The Naked Now

I just realized the title of this post will probably generate a lot of Google hits, LOL. But for those that have been following along I promised I follow up my top ten Star Trek: The Next Generation (going to abbreviate it as ST:TNG from now on) favorite episodes with some followups.

Now remember back in around my second post of this blogathon that I mentioned I mostly ignored ST:TNG when it first aired? You don't? That's ok :) Well "The Naked Now" was the episode that followed the pilot, so just imagine it as being in the very early stages. It also happened that it was meant to be a homage to the Star Trek Original Series (hereafter abbreviated TOS) "The Naked Time". Well the fact that it was meant to be a homage was unfortunately not disclosed and many, including myself, saw it as a show that was so desperate for an audience that it was already reaching back to TOS.

So you might ask, how then did this episode, The Naked Now, wind up on my top 10 list? Well, after seeing Patrick's live performance of A Christmas Carol, I decided to give ST:TNG another chance. Shortly after we moved to Maui, Amazon started selling the boxed DVD sets of ST:TNG. We ordered the first season and this time watched it with a more open mind. Yes, there were still a lot of rough edges during the early seasons, but there was also something else (well besides Patrick of course). There was an interesting relationship between Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Doctor Beverly Crusher. With a lot of help from the fantastic chemistry between Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden and a lot of unresolved sexual tension between the characters, I found my hook.