2.4 — “The Outrageous Okona”
Plot: The Enterprise picks up Captain Okona in a derlict vessel needing assistance. He is a rogue (“cad, knave, rake, rascal”) and immediately starts sleeping with minor crewmembers. Picard soon discovers that Okona is also wanted by the authorities of two planets. Meanwhile, Data enlists the help of Guinan and the Holodeck to try to understand jokes.
Thoughts: Auuuuggghhhh! The pain! Make it stop!!!!!
I hoped we had turned over a new leaf with season two, but suddenly we have this awful episode which may possibly be the worst of the series so far. Again, we have premises pilfered from TOS. The rogue rescued from the disabled ship is Harry Mudd in “Mudd’s Women” (a vastly better episode), and the fugitive from planetary justice who the captain is reluctant to turn over to extraterrestrial authorities is a plot lifted from “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.”
What were they thinking when they threw this together? The A and B plots have no connection, not even a thematic resonance. There is no science fiction in this episode. In fact, it’s science illiterate. The idea that the Enterprise would happen to run into representatives of two planetary civilizations in deep space who both happen to know each other and also Okona is deeply innumerate about the vastness of space.
A conspicuous flaw is that Okona is not actually charming. Han Solo he ain’t. Women in this episode are used like props in scenes to perpetuate chauvinism. Riker, of course, admires Okona. As he leers at the transporter technician (played by Teri Hatcher, future Bond girl, Lois Lane, and Dangerous Housewife, uncredited at her own request, after much of her dialogue was cut from final episode), we have another entry in Riker is a Pig, a Continuing Series.
The resolution involving the children of the two planetary leaders is absurd. It also defangs the supposed hero. It’s a “Han didn’t really shoot first” moment, ten years before the Star Wars Special Editions. I knew Harry Mudd. Harry Mudd was a criminal. You, sir, are no Harry Mudd.
Perhaps what disgusts me most about the whole business with the father insisting Okona must marry his daughter because she is pregnant and “dishonored,” even though she isn’t interested in marrying him (they have spaceships, but not abortions, on this planet) (notice again how the woman is used as a prop in this scene, instead of as a person) is that they try to excuse it with a fig leaf line tut-tutting about how primitive the ancient codes of this (space-faring) culture are. Hey guys in the writing room: you aren’t fooling anyone. Grow up! This crap is not becoming.
Enough. Warp 1.
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