This is the episode that established familiar patterns. We start with Picard's narration, and are presented with an initial problem - communication has been lost with another Starfleet vessel investigating a scientific curiosity, the collapse of a star system. This has all the hallmarks of a great Star Trek episode: the routine aboard the ship, the scientific parameters that will affect the way the story will play out, and then the confrontation with a mystery that needs to be explained.
To be sure, there were still some awkward scenes, clumsy dialogue, but we were working toward something. Data was a little too forced, but his is a character that takes some developing.
However, the great promise couldn't last this time. The premise of the story is that affected individuals lose their inhibitions. Sadly, that means that all the female crew immediately begin making sexual advances to the nearest male to the point where Tasha immediately seduces Data, with the clear implication that they had an extended sexual encounter. The sexism here is deeply uncomfortable, since none of the male crew is similarly affected. It plays into deep stereotypes of women's sexuality as repressed promiscuity. Nevertheless, beside Tasha, Deanna throws herself at Riker and Beverly throws herself at Picard. And this is in the second episode.
Almost as a distraction, we have the beginning of the descent of the character of Wesley Crusher as an annoying know-it-all that Picard should have flushed out the nearest airlock the moment he tried to worm his way on to the bridge. This episode established the pattern that led to Wesley being universally reviled. First, he's constantly whining about what he's not allowed to do, but at the same time his genius far surpasses anyone else in the crew, and he singlehandedly saves the ship in the end.
This is also the first glimpses of how hard it was to write for Tasha Yar. Picard's musings about the source of the intoxication. Before Riker has even seen the information, he's already telling the captain that he's got it all figured out, and before Picard has understood it, he confidently telling Dr. Crusher that the answer is on its way to her. These announcements seem pre-mature at best, yet we are given no clues that this is the early onset of the disease.
the other inconsistency is that the disease seems to be transmitted by close contact, and yet the explanation is proximity to the collapsing star system. There's no attempt at an explanation for why Data is affected
Finally, the show comes crashing down around Wesley Crusher becoming intoxicated. He takes over the entire ship, re-routes control down to engineering and then places everybody in an extremely precarious situation. This is an untenable situation for the cast, and both Patrick Stewart and Wesley struggle as actors to bring believability to the scene.
Story References: This episode is a direct reference to The Naked Time TOS S1: E4.
Rating 1/5 so much went wrong here, so many instincts that led the writers astray, virtually no one escaped from the episode unscathed.
