‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Retro Recap – ‘The Outrageous Okona’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

What’s truly fascinating about the Star Trek universe as a whole, is how it often challenges its audience by offering up stories that compel and inspire us to be better than we are now. A feat that it often accomplishes by having the crews of a respective series, encounter characters and a world that feature human behaviors that in a way, hold us back from genuine progress. Which is why we see stories that tackle racism and inequality and everything in between, so that we can reflect upon our lives and our world and genuinely ponder upon what kind of changes can be made to ensure that such issues are removed from the face of our planet. Which is one of the many reasons as to why this franchise is so uplifting.

But from time to time, the writers’ room gets a little ambitious with its storytelling and loses sight of the message. Which results in an uneven tale that quite frankly, is a bit messy for certain and sadly, this is a problem that tends to plague early seasons of Star Trek shows. But while these formative years are all about finding a show’s voice and direction, the end result of these mistakes tend to be quite laughable and cringe-worthy in nature and sadly, a well-intentioned misstep is precisely what the next episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation features. For ‘The Outrageous Okona’ was clearly designed to be a tale about how we need to shed our selfish and narcissistic ways as a society in order to grow, something that the brash Okona personifies when he comes aboard the Enterprise, while his ship undergoes repairs.

But the opportunity to express that fascinating message is utterly wasted once the plot gets underway. For in the end, this episode turns out to be nothing more than a grandiose soap opera. One that paints Okona as a playboy that is eager to make sweet love to any woman he comes in contact with, when in reality, he is nothing more than a good man with great intentions that just loves sex and well, none of this works on screen in the slightest. Because not only does it cheapen the message that the episode hoped to express, the star-crossed lovers/soap opera segment of the story, is just silly and annoying and honestly has no gravity or place in TNG. Because there’s no stakes here, and nothing remotely important about what’s happening, making a majority of this episode a grand hunk of filler since it goes nowhere and does nothing for the characters.

Which is an unfortunate turn that is extended to the only plot thread worth a damn in this tale, which involves Data’s exploration of the nature and the power of humor. Which is a shame because when Data tries to understand humanity, usually powerful moments come out of that exploration. But here, the only focus is trying to get Data to tell a funny joke, and that really serves no purpose or growth for Data. But this particular part of the story isn’t a total loss. After all, it lets Spiner show off his comedic chops once again and having Joe Piscopo guest star as ‘The Comic’ is a real treat since he does his thing here in unrestrained and dynamic fashion. But really, in the end, all of these elements and their empty paths storytelling wise, really just raise a big question in the audience’s mind, in that… what was the point of all of this?

Because TNG was always about taking the story somewhere special. But this. This is just a bunch of stuff that happens to fill a forty-five-minute block and that’s just unfortunate. Because had the story taken the time to really have Okona deal with his desire for isolation, instead of playing up his libido for laughs, something special could have happened with that particular plot thread. And if Data’s storyline featured some depth as well and something more worthwhile in exploring human emotions, well then, this episode would have been a brilliant exploration of the human condition. Specifically, what it means to bring joy into one another’s life and what it means to let down walls and be a part of something bigger. But instead, this is nothing more than a puff piece, one that passes the time and well, what’s done is done and this once again serves as a reminder that we do still have a little way to go before this series really hits the mark. And now that this particularly disappointing adventure has come to a close, it is on to the next one and hopefully ‘Loud as a Whisper’ has something more to offer the audience. Until next time.  

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