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Linky thing.

Enjoy.

I really don't get the level of hate.

I know it wasn't a good episode by any stretch... not even a "standard" one for that matter.

But seriously... worse than Shades of Grey? Worse than The Royale? Worse than Threshold?

I just don't get it.

I'm sort of with you Graham, I mean it was a terrible episode, but it was just humor, failed humor, but it wasn't anything that was actually meant to mean something and just failed miserably at it.

I'm sorry, but Okona is worse than Pulaski? Really? At least we only had to suffer through 47 minutes minus the 'B' plot on Okona, and he never returned. It took a whole season to get Pulaski off the ship...

I will admit, it is the MOST unfunny episode I've seen in which humor was expected of any of the Start Trek Incarnations...

I think it can be understood. While Threshold, Royale, Shades of Grey etc. tried to tell a story and it sucked for one reason or another Okana was supposed to be carried by the comedy and even at the time it was broadcast the thing wasn't funny. In fact it was painful to watch. Royale was boring, Shades of Grey is a clip show, and Threshold is stupid but at no point did I wince during them as often as the "comedy" in this one.

I dunno. Yes, the jokes fell flat but I didn't feel overly insulted by it. And Data trying humor was kinda interesting.

Indeed. It was bad, certainly, but no worse than bog-standard bad.

I remember watching this ep as a kid thinking that it must be adult humor because as an elementary schooler... I changed the channel to Married with Children.

Yes, this was both bad and trite... but nowhere near the depths of badness which entombed eps like "Threshold, Shades of Grey," et.al. And the Okona - Pulaski comparison is way off. Methinks C. S. is still bitter over the CBS/Youtube decision.

Tyyr wrote:I think it can be understood. While Threshold, Royale, Shades of Grey etc. tried to tell a story and it sucked for one reason or another Okana was supposed to be carried by the comedy and even at the time it was broadcast the thing wasn't funny. In fact it was painful to watch. Royale was boring, Shades of Grey is a clip show, and Threshold is stupid but at no point did I wince during them as often as the "comedy" in this one.

Maybe that's the difference... I never looked at it as an episode that was meant to be carried by the comedy. To me this was an episode meant to be about what is funny, not an episode that was meant to be funny.

To my mind the story was about Data trying and failing to be human. The fact that it was comedy he was exploring was incidental. I liked the pathos of it - so often we are given a plotline where Data succeeds in mastering some aspect of his being human quest, I rather enjoyed seeing him reach a hard limit and have to admit failure. If anything, it's a tragedy not a comedy.

And in the other plot, it was about Picard having to deal with a situation where he's in a position of overwhelming strength, yet unable to use that strength. Kinda boring and silly, I thought.

Yeah, I rather liked Data's plot in this one.

Good points, GK. I never saw this as a comedic episode - rather, one in which comedy was a superficial aspect of the plot. The point of the Data subplot was, as you say, not the jokes but his effort in trying and failing to understand a facet of humanity.

The overarching plot was a hackneyed (and poorly done) rehash of the old R&J theme, which made the ep bad but not "Threshold" depths of abysmal.

Deepcrush wrote:I remember watching this ep as a kid thinking that it must be adult humor because as an elementary schooler... I changed the channel to Married with Children.

Ahhh... yes Married with Children. I still find it amusing.

Never liked the episode and definitely ranks on the bottom ten IMO.