1.23 — “Skin of Evil”
Plot: Troi is returning to the Enterprise on a shuttlecraft when the pilot loses control and crash lands on a planet. A rescue team approaching the shuttle encounters a black pool of sentient goo with a serious attitude problem. Out of pique, the talking oil slick (whose name is Armus) kills Yar. Will she be resurrected by the end of the episode? (spoiler: no.)
Thoughts: IGN reviewer RL Shaffer (quoted on Wikipedia) is quite correct to point out that but for Yar’s death, this episode would be completely forgettable.
What is the crew’s goal? They need to walk over to a shuttlecraft. What is their obstacle? Something doesn’t want them to. Why? Because it’s evil. Wait, that’s it? Pretty much. How does it try to stop them? With its magic powers of stoppingness. What else does it do? Nothing. It waits.
I found the oil slick effect used to create the creature to be simultaneously impressive and inadequate. Creating the effect must have consumed a lot of effort–but to what end? At least something on screen is representing the industry and creativity of somebody.
Instead of an oil slick, the creature could have been anything. Perhaps an energy cloud, as in the 10,000 times better episode, TOS 2.9, “Metamorphosis.”
Yet this episode is unforgettable, because it contains the death of Lt. Yar, and her very long but admirably earnest memorial scene. Why did Denise Crosby want to leave the show? In this interview (http://www.startrek.com/article/catching-up-with-denise-crosby-part-1), she says:
“I was miserable. I couldn’t wait to get off that show. I was dying. This was not an overnight decision. I was grateful to have made that many episodes, but I didn’t want to spend the next six years going “Aye, aye, captain,” and standing there, in the same uniform, in the same position on the bridge. It just scared the hell out of me that this was what I was going to be doing for the next X-amount of years.”
Good for her! I think watching “Skin of Evil” may have also been the moment I gave up and quit the show back in April 1988. (In my memory, the death of Yar happened in the first 5 minutes, and I was fuming).
In part two of the same interview (http://www.startrek.com/article/catching-up-with-denise-crosby-part-2), Crosby says:
“In hindsight, it was a very male-driven set. I think that the women were not really included. For me, certainly, I felt it was very much a boys’ club, the whole show. I didn’t really feel a part of it, in some way, you know?”
Yep. Even this episode comes off as misogynist and weird.
Nitpicks: Troi keeps forgetting completely about the pilot character, dead or dying on the other side of the shuttle, even as she tells Armus “We are members of a community. We all care for one another.“
I almost lost it when I heard the line “Neurons are beginning to depolarize” during the sickbay resuscitation scene. Is this intended as black comedy?
When he sees that the shuttlecraft is in trouble, Picard orders the warp drives to be placed back online, and increases speed to Warp 8 so they can rush to the rescue. 8? Can you imagine the distance represented by travelling even for one minute at Warp 8? The mind boggles.
I’m forced to wonder how often Yar indulged in her hobby of recording death speeches for her shipmates. This is just unintelligible as a normal human behavior. Did the eight surviving cast members rush off to re-record their own maudlin farewell speeches so as to delete their own final messages for Yar? She seems quite certain that whatever it is that gets her, she’ll be the only one that gets gotten.
Picard tells Yar in the end, “Au revior.” Is this a stealthy expression of religious belief? That seems very unlike the Gene Roddenberry who produced TOS. Perhaps Jean Luc was referring to their afterlife on the convention circuit?
Lt. Worf gets his field promotion to acting chief of security. Good for him.
For all the problems, the actors play the final scene straight, professing their characters’ love for each other with such sincerity as to make me feel like a lout for wanting to assign a failing grade to the episode. With due respect for Denise Crosby, however, I must.
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