than the Outrageous Okona?
I have never watched Enterprise, and Voyager has some really lame episodes,but the Outrageous Okona was just so bad on so many levels.
Start with the title...the writers found it necessary to tell the viewer that this guy is going to be so awesome.
This guy is so awesome that every chick on the Enterprise wants to bed him. Every guy admires him. The speech by Riker talking about how awesome the guy is...Okona is ever more successful with women that Riker. The guy has jokes that every one gets giddy about. Geordi basically salivates over the man, and Wesley is drawn to him. Data seeks him out for advice because the guy is just that awesome.
Throw in the over the top acting and the pony tail...because pony tails in the 80s just smacked of coolness...and you have the greatest Trek character of all time. He makes Harry Mudd look plain.
The plot is garbage, and the Joe Piscopo part has no business being in ST.
I think they should have made a spin off series following his adventures from week to week.
Agreed. As you said, the title is a heads-up to the audience
to create for them an expectation that someone really rogue and cool is coming aboard and hijinx will ensue. Like Fonzie except I don't think they were trying to get Henry Winkler. It's not the best type of plot that TNG could do successfully, mixing "Animal House" with "Three's Company", "Romeo and Juliet", and "Jerry Springer" and shoving it into space. Nobody in TNG could take what's on the script and improve on it, the script was so awful even season 5's "Ethics" didn't feel as poised and forced. But not by any worthwhile margin.
Teaching Data humor was fascinating, but when Spiner and Goldberg are given jokes far better then Piscopo - it's a big massive FTW. (Goldberg's line at the very end of the episode was the best and not because it was the end of the episode.)
Gosh, is this going to be another Mary Sue discussion? Like, uh, this one?
Did next gen ever have a mary sue type character?
His is the OP a Mary Sue discussion, based on the current definition of what a Mary Sue is (a character that can do anything when the story needs it, the male equivalent being "Marty Stu", and there's no gender-neutral term yet)?
Okona himself wasn't a M.S. Just a guy stuck in the middle of something, clearly had a struggle, didn't magically resolve the plot problem by a wave of the hand or any other form of hokey and primitive "scripting" we expect from a a kid in 8th grade creative writing class...
Yes it was called Shades of Grey.
Okona was made just after the 1988 writer's strike so some episodes were going to be a bit shit. Plus, the show was still finding it's feet. It was written by 3 people who I've never heard of because everybody was getting fired. They probably locked them in some supply closet with tapes of Season 1 and said watch these and then write something, anything, we just need something to shove on the air. Billy Campbell is still pretty rad though.
Take out the clips and what's left isn't exactly bad and actually puts crew in jeopardy in a way other than "actor with big bits of latex glued to forehead because we didn't do big latex forehead bits in the 1960s but people accepted them anyway when we had the budget to do small bits instead." The episode nosedives once the clips start rolling.
"Grey" still a better story with better dramatic and adventure potential than almost half of season 5's one-sided, insultingly over-contrived soap-operas. "Insulting", unless the target audience demographic was reduced by a decade or so, but even then we owe it to kids to be a little more ingenuous... "Ethics" and "The Masterpiece Society" instantly come to mind as horrible episodes for that season. Were there no other ways to bring in their key points without being so contrived? "Masterpiece Society" was contrived enough, but "Ethics" and the two brain stem magic ending is worse. If they wanted Crusher's point to rule the day they needed a human or species of other rank to actually die (no magic bodily functions to pop up like magic mushrooms on musical cue in case we weren't crying with joy already) for thematic dramatic effect and not bridge crew regular with so many redundant organs even the Borg blush in awe by comparison... Research takes time - nobody's arguing against that good point - but simulations only go so far, even with similarities biological beings still have individual differences (allergies and other variables can create complications) that no computer could peg 100%, and people are asked to do trial treatments all the time if they have certain ailments and after a drug has had enough research applied. Worf was put in a virtually no-win situation. It all ends up as drama that rang hollow.) Still, in a show that ignored the obvious with computer viruses ("Contagion") or the possibility logs can be altered ("Court-Martial"), "Ethics" is in a line of episodes that works hard to get the audience to gloss over reality - but the other episodes were actually entertaining adventure and not "you must live like this or else you're inferior", but Worf hadn't any residual discussions with Riker by the following week so the issue must've been nothing to him (except it clearly was, only when the plot needed it. Again, it's not the best of stories...)
