Control Nathan Rabin #4.0 128: Star Trek: the Next Generation: "The Outrageous Okona" and "Sub Rosa" — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.

Or you can be like three kind patrons and use this column to commission a series of pieces about a filmmaker or actor. I’m deep into a project on the films of the late, great, fervently mourned David Bowie and I have now watched and written about every movie Sam Peckinpah made over the course of his tumultuous, wildly melodramatic psychodrama of a life and career.

This generous patron is now paying for me to watch and write about the cult animated show Batman Beyond and I also recently began even more screamingly essential deep dives into the complete filmographies of troubled video vixen Tawny Kitaen and troubled former Noxzema pitch-woman Rebecca Gayheart.

I want this column as appealing as possible because I love writing it and also I desperately need the income it provides. So I try to be as flexible about what I will cover for it.

I’ve written almost exclusively about movies for Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 but I jumped at the opportunity to cover the entirety of Batman Beyond for it because I love having regular ongoing income and because I am intrigued and so far deeply impressed by Batman Beyond and the unique role it occupies in Batman mythology.

I also like that I’m going to hopefully write about all of Batman Beyond, from its debut to its finale, as opposed to writing about, say, two random episodes from a TV show that I had never seen before and will never see again.

That said, in this entry I happily write about two semi-random episodes from a TV show I honestly haven’t watched in a solid three decades and will probably never watch again unless someone chooses more episodes for this column.

The show is Star Trek: The Next Generation and the not so random episodes in question are “The Outrageous Okona” and “Sub Rosa.”

These episodes are only semi-random because while it is off-brand for me to write about any iteration of Star Trek I have long made my living writing about things that are egregiously, fascinatingly terrible and am also weirdly obsessed with the life and career of steroid-addled Jersey joker Joe Piscopo.

“The Outrageous Okona” combines my love of the mermerizingly awful with my overlapping fixation with the television and film career of Joe Piscopo, who guest stars in the episode as the 1980s comedian who teaches curious android Data (Brent Spiner) about comedy with a healthy assist from Whoopi Goldberg’s wise alien bartender Guinan.

I recently excised all references to Donald Trump from both versions of The Weird Accordion to Al partially because his presence in my book about “Weird Al” Yankovic’s life’s work seems to have enraged Trump super-fans and detractors alike but also because I worried that writing too much about the current president in a book like that might date it horribly.

I felt justified in that decision when Data asks the unnamed holographic 1980s comedian Joe Piscopo plays what’s funny and his first answer is “Tip O’Neill in a dress.”

I would hate for anything in my book to age as poorly as a Joe Piscopo joke or Joe Piscopo’s presence here, or really anything about this fascinatingly woeful episode, which is painfully unfunny in its exploration of the nature, craft and value of comedy and defiantly unsexy in its depiction of sex.

Astonishingly the Joe Piscopo subplot might actually be less embarrassing than the main plot of “The Outrageous Okona.” Future Rocketeer Billy Campbell (billed as William O. Campbell) guest stars as the titular rogue, a dashing space scoundrel in the Han Solo mold.

Captain Thadiun Okona should be an absolutely amazing role. Who is cooler than Han Solo? Unfortunately, Okona is less Star Trek’s virile answer to the beloved bad boy of the Star Wars universe made than a Syfy answer to Han Solo.

Instead of the sly smirk, self-deprecating humor and rascally charm that Harrison Ford brought to Han Solo, Campbell substitutes an unchanging expression that silently but annoyingly conveys alternately, “Ain’t I a stinker?” and “Ain’t I a stinker who is totally about to get laid?”

Captain Picard and the gang come across Okona’s ship and beam him aboard, at which point he immediately begins macking on the honeys. Campbell brings serious big dick energy to the role.

This Captain’s log has clearly gone where no man has gone before, and many other warm, inviting places as well. All of his star dates end in fucking. His prime directive involves shagging as many sexy babes as possible.

“Thank you for beaming me here and enabling me to see a truly beautiful woman” Okana, dressed like a cross between someone cosplaying badly and cheaply as Han Solo and a lead in a community college production of Pirates of Penzance, tells Transporter Chief Lt. Bronwyn Gail Robinson (Teri Hatcher) while making outer space fuck eyes at her.

“You have the majestic carriage and loveliness that could surely be traced back to the noblest families” this space perverts coos creepily, which is a very verbose, ponderous way of saying, “I like your boobs.”

The whole damn ship inexplicably stands and watches the randy space maverick Captain flirt awkwardly with a woman who would never appear in another episode, with Captain Riker approvingly noting his “healthy libido.”

The dashing Captain who fucks takes an instant shine to Will Wheaton’s Wesley Crusher. Wesley is supposed to envy the stranded captain’s confidence and skill with the ladies but there’s something more than a little homoerotic about the way he looks at Okana as well. At the very least, the younger man would clearly appreciate any help he might be able to provide him in the all-important task of losing his cursed virginity.

Everyone is just way too impressed by Captain Okona and his stupid ponytail. Data wonders aloud how one man can be so simultaneously sexy, funny and irresistible, leading him to seek comedy lessons from the comedian played by Piscopo.

The Next Generation hoped to land Jerry Lewis for the role of the comedian but he was filming a guest shot for Wiseguy instead so much of Piscopo’s performance consists of a terrible extended Lewis impersonation that causes Data to inquire, “If you put fake teeth in your mouth and jump around like an idiot, that is considered funny?”

There is one good gag here and it predictably comes at Piscopo’s expense. The comedian is trying to teach Data about comedy by sharing famous jokes and the android gets so bored that, with a mischievous gleam in his eye, he fast-forwards the holographic funnyman to make the experience of listening to his act shorter and less painful.

In the main plot, meanwhile, two separate races from different planets want Picard to turn over Okona for reasons they’re reluctant to share. Debin (Douglas Rowe) accuses the rogue of “dishonoring” his daughter Yanar (Rosalind Allen) by getting her pregnant out of wedlock with his big old space dick while Kushell (Albert Stratton) from the planet Straleb is apoplectic because he thinks Okona manipulated his son Benzan (Kieran Mulroney) into helping him steal a treasure known as the Jewel of Thesia

In a shitty Gift of Magi meets Romeo and Juliet twist, it turns out Okona is one hundred percent innocent, in addition to being dashing and hilarious and sexually irresistible because it was actually Benzan who knocked up the opposing leader’s daughter and stole the Jewel of Thesia by himself to give to her.

I have low expectations for anything involving Joe Piscopo but I was genuinely astonished by how silly and stupid the episode was, and that has more to do with stupid, sexy Captain Okona than Piscopo’s labored shenanigans.

I know that a lot of people love The Next Generation but good lord, when it is bad it is really bad.

This brings us to our second, Piscopo-free episode, “Sub Rosa”, which similarly explores the mysteries of human and alien sexuality in ways that are incredibly embarrassing to everyone involved, particularly the audience. Both “The Outrageous Okona” and “Sub Rosa” seem to have been written by people with a twelve year old’s conception of sex. They know it exists but they don’t actually know what it entails.

“Sub Rosa” feels like a back door pilot to an unspeakably cheesy erotic spin-off—Star Trek Nights—that would explore the supernatural sexscapades of the mature sexpots of the Enterprise in a nudity-filled romp that combined the dissimilar visions of Gene Roddenberry and Zalman King.

“Sub Rosa” came late into the show’s seventh season, when the only premise left was “Beverly Crusher becomes erotically obsessed with the 800 year old Scottish fuck-ghost that was shagging her hundred year old granny before she died.”

The episode begins with Beverly delivering a tender, sincere and passionate eulogy for Felisa, her beloved healer of a grandma, who just died at a hundred. Beverly (Gates McFadden) remembers her beloved “Nana” as someone who was fiery and opinionated and beloved by her community and everyone blessed to know her.

But she soon learns that her dear granny was something else as well: a hot and horny fuck bunny in a mind-blowing sexual relationship with a big dick 800 year old Scottish fuck ghost named Ronin (Duncan Regehr, best known as Dracula in The Monster Squad and Zorro on the Disney Channel).

This leads to the following very normal, not at all insane exchange between Crusher and her boss, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), about how her horny her grandmother was, how that must mean that she’s horny as well and how great it is to be old and horny.

Beverly Crusher: You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been reading about in my grandmother’s journals. You know she had a lover? Do you believe that? Nana was 100 years old.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Mm. It would seem that the Howard women have exceptionally vigorous libidos.

Beverly Crusher: I certainly hope so! After all, I hope I can find a handsome young man in his 30s when I’ve passed the century mark!

I’m not sure it’s ever appropriate for a boss to say something to an employee like “Wow, you and your grandma are HORNY! Actually EVERY women in your family is down to fuck!” and for the employee to respond, “Thanks for noticing!

Then again, Beverly spends a LOT of the episode gushing about how horny everything involving Ronin, the 800 year old Scottish fuck ghost, makes her. She leeringly observes to Commander Troi (Marina Sirtis) of a sex dream she had about her supernatural new beau, “He knew exactly how I liked to be touched. It was the most physical dream I’ve ever had. The sensations were very real and extremely arousing.”

When Troi replies, “Frankly, I’m envious” Beverly confesses, “I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter in my grandmother’s journal. She wrote very detailed descriptions of her experiences with Ronin.”

McFadden teeters on the knife’s edge of a shattering orgasm throughout “Sub Rosa”, even when she’s ostensibly working. Ronin doesn’t need to assume corporeal form to have her wet and ready; reading about his powerful sex magic in granny’s journals is enough to push her over the edge and all the way to Orgasm Town.

Ronin comes on strong to Beverly in invisible spectral form, explaining that he was born in 1647 in Glasgow on Earth and ghost-boned her beloved granny and her granny’s granny, and her granny’s granny’s granny, going back hundreds upon hundreds of years.

People literally base their lives on this television program and its predecessor.

Beverly is excited to continue this proud family tradition of fucking the same sexy ghost, particularly once he takes handsome human form and shows her the kind of soul-smashing sexual ecstasy that filled her granny’s golden years with unending erotic bliss.

“Sub Rosa” refreshingly does not judge or slut shame Beverly for wanting to slob the knob of the virile granny shagger that gave Nana Felisa the old salami surprise on the regular, that played “hide the Afi Khomen” with her throughout the autumn of her years. Nor does it judge Beverly for wanting to fuck a sexy ghost that knew her grandma in a biblical as well as social fashion and now lives inside a candle or something.

Ronin mind-fucks Beverly so good she’s ready to quit her job on the Enterprise so she can be a healer on her granny’s planet and enjoy all the brain-meltingly hot ghost sex her body can handle when she makes a shocking discovery.

The sexy spirit that fucked her grandma and has her sexually obsessed is not as innocent as he initially appears and also is not an actual ghost but rather something called an “anaphasic" alien that needs host bodies to survive.

Ronin’s erotic hold over Beverly lifts when Ronin inhabits granny’s corpse in a desperate attempt to stay alive and she ends up killing him.

Everyone seems very forgiving about the whole “Beverly giving up everything due to her erotic obsession with the 800 year old ghost that was fucking her granny” thing but the episode ends with Picard reflecting that it might take Beverly a little time to recover from the whole incident emotionally.

I watched a season or two of Star Trek: The Next Generation during its original run and while I don’t remember much about it, I can’t help but think that this is an outlier not unlike the “supernatural” season of Baywatch Nights, when they pathetically decided to chase the popularity of X-Files by making David Hasselhoff’s buff life saver an investigator into the world of ghosts and monsters and things that go bump in the night.

It’s weird to dip a toe back into a beloved cultural touchstone through its worst, weirdest, most embarrassing episodes but I enjoyed it all the same. These episodes can’t possibly be indicative of Star Trek: The Next Generation as a whole because if they were it would have a bad, cheesy reputation for mind-blowing camp idiocy rather than a good reputation for being smart and thoughtful and socially conscious.

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