?
44:13: Kirk wanders onto the bridge, where Bones rips his jersey open at the shoulder and jabs him with a needle full of antidote. The shirt-ripping was medically necessary, you see! Though I must say that Starfleet could stand to invest some money in uniforms that tear a bit less easily than paper.
44:43: Symbolically, Kirk achieves recovery while sitting in the captain’s chair - though he does mutter, “No beach to walk on,” and reaches out a wistful hand toward Rand, who fortunately has no clue what he’s talking about. His helmsmen now ask him what course to plot, and after a moment of thought he responds, quite lucidly, “Doesn’t matter. The way we came.” Now you’re talking!
45:44: With a fully Spocklike Spock joining Scotty in the engine room to handle the logistics of this thermonuclear jump-start they’re attempting, Kirk gives the critical order: “Engage.” Moments later, the lights go off and the crew is cringing like you do when pressure inequality fucks up your ears during a bad air descent, but this is apparently the extent of cold combustion’s ill effects: Soon the lights come back on and everyone looks around like, Hey, wasn’t that interesting?
47:05: Why, yes, it certainly was: Sulu and Spock now report that the Enterprise’s speed and engine power are not only back, they’re off the charts. They’re going so fast, in fact, that they’ve time-warped backwards (do NOT ask me to explain this), as the ship’s chronometer proves. Merely through Sulu reversing power, they correct this, but find themselves moving forward again from a point 71 hours in the past. “We have three days to live over again,” explains Spock. “Not those last three days,” murmurs Kirk, though the very fact that he remembers the last three days at all shows that they’re not quite back at square one. Going back in time has apparently not deprived them of the antidote to the mystery virus, for one thing, so it’s all good.
You can't say you weren't warned that things like this might happen.
“This does open some intriguing prospects, Captain,” says Spock. “Since the formula worked, we can go back in time. To any planet, any era.” Excuse me, how does that follow? “We may risk it someday, Mr. Spock,” says Kirk. Pass it on to the writing team! Time travel: who knew it was so uncomplicated and repercussion-free? “Resume course to our next destination,” says Kirk to Sulu, without telling him what that is, but it doesn’t seem to matter. “Steady as she goes.”
With these magic words, all has become right in the world again, but recent events have obviously left Kirk in an introspective mood; I’m starting to kind of buy that malarkey about his days as a Starfleet Academy philosopher-in-training. This is what’s missing from the emotional palette of Pine’s Kirk, so far anyway. Maybe Ortzman will decide he can do without it, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Pine make the attempt, however much he has to squirm and suffer to get there.
Dear God, look at the length of this synopsis. I feel I should apologize, but so much comment-worthy stuff happened in this episode that I couldn’t restrain myself. If you made it this far, double portions of ice cream pecan pie for you.
Potential for drunkenness from playing the TOS drinking game: Substantial! This was, in its very depiction of abnormal crew behavior, the most quintessential TOS episode yet. I would lay in a supply of extra-strength Excedrin for tomorrow morning if I were you. In the meantime, let’s break it down and understand the building blocks of our drunkenness, shall we?
TOS Drinking Game Tally:
References by Spock to the virtues of logic and/or unemotional decision-making: Only one audible one, but apart from cold combustion theory, it’s ALL he’s thinking about in this episode. Two drinks, one for the literal reference and one for the symbolic.
Three-dimensional board game sightings: Two.
References to setting phasers on stun: One.
Does Kirk say, “I’ve lost a crew member and I want to know why”?: Not in so many words, but the sentiment is there. Half a drink.
Does Kirk’s shirt get strategically ripped? Hell yes! One drink.
Finally, Scotty’s saying the immortal line “I can’t change the laws of physics!” is surely worth two drinks on its own.
Total number of drinks: Eight and a half.
*I strongly dislike this song. Merely for referencing it in her (superior) song of the same name, Madonna gets a demerit from me.