The Naked Time
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| Star Trek: TOS episode | |
| "The Naked Time" | |
 Sulu brandishes an épée |
|
| Episode no. | 4 |
|---|---|
| Prod. code | 007 |
| Remastered no. | 4 |
| Airdate | September 29, 1966 |
| Writer(s) | John D. F. Black |
| Director | Marc Daniels |
| Guest star(s) | Bruce Hyde Majel Barrett Stewart Moss John Bellah William Knight Christian Ducheau Woody Talbert Frank da Vinci Eddie Paskey Ron Veto William Blackburn (actor) |
| Year | 2266 |
| Stardate | 1704.2 |
| Episode chronology | |
| Previous | "Where No Man Has Gone Before" |
| Next | "The Enemy Within" |
"The Naked Time" is an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series first broadcast September 29, 1966, and repeated on April 27, 1967. It is a first season episode #4, production #7, and was written by John D. F. Black and directed by Marc Daniels. It has a sequel in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the episode "The Naked Now".
Overview: A strange affliction infects the crew of the Enterprise, destroying their inhibitions.
[edit] Plot
On stardate 1704.2, the starship USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, beams a landing team down to a research station on the planet Psi 2000, a world in the midst of breaking up. The team finds all six of the scientists manning the station dead. The circumstances of their deaths are not apparent; however, the life support systems had been found shut down and all control systems frozen solid.
One of the Enterprise crewmen, Joe Tormolen, carelessly removes his gloves and is contaminated by a strange red liquid. When Tormolen and Mr. Spock return to the ship they are given a clean bill of health by Dr. McCoy. Later however, Tormolen notices a strange itch and begins to act irrationally. He threatens Lt. Sulu with a knife, then attempts to turn it on himself. Tormolen is stopped and escorted to the sickbay where he later dies apparently from the superficial wounds he caused himself during the incident. Dr. McCoy is left bewildered, especially since Tormolen's wounds were not that serious - Tormolen seems to have simply lost the will to live.
Soon Tormolen's bizarre affliction begins to affect other crew members and quickly spreads through the ship. They each begin to display both comical and horrific exaggerations of character. McCoy finds nothing like it in Starfleet records.
As the affliction spreads, Mr. Sulu abandons his post on the bridge and runs around the ship shirtless, brandishing a sword, and challenging everyone to a duel. Ship's navigator Lt. Kevin Reilly then declares himself the new Captain of the Enterprise and rushes down to Engineering where he takes over control of the ship. He demands "double ration of ice cream" for everyone, then begins flipping random switches, fouling up ship systems. The Enterprise starts to drift out of control and slowly falls out of orbit, pulled down by the erratic gravity of Psi 2000.
Nurse Chapel confesses her deepest desires for Mr. Spock. Spock himself, shows troubled emotions and begins weeping uncontrollably because he can't tell his mother he loves her. Even Captain Kirk is affected, first becoming overly romantic toward the ship, then exhibiting paranoia, breaking down for fear that he is losing his ability to command.
McCoy manages to avoid the affliction and finds that somehow on Psi 2000, water has changed to a complex chain of molecules (polywater?) and once in the bloodstream, it acts like alcohol, depressing the centres of judgement and self-control.
Eventually Reilly is stopped and control of Engineering is regained. However, Reilly has turned the engines off and Scotty tells Kirk that he is going to need more time to restart them than they have left. When Kirk challenges this, Scotty delivers the famous line: "I can't change the laws of physics".
To avoid crashing into the planet, they are forced to risk a full power start, mixing the matter and anti-matter cold. To prevent the engines exploding, they will need to balance them into a 'controlled implosion', but this has never been done before. Spock explains there is an intermix formula based on the theoretical relationship between time and anti-matter, but it also has never been tested.
Although the start is successful, it sends the Enterprise into a time-warp and 71 hours backwards in time. As they recover on the bridge, Mr. Spock says that they have three days to live over again, to which Captain Kirk replies hopefully, "Not those last three days". Spock also points out that since the formula worked, they can go back in time to any planet; any era.
[edit] 40th Anniversary remastering
This episode was remastered in 2006 and aired September 30, 2006 as part of the 40th anniversary remastering of the Original Series. It was preceded a week earlier by "The Devil in the Dark" and followed a week later by "The City on the Edge of Forever". Besides upgrading sound and image, the remastering also alters elements of the original episode. Besides the all-CGI animation of the USS Enterprise that is standard among the revisions, specific changes to this episode include:
- The planet Psi 2000 has been updated appearing more realistic.
- The matte painting of surface now includes the research station structure.
- When Scotty uses a phaser to burn through the bulkhead, the phaser beam has been properly added.
- When the Enterprise begins to fall into the planet's atmosphere, a fiery glow appears on the view screen from the friction.
- The archaic mechanical clock has been replaced with a digital readout.
- The time travel effects have been enhanced.
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- This was originally intended to be a two-part episode, with part one ending with a cliffhanger (with the Enterprise going back in time). The ending was revised so that the episode would become a stand-alone episode. What would have been part two eventually became another stand-alone episode, "Tomorrow is Yesterday". [1]
- In this episode Kirk confesses his love for the only "female" in his life – the Enterprise, calmly exclaiming, "Now I know why it's called she" but he also regrets that he can not walk on a beach with her. He vows never to lose her.
- In this episode Lieutenant Sulu was originally going to use the Japanese katana in his famous fencing scene, but the weapon was changed to the European foil in order to avoid racial stereotypes. Dialogue indicates that he imagines himself as d'Artagnan in the novel The Three Musketeers. A quip slipped past the censors of the day when Sulu declared to Uhura, "I'll protect you, fair maiden," to which she replied indignantly, "Sorry - neither!"
- The events of this episode are repeated in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Naked Now". Riker even references something similar happening to a previous Enterprise crew.
- George Takei has repeatedly mentioned in interviews that this is his favorite episode, and spends a chapter on it in his autobiography[2].
[edit] External links
- The Naked Time article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki
- Side-by-side comparisons of the 2006 "Enhanced" visual effects
- The Naked Time side-by-side comparisons
| Last produced: "The Man Trap" |
Star Trek: TOS episodes Season 1 |
Next produced: "Charlie X" |
| Last transmitted: "Where No Man Has Gone Before" |
Next transmitted: "The Enemy Within" |
