20 Most Cringeworthy Star Trek: The Next Generation Moments

9. Data Drunk From The Naked Now (1987)

This might be a good time to clarify what a 'special episode' is. If you were a teenager in America in the '80s, you probably saw at least one 'very special episode' of your favourite TV show (and even the ones you hated) devoted to some sort of 'Just Say No' message. Such was the reach of then-First Lady Nancy Reagan's anti-drug campaign that it was a rare week in television that didn't go by without some sanctimonious message about drugs delivered with all the subtlety of a two-by-four to the head. You would think that science fiction programmes were immune to this sort of madness, but oh no. While they weren't called 'special episodes' per se, both The Naked Now and another first season episode, Symbiosis, which we'll talk about later, called the audience's attention to the evils of alcohol and drugs, respectively. Unfortunately, they do so in ways that made the audience seriously wish to have a little of each. In the case of The Naked Now, the constant references to how similar the infection is to intoxication get tired very quickly. Picard even corrects Troi about it at one point, and we'd think she'd know better than anybody about intoxication, given her line of work. But this comes during a conversation referring to Yar, who's already given it to Data - in more ways than one. Now, this is Data - an android, not a synthetic lifeform made up of the sorts of biological materials that can be easily infected by humanoid diseases or viruses. In fact, this episode marks the only time that Data gets any sort of virus that can also infect humans. Computer viruses, on the other hand, are probably so common that he keeps a McAfee backup disc around his quarters just in case. But this virus is like intoxication, kids, and if we know anything about intoxication, it's that it's not funny. At all. Which probably explains why Data acting like a drunkard and quoting Shakespeare's famous line "Prick us, do we not leak" goes down like a case of syphilis. Actually, given how Data contracted the infection, that's probably in poor taste, and it speaks ill of the dead, besides.