Star Trek: The Naked Time (Or It's the End of the World as We Know it!)

Ethan: 0:18

Welcome everybody to another episode of Father and Son's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm your host,

Anthony: 0:23

Ethan. And I'm your co host, Anthony. And

Ethan: 0:26

today, we will be going over episode 4 of Star Trek, the original series, which is called The Naked Time.

Anthony: 0:32

Yeah, The Naked Time. This is a classic Star Trek episode, and in fact was the inspiration for an episode of The Next Generation called The Naked Now, which we're not going to talk about today, but That episode wasn't one of the best TNG episodes, but the Naked Time is a pretty good episode of Star Trek the original series. And what we decided we're going to do going forward as we talk about these episodes is we're going to spend less time talking about the plot during the show so that we can focus on the more interesting aspects of the episode. And so we're just going to give a brief summary of what happened in the Naked Time, and then we'll dig in and get into the meat of it. So At the beginning of the episode, the crew of the Enterprise arrives at this planet called Psi Alpha 2000. And Psi Alpha 2000 is like this frozen wasteland and the planet's about to be ripped apart. It's about to be totally destroyed. And so the Enterprise's mission is to first go see if there are any survivors on the planet and get them to the Enterprise and get them home. And then to gather data on the planet as it breaks up and no longer exists. And what ends up happening is, while they're down on the planet one of the crewmen gets infected with a virus. And apparently, this virus had infected The other people who lived on Cy Alpha 2000 and all of these people had died, so there were no survivors on the planet. And so they beam back up to the Enterprise and this crewman has this virus and this virus spreads throughout the ship. And what the virus does is it makes it so that the person who has it can't really control their emotions and can't exercise self restraint. Basically, it sheds all of a person's inhibitions, and it causes the person to start acting erratically and doing some weird stuff. And so we see this virus spread. And what's really interesting about it is, as it spreads to the main characters of the show, like Captain Kirk, and Spock, and Sulu, we get insights into their personality that we otherwise wouldn't have gotten without this episode. Because the episode really explores their subconscious. Mind. And so, we learn more about the characters, which is really interesting, but there's also some larger themes associated with the episode. Would you say that's a pretty good summary of what happened in the episode?

Ethan: 3:19

Yeah, yeah. I think you pretty much got it down. When you were kind of just rehashing it, I was kind of just thinking about the episode as we watched it and what kind of came to my mind is they all kind of just let their intrusive thoughts win.

Anthony: 3:36

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's exactly right. What, what was your overall impression of the episode?

Ethan: 3:42

I mean it was a really interesting episode for sure. There was some amazing costuming with those ice suits that kind of just had a little Opening that the one guy kind of just put his hand in and itched his nose.

Anthony: 3:57

Right. Yeah, at the beginning of the episode Spock and this other guy who beamed down to the planet were wearing like this. It was like a hazmat suit, right? But it was It was red and it had like sparkles on it. It looked like a blanket. Yeah, it almost looked like a blanket and the way that the the one crew member contracted the virus was he took his glove off and it got on his hand and then from there You know, once they got back to the ship, it spread. But yeah, I agree. The costuming was something to behold in this episode for sure. The scene

Ethan: 4:31

where he got infected was also, I thought, really funny because it was just like a little like droplet of blood from another body and it kind of just like flew into his hand. Yeah, yeah.

Anthony: 4:42

So, what character did you think was the most interesting that got the virus in terms of how they acted once they started, you know, shedding their inhibitions and being, acting out their subconscious? So for

Ethan: 4:58

me, it was two. It's in between Sulu and Mr. Spock. Because Sulu just started ignoring all his responsibilities and decided to go for a workout in the gym. But previously in the episode he mentioned sword fighting or like fencing, stuff like that. And then you see him running across the halls chasing people with a sword. And usually, like, fencing swords have that little, like, tip on there, like, the little, like, ball tip, you kind of know what I'm talking about. But his sword did not have that, so he was chasing around crewmen with a sharp

Anthony: 5:33

sword. Yeah, a fencing foil is what it's called. And he had his shirt off, right? So he's running around the ship with no shirt on, and this fencing foil, and pretending to fence, and like, I don't think he was intending to actually hurt anybody with it. But he was trying to scare people, right, as he, as he poked the, the foil at them. It, that, I agree, that Sulu's character development there was really interesting. So what, what do we learn about Sulu from the episode and, and from his experience with this virus? Well,

Ethan: 6:09

first we learn that he is incredibly ripped. Yeah, he

Anthony: 6:12

was, he was in good

Ethan: 6:13

shape, right? I mean, he did say he wanted to go down to the gym, so you can assume he does that a lot and it's pretty muscular. But you also kind of see his more adventurous side in, I don't know. He just seems like a fun guy, generally. Yeah. But when you take away some self control that's not so fun.

Anthony: 6:34

Right, right. Yeah, he has a sense of adventure, and he's basically a swashbuckler at heart, right? That's kind of what we learned about his character. So I thought that was really interesting. Now, you mentioned Spock. Tell me what you liked about Spock's character.

Ethan: 6:54

It was extremely, like, dramatic and funny. He kind of just let out all his human side and started crying to himself on a table and you kind of see him like trying to grasp for self control, but then he just starts absolutely bawling, which is just so out of character and So funny at the same time.

Anthony: 7:22

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was pretty hilarious to see. And he talks about, when he's having this breakdown, he talks about how much he loves his mother, his earth mother. Who he never, you know, he never said that he loved her, or told her that he loved her. And he feels bad about that, and he's just having this emotional breakdown. And so I think what we learn about Spock is that he's very human at heart, right? His logical side is the Spock that's You know, self restrained and wants to execute a mission and follow orders and help the crew of the Enterprise. But deep down inside, he's a fairly emotional guy. There's quite a bit of depth to Spock as a

Ethan: 8:15

character. Yeah, this also kind of reminded me of the episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds where they had Spock become a human and kind of was dealing with all sorts of new kinds of emotions that he'd never experienced and Yeah, I kind of like how they explore his human sides from the earliest forms of Star Trek to the modern Star Trek that we see

Anthony: 8:44

today. Yeah, I almost wondered if that Strange New Worlds episode was inspired in part by this episode, The Naked Time. It's a different plot, and in Strange New Worlds, he somehow loses his DNA, his Vulcan DNA

Ethan: 9:00

shuttlecraft accident, and there was kind of like this Wormholes type place that the shuttle crashed into, and the aliens in there fixed him. And, cause they saw the Vulcan DNA as like, kind of Unimportant, because he was in the shuttle with Nurse Chapel, so they saw mainly human DNA. Right, right,

Anthony: 9:23

yeah, that's right. So it's a different scenario, different plot device that ends up revealing Spock's emotional side. But I'm certain that the writers of Strange New Worlds had to have been inspired by this original series episode, so. Yeah, definitely. Speaking of Nurse Chapel, she also gets infected by this virus. And her character is interesting too because she begins expressing her love for Spock to his face. Telling him how she feels about him and that she's had all these built up emotions towards him and she's in love with him. That was pretty interesting to see too.

Ethan: 10:03

Yeah, you also see Spock's reaction before he starts, like, acting as he was when he was infected. You could tell that he wasn't under the influence of the virus yet, but he was kind of starting to feel emotional. And then when he walked out, the effects of the virus, like, escalated his reaction. Right. To the breakdown you saw in the conference room.

Anthony: 10:30

Yeah, and I think Nurse Chapel is actually the one that transferred the virus to him, right? Yeah. She, she like physically touched him when she was pouring out her emotion and feelings towards Spock, and then he got infected and then he manifested the subconscious stuff in a different way, but really interesting and I wondered if This episode was also an inspiration for the Nurse Chapel Spock storyline in Strange New Worlds, where they're, you know, essentially in a relationship and falling for each other.

Ethan: 11:06

Yeah, I could definitely see that as being one of the factors that inspired that whole storyline. In Strange New Worlds.

Anthony: 11:16

Yeah, so Strange New Worlds is great because it explores some of this backstory before the original series. And so it just further adds to the character development of these classic Star Trek characters. What about Captain Kirk? So Captain Kirk gets infected with the virus and his reaction is pretty interesting. And this is towards the end of the episode, he's infected relatively late, but he comes across as very passionate and he starts expressing his feelings about Rand and says something to the effect of, you know, he wishes he could be with her, but because he's the captain, he's not allowed to. And then he also starts talking about his feelings for the Enterprise and the weight of his office as captain for, of the ship. And, it just gives some interesting insight into who Captain Kirk is. He's a man of great passion he loves this ship, but he also, I think at some point, makes a comment about the ship that He keeps giving and giving and the Enterprise keeps taking and taking or something like that. So as much as he loves the ship, he also feels this enormous weight of responsibility that he has as captain and you know, the protector of his crew.

Ethan: 12:47

Yes, this was kind of a conversation between Captain Kirk and Spock. I believe, and am I right about that? Yeah. And I found this really funny because they were like minutes towards being pulled in by the planet and the ship exploding and they're having this conversation about their emotions and their feelings and it's, it's one of those things that happens a lot in TV where time lasts as long as they want it to in a sense of urgency. Right.

Anthony: 13:22

Yeah, it, it, they said they had only so many minutes left, but it ended up being a lot more than

13:29

that.

Ethan: 13:29

It was like, they said they had 15 minutes left, but it lasted the whole rest of the episode.

Anthony: 13:33

Right, right. Yeah, so, so anyway, we get some interesting insight into these characters and learn more about them, and that makes us, want to see more of, of them in future episodes. And then there's some interesting themes in this episode. One of the things that I wanted to get your take on was at, at the beginning of the episode, after they get back to the ship, Spock makes this comment, that the data that they're gathering about this planet, Psi Alpha 2000, that's about to break up and be destroyed, suggests that they may be seeing Earth's future because Earth was remarkably similar to Psi Alpha 2000. And so Spock's suggesting that this may be what will eventually happen to Earth. What did you think of that? What did you take away from that comment?

Ethan: 14:27

So, I, I, if I remember correctly, the planet kind of turned into that ice planet when the sun of that solar system burned out. And so that kind of reminded me of like I believe you've told me this before that back in your time, maybe a little earlier that people thought that like global cooling was an issue. Right. And so I'm wondering if that. They kind of took that issue and sort of escalated it to the extreme form of the planet basically turning into just a frozen ice cap.

Anthony: 15:08

Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that. I guess it's possible. The global cooling phenomenon was briefly during the 1970s, I believe, but there may have at this point in the late 60s, there may have been talk about it. I'm not entirely sure. So yeah, that, that's possible. I wonder if it's more of a metaphor for the breakdown of society you know, what, cause, cause what happens on Psi Alpha 2000 is you know, environmentally the conditions are bad, but this virus infects people and they start acting out their inhibitions and you know, it just Results in chaos. And so, and then everybody ends up dying. And so I wonder if Spock's reference or comparison to Earth is to, maybe to make us think like, okay, what's Earth's destiny? What's our society's destiny if we don't reign in, you know, our, subconscious and we don't exercise some self restraint.

Ethan: 16:17

Yeah, Spock was just kind of saying look what happens when people let our intrusive thoughts win We all die.

Anthony: 16:27

Yeah, yeah, but he's making an analogy with the breakup of the planet. Yeah. Another thing that I thought was interesting was there was one character, I don't think he even had a name, but he got infected with the virus. And he starts painting, right? He has a paintbrush, and he starts painting on the walls, and down one corridor, he wrote or painted, Love Mankind. Do you, do you remember that scene? Yeah. What did you think of that? What, what do you think that was all about? I,

Ethan: 17:03

my mind immediately went to, like, hippies and their Like, rainbow vans, and peace signs, and, yeah.

Anthony: 17:12

I don't know. Yeah, I think it's a reflection of the culture of the 1960s. I don't know, what I, what I wasn't sure about after watching this episode, it clearly, it was referencing the culture of the 1960s in the United States. But what I wasn't sure of is whether or not it's an indictment of the culture or not. It seems that maybe it is because what it shows is It's, you know, these people who are breaking down these social norms and barriers, which, which was a lot of what was happening in the 1960s with the, the hippie movement and peace, love, dope, and all of that. In the episode, of course, it ends up creating chaos and the ship almost ends up not surviving, right, getting, getting blown up because one of the guys that was infected with the virus kind of takes over the ship. And so I wonder if that's kind of a commentary on what happens if we let that kind of stuff go too far. Right? If, if we don't have societal norms and we don't have a culture of restraint you know, what does that do to society in, in the long term and the social order, so to speak? At the same time, You could also argue that there are some good things that came out of that cultural movement. Certainly we saw an advancement in things like civil rights during the 1960s. And so, like any good work of fiction I think it leaves you with more questions than answers. But that was kind of my takeaway, is that this episode maybe wasn't very sympathetic to the hippie movement of the 1960s.

Ethan: 19:13

Yeah, I guess, I guess, I can see where you're coming from in that

Anthony: 19:16

one. Yeah, but to contrast that Love Mankind phrase that was painted on the wall we, there's a scene where Kirk is going back to the bridge, and so he gets into the turbo lift, and he notices It's another phrase painted on the wall of the turbo lift, which is sinner repent. And so that, that was kind of like a, an apocalyptic phrase, you know, about the, the end of the world. And, and that was, I think something that was in the zeitgeist of the time, you know, this concern about the, the end of the world. What, what was gonna happen to humanity, and so, I, I thought that was interesting as well. What, did you have any thoughts on that phrase, the, the sinner repent?

Ethan: 20:05

What I was trying to figure out with that phrase is like, I really couldn't tell what the audience of that message was supposed to be. Like, who was that supposed to be painted for, and repent of what?

Anthony: 20:23

Yeah, yeah. I, I don't know. I think, I think it could mean a lot of different things, and the scene was with Captain Kirk, and he's the one that sees that on the wall, so maybe it's directed towards him that he feels like he's, You know, things are, are out of control. I'm not really sure. It it was interesting though and it certainly made me think a little more deeply about the themes of the episode because I think ultimately what the episode is about is what happens when society breaks down, right? And we've seen, we've seen examples of that in recent years, right? Rioting and you know, chaos and just Just crazy stuff that has gone on in, in the United States specifically, but also in other parts of the world. And so sometimes it does feel like society's on the verge of a total collapse. And so this episode kind of explores, like, what, what What does that look like, you know, if people stop caring about the social order and just do whatever they want and you know, and, and maybe there's these two extremes, right? There's the, the extreme of the hippie side, the, the just, you know, love, man, that's all we need. And then this extreme of, you know, repent, it's the end of the world. And those two extremes come in conflict with each other. And it creates problems for society.

Ethan: 22:03

Yeah, that's That's a way of looking at it. I, I don't know, I'm still trying to, like, piece it all together, so I'm not really sure how all of it fits with, like, the movements of the time and things. But I, I do It definitely makes sense, the breakdown of societal norms and just how that destroys order and things like that. One thing though we haven't really gone over was the guy who first came down with the virus and how it affected him. Because he had a very interesting perspective about Starfleet and what they're doing in space. That's true.

Anthony: 22:50

Yeah, glad you brought that up. Yeah,

Ethan: 22:52

so what happened, if you recall, is he basically started going on this whole rant about how they don't belong in space and that like they shouldn't be there and it's just it's bad that they're out there and humans should stay

Anthony: 23:11

on earth. Yeah, he's, he's saying they have no right to be there and, and Almost suggests that it's irresponsible of them to be out exploring space. So his subconscious has these concerns about everything that Starfleet is doing, right? Including himself as a member of Starfleet. And then that causes him to go into like this depression, right? And he ends up trying to kill himself, and he's not successful. at that at first. But he ends up getting, he grabs a knife, they're in the mess hall, and he grabs a knife, and he's about to stab himself, and Su Lu and another character are able to stop him, but while, while doing so, he ends up falling to the ground, and the knife stabs him. But it wasn't a fatal wound. We find out when he's later in sickbay. And Dr. McCoy is operating on him. And All the sudden, he starts dying on the table, and McCoy is really confused about this, like, why is this guy dying, he shouldn't be dying, there's, you know, he had this wound, but it's not, wasn't that severe of a wound, I should be able to, fix this and save his life, and as it turns out, he basically chose to die, he was so depressed that he didn't have the will to live anymore, and that's why he died, on the table, right, and so that's how this virus infected him so that was really interesting. Yeah, the way

Ethan: 24:41

he died kind of just reminded me of the movie Revenge of the Sith, where Padme was just sad he died. And then you've got Anakin Skywalker, who has just been burned in lava, lost all his limbs, put in a robot suit, he's still living.

Anthony: 24:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was kind of similar, for sure. Yeah, so, any other were there any other characters? I guess the other character that's worth talking about is the Riley character. So he gets infected with the virus and all of a sudden he thinks he's an Irish king. And he starts singing and doing weird stuff. And then he's the one that eventually Takes over the engine room and takes over the Enterprise and and basically the Enterprise is getting sucked in To this vortex that's created from the the planet breaking up Well it

Ethan: 25:39

wasn't a vortex it was the planets gravity intensifying because the planet was kind of crushing in on itself And what they needed it was they needed helm control so they could Manage that But this character took over the the whole ship from engineering, right? which was also this this part of the story was Taken from like the next generation borrowed this part of the story for a different character I believe it was Wesley crusher in the in the yeah naked now who also took over the ship from engineering, right? Yeah, so, basically, this character now seems to believe he is in charge of the ship, but also has no clue that the ship is spiraling down into its own doom. Right,

Anthony: 26:35

right, he's oblivious to what's actually happening. Which is another you know, another commentary on the whole theme, right, that as society continues to break down, there are those who are not paying attention to what's happening, right? And and don't care. So, yeah that was an interesting one as well. So at the end of the episode they end up being able to solve the problem of getting sucked into this This gravity pool that you explained, and the, the solution to the problem is this engine implosion, I think they called it, right? And and so, Spock and Kirk kind of snap out of the the, the virus stuff and, and Spock in particular is able to go save the day and make this engine implosion happen. And the result of that is that they went back in time three days. And that's how they ended up surviving. So they, they went back in time and then they. Of course, don't go to Psi Alpha 2000 again, because now they know what's going to happen. But one thing that I thought was interesting was at the end of the episode, they realize they've gone back three days in time, Spock says to Kirk, we have three days to live over again. And Kirk responds, but not those last three days. So you know, that's kind of interesting. You know, what if you, what if you had a do over you know, if you could go back and fix a mistake that you made that was potentially catastrophic or destructive in some way? Yeah. You know, what would that, what would that be like? And Spock also notes that they now, know how to go back to any era in time. Right? They now have the, the ability to do that. And Kirk says, you know, maybe someday we'll, we'll do that. But this was interesting because it introduces time travel to the Star Trek story. This is the first mention of, of time travel. And there'll be you know, future episodes. I think there's at least a couple of original series episodes that deal with time travel. And then of course, in the later shows, TNG and Deep Space Nine and Voyager, there's, you know, Lots of time travel episodes. Yeah, there's

Ethan: 29:05

soon enough episodes that Starfleet has a whole section devoted to time travel issues. And that was probably what there was an episode about it in Deep Space Nine. One of the workers said, like, that's one of the reasons we dislike Captain Kirk is because he's time traveled so much and he piles up so much paperwork. Right.

Anthony: 29:28

Yeah. So, all in all I gave this a, a, a letter grade of an a. I really liked this episode. I thought it was thought provoking. I thought the characters were interesting. The character development was fascinating as you got to kind of dive into the subconscious of, of some of these characters that we love so much. So I, I gave it an a What about you? Yeah, I

Ethan: 29:51

would also give it an, a very entertaining story. Lots of funny parts to it. Yeah, I just really liked

Anthony: 30:00

it. Yeah. Yeah, definitely my favorite of the four episodes that we've reviewed so far All right. Well, thanks everybody for joining us again for this episode. We look forward to continuing the discussion next week. In the meantime we hope you have a good week ahead and we'll talk to you soon. See ya.