TNG Flashback: The Outrageous Okona

Just as "Elementary, Dear Data" was starting to make it look like Star Trek: The Next Generation might finally have started on the path to its ultimate greatness, along came "The Outrageous Okona" to slap that silly notion out of your head. It's a dreadful episode from beginning to end, notable only for a few good guest actors (popping out from a raft of bad ones).

The Enterprise lends assistance to a roguish character named Okona, captain of his own small ship that plies the space lanes between two systems. Rivals from those two systems soon arrive, each demanding the Enterprise hand over Okona to be judged for different crimes. Meanwhile, Data turns to a holographic comedian in an effort to better understand humor.

I've noted of some past episodes that too much focus on a guest character can be a bad thing. This episode shows the horrid results that can come of that. There's no jeopardy here, as a major plot point is made of the fact that neither of the alien ships has weapons capable of harming the Enterprise. There's no chance for Picard -- or anyone else -- to show off any diplomatic skills, as Okona himself does all the talking that ultimately resolves the conflict (revealing a bad Romeo and Juliet knockoff in the process). The entire story of Okona winds up probably exactly as it would have had the Enterprise never intruded upon it.

There is a way to do this kind of story well, as demonstrated on the fantastic series Firefly, in the episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds." The guest character should be used as a way of casting ripples in the pond, illuminating all of the main characters by way of their reactions to the intrusion. But we don't get that here. Okona's constant joke-telling puts Data on a quest to learn more about humor, a hot young transporter chief gets a roll in the hay, and that's about it. Okona has as little impact on our characters as they do on him.

Part of the problem may be that Okona is such a badly written character. His two major traits are that he's endlessly charming and wildly funny. At least, that's what we're supposed to think, given how others react to him. In actuality, his jokes are quite terrible, and his charm comes off quite false, even oily. It's a particular waste of the actor playing him, William O. Campbell. Later known as Billy Campbell, he went on to star in the film The Rocketeer, and play major characters on The 4400 and The Killing. He can be both charming and funny, as this script wanted him to be, but the material simply didn't allow it. Campbell was also reportedly the runner-up to play Commander Riker; if this was his consolation prize for losing the part, he suffered twice.

At least he got credit, though. The sexy young transporter chief he seduces was played by a before-she-was-famous Teri Hatcher, and she doesn't even get her name on the episode -- not even in the end credits. No one could have known at the time the brilliant comedic skills she would later showcase in the movie Soapdish, or on the TV series Lois and Clark and Desperate Housewives. Another sad waste.

No, the special guest star of the episode that was famous at the time was Joe Piscopo, who plays the holographic comedian Data turns to in his quest to understand humor. Piscopo more or less vanished not long after this. Rightly so, too, as his material in this episode is even less funny than the unfunny things Data is saying. Brought in to replace Jerry Lewis, who the producers had attempted to cast, Piscopo reportedly improvised most of his own material, and it's awful.

And yet, amazingly, not the worst acting in the episode! The two fathers from rival planets who are after Okona are monotone in their outrage, while their two children are aggressively wooden in portraying their star-crossed romance. (The woman even seems like her dialogue may have been dubbed over entirely in post-production. By another actress? I shudder to think how bad the original might have been!)

In between cringing and yawning, I noticed these other things about the episode:

• By far the most fun thing going on this episode is the music. Composer Ron Jones serves up some super-cheesy 80s synthesizer to give a borderline-porno set-up for Okona's liaison with the transporter chief. And he delivers an all-out Klingon battle anthem... for Worf walking down a hallway to fetch Okona to the bridge.

• I mentioned that the best use of a guest character like this is to illuminate the mains. This episode sort of tries to do that with Wesley. But everything Wesley says here is ultimately proven wrong. He says he's "made his decision" to join Starfleet, and that he could "never imagine" a life where he'd be constantly leaving places and people all the time. But he winds up dropping out of Starfleet to go hitchhiking all over space-time with The Traveler near the end of the series. Not that a 16 year old should necessarily know exactly what he wants from life, though I don't remember the show really hitting that hard on just how wrong he was.

• It seems like Brent Spiner often got one-on-one scenes with special guest actors that none of the rest of the cast got to interact with. But remember, he paid for those special moments with DeForest Kelley and Stephen Hawking by having to work with Joe Piscopo.

• I'm a few episodes into the second season by now, but this is as good a time as any to acknowledge Geordi's transfer to the position of chief engineer. What a good move that was for the show and the character! It seems silly that they thought they could get by without a regular character in the engineer's role, and Geordi was serving as the proxy for that in the first season anyway, in any episode where they didn't want to cast a guest actor.

• Whoopi Goldberg tries to save the episode a bit, coming off rather natural in her performance as Guinan. She's the best written part of the hour too, almost an "anti-Pulaski." Data comes to her with a problem, and she treats him no differently than any of her other customers, doing her best to help him with it.

I give this episode a D-, though I'm not quite sure I can point to exactly what I think saves it from deserving an F. I just know that watching this, I didn't quite feel the level of suffering I did watching first season stinkers like "Too Short a Season" and "Home Soil." Maybe I'm anticipating some even worse second season episodes I remember being around the corner, and I'm withholding a lower level for those. But in any case, this is certainly an episode to be avoided.