Apparently Gene Roddenberry thought this story was a good template to allow us to learn more about the characters, hence why he chose it as the first regular instalment.
Only problem with this is we don’t learn anything about the characters, nada, zilch! For example Geordie claims he is having “wild thoughts” yet we don’t actually hear what this means, when he said it I thought maybe he’s gonna jump Lt Yar, but no that was left for Data! In fact if it weren’t for Data & Tasha this episode would have fully sucked, but Data sexing up Tasha was a true series highlight so chalk one up for the good guys there.
The opening was well done and they clearly had a lot fake ice left over Encounter at Farpoint so they decided to freeze a whole ship worth of people – turns out they’d been fooling around with the thermostat a little too much!
The main jeopardy here is provided by Wesley who has eschewed his Rappin’ Ronnie Reagan tapes for a Captain Picard Remix, he uses this to fool the dopey Assistant Engineer (Jim Shimoda – better known as one of Al Bundy’s NO MA`AM crew on Married with Children) barricading himself in Engineering and making a dog breakfast of the computer which is left to an intoxicated Data to sort out – still sporting a hard on from his encounter with Tasha and unable to think straight, he does manage to save the day and probably get two engineers fired in the process!
WILL IT FLOAT?
Uh no – the basic problem here is the premise is decent, everyone essentially gets drunk and acts crazy, rather than try and peek beneath the veneer of the characters the writer instead decides to play up the screwball side of things making the main focus the jeopardy plot.
A far better alternative would be to hold onto this for half a year and then unleash it as a game changer – use the honesty to screw up Picard & Crusher’s friendship (make it her reason to leave for Starfleet Med), break in some revelation about Worf or Troi or even Geordie – but no all this potential is wasted in favour of some cheap thrills in engineering.
OVERALL
2 stars – One for Production Design and TOS references and the other for Data & Yar.
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