My Trek Of The Stars, Part 6: The Naked Time

Guest Starring: Stewart Moss, Majel Barret, Bruce Hyde, Grace Lee Whitney, William Knight, John Bellah

First, the Lowdown: The Enterprise crew is infected with a disease that makes them all act like college sophomores on Spring Break.

So the Enterprise is in orbit of the planet Psi 2000 (now with 2000 times the cleaning planet as the original Psi!). A scientific party has been on the frozen, Land of Dairy Queen-like surface to research the eventual disintegration of the planet. (Because that’s what planets do when they get too old, they fall apart like an old Gremlin.) On beaming down to the planet surface, Spock and Lt. Tormolen discover that what is supposed to be a bland research station now looks like a frat house after rush week, complete with strangled lady in a back room (if you can’t get rid of the dead hooker before the campus police show up, you can’t make it into Theta Chi, bro.) It’s a good thing Spock and Tormolen wore special clothing made of shower curtains before beaming down, otherwise they’d be freezing. Tormolen takes some instrument readings, and then takes off the glove to his suit (it’s a good thing hands don’t get contaminated) in order to scratch his nose and smear his exposed fingers in the pool of liquid plot device. Spock concludes that the scientific party has gone batshit insane and beams Tormolen and himself up.

On the Enterprise, the landing party is decontaminated and examined by the doctor, who can’t find anything wrong with them – and nothing suspicious about Tormolen’s case of sweaty palms.

Meanwhile, in the briefing room, Kirk hammers home the point that they still don’t know what caused the scientific party to just go bananas, and that once Psi 2000 starts breaking up, they’ll need to make sure the Enterprise isn’t in it’s line of sight. In the recreation room, Sulu and Lt. Riley walk in to see Tormolen break into a psychotic rage – so psychotic that Tormolen falls on his own butter knife. Now Sulu and Riley, the ship’s navigator and helmsman, have a case of sweaty palms.

While Kirk and Spock discuss Tormolen’s recent outbreak of crazy, Dr. McCoy is trying to patch up the damage he did with his butter knife. What should be a routine operation is a complete clusterfuck, leaving Tormolen dead on the table. Back on the bridge, Sulu and Riley’s case of sweaty palms is distracting them from making course corrections. When Kirk leaves the bridge to hear McCoy’s report, Sulu sneaks off to practice fencing.

Riley, however, has proven himself a poor substitute by swaggering and loudly proclaiming as if he were the central character of a James Joyce novel. Spock relieves the now drunken Riley to sickbay, where he only reports long enough to give Nurse Chapel a case of sweaty palms, and then departs into the engine room. Meanwhile, Sulu has reappeared – half-naked and swinging a sword. He swashes his buckle all the way to the bridge, but his Wu-Tang sword no match for Spock’s Vulcan neck pinch. Too make matters worse, Riley has commandeered the ship via the engine room and locked himself in.

As time goes on, more and more crewmen are becoming infected – turning the Enterprise into a drunken orgy that’s spiraling out of control. (It’s the “spiraling out of control” part that makes this situation so unique.)

Spock checks in on Scotty – who’s cutting through a wall next to the engine room door – and McCoy – who had to take off to check on something in the biopsy lab. On the bridge, the crewmembers are getting more and more high as time wears on, which would be funny if it weren’t for Riley belting out the same Irish ballad over the PA over and over again like a mid-twenties asshat who fills the bar jukebox with four hours worth of Nickleback. When Spock arrives at sickbay, Nurse Chapel transfers her case of sweaty palms to him, after telling him she loves him. Spock departs awkwardly and ducks into the briefing room so he can weep like a computer club member that’s been pantsed by the captain of the football time in front of the cheerleader he’s been crushing on.

Scotty succeeds in breaking into the engine room (you see, in the future they only need about a dozen interns to maintain a faster-than-light engine.) But Riley, in his drunken stupor, has shut the engines completely off – meaning the Enterprise is about to crash and burn in less time than there’s left in the episode.

But the good news is that Dr. McCoy has discovered an antidote to the sweaty palms everyone’s been dealing with (or at least has figured out a way for them to fudge a breathalyzer test.)

Kirk stumbles upon Spock in the briefing room and tries to shake him out of his depressing cycle before he starts cutting on himself. He slaps Spock to sobriety, but not before coming down with his own case of sweaty palms. Spock figures out a nice, whiz-bang solution to their engine problem – which sends the Enterprise to fast in reverse that time itself is going backwards! The time warp sent them back three days – which is the perfect amount of time to forget how many embarrassing sex acts the just witnessed and participated in.

Things to look out for:

The “sweaty palms”: You can tell who has been infected because they begin to wipe their hands on their trousers, like after shaking hands with that greasy guy your dad is friends with.

The shower curtain suits: I’m not sure what environment they’re meant to protect their users from, but I sure hope they get them regularly checked for soap scum.

What is McCoy not today? Able to keep his nurses and orderlies sober.

Does Sulu get stoned? Boy howdy, does he! Shirtless and chasing crewmembers with a sword (you better hope I’m not being metaphorical with that) – or as they call it on the Enterprise: Tuesday.

And what about Spock? Spock gets all emo and weepy in this episode. What’s really surprising to me is that he doesn’t start listening to the Smiths while he’s at it.