TNG The Outrageous Okana

[MerelyAFan]

Here's some admittedly useless trivia (though probably still more useful than Okana) about this episode:

Both Teri Hatcher and the actor playing Benzan were actually both in the same Seinfeld episode, with the latter (Kieran Mulroney) playing the guy who got upset at George for double dipping his chip.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Hoh shit that's some good acting.

[TGLS]

Hm... A TNG episode that is just a redressed Seinfeld episode would have been something to watch.

[MerelyAFan]

Hm... A TNG episode that is just a redressed Seinfeld episode would have been something to watch.

"So we get that new Orion Spa holodeck program, upgrade the power of the matter/anti matter reactor, yadda yadda yadda, we end up getting back from the edge of the universe."

"You yadda yadda'd over the most important part."

"No I mentioned the holodeck program." *smirk*

[ChrisTheLovableJerk]

Hm... A TNG episode that is just a redressed Seinfeld episode would have been something to watch.

"So we get that new Orion Spa holodeck program, upgrade the power of the matter/anti matter reactor, yadda yadda yadda, we end up getting back from the edge of the universe."

"You yadda yadda'd over the most important part."

"No I mentioned the holodeck program." *smirk*

Starring Patrick Stewart as Jerry Picard and John De Lancie as Q. Newman

[Nobody700]

Riker and the gang have to find out if Ensign Teri's breasts, are in fact, real. Meanwhile Data has to set up a new comedy routine while some asshole named Okana harasses him the whole time.

[Makeshift Python]

This episode is my go-to Star Trek episode for teaching how NOT to write an episode.

[TGLS]

Riker and the gang are stuck at a boring party where only Data's having any fun. Picard tries to get closer to an attractive captain by pretending to be a barber. Worf enjoys some personal time.

[Vardon]

The actor who played Benzan would also later be in the Enterprise Episode "Fortunate Son"

Yeah this one's a turd, I like the actor who played Okana, he was good in The Rocketeer, but man was he, & everyone else for that matter written poorly in this episode.

The constant way he was saying he was making a joke made me feel for Data, those weren't jokes.
And the way pretty much everyone fell for him made me feel like I was in some weird episode where everyone liked him, but there was no twist that it was all just a mind control thing.
Or maybe it's something like out of Barkley's fantasy on the Holodeck, actually, that kind of fits better if you think about it.

[PerrySimm]

"Brent Spiner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Joe Piscopo walk onto a set... and nobody laughs?"



As off-kilter as it went, though, the comedy B-plot is still the part of this episode that, comparatively, went well.

I mean, TNG is not a show that ever worked well for scripted comedy. You can kind of tell that a lot of the first couple seasons, they were trying to claw back some of that Bones and Kirk slide whistle to credits energy, but it kind of played against everything else the new show was going for as serious, high-budget sci-fi.

Even the master, John de Lancie, was at his best when the writing room made no attempt to "be funny" and he was free to mess around with the script a bit to get a take with maximum impact.