By 
Title: Skin Of Evil
Airdate: 4/25/1988
Plot Summary
Troi is on the way back to the Enterprise when her shuttle malfunctions. The pilot does what he can but it crashes on a remote planet. The crew race to rescue them but find a black oil slick blocking their path to the shuttle wreck. The slick takes on humanoid form and stops the crew from approaching. It identifies itself as Armus and is sadistic and cruel. It kills Tasha but finds that boring so it plays with the crew.
Occasionally it envelops the the shuttle to taunt Troi but she senses its deep pain and is able to turn the tables on Armus, taunting him back. Finally Picard beams down to confront Armus and find a weakness before anymore of his people die.
Make It So
Picard ends up going down to confront Armus and is able to get him to see Troi on the shuttle. Once she tells him what’s up, he has no problems working the little whiny bitch into a weak little puddle screaming in rage.
Number 1
Riker gets sucked into Armus and then puked out later. Not a great day for him.
Fully Functional
Data refuses to play Armus’ games. He very objective about what his role would be if Armus uses him to kill his friends and will not take any blame since Armus is the one controlling him. He does make a somewhat subjective conclusion however to what Armus’ ultimate fate would be. No emotions my ass.
Today Is A Good Day To Die
Worf takes over as security chief, a position he would hold throughout the rest of the series. He has a nice little moment with Yar, claiming he bet on her to win the next martial arts tournament. She’s touched.
He uncharacteristically stays on board the ship to monitor from above and best use his skills to rescue Troi and the shuttle pilot.
Phase Inducers
Geordi goes down to look at Armus with his VISOR. He doesn’t see much and is pretty pissed at Armus eff’ing with him by knocking off his VISOR and moving it around on the ground so he can’t find it.
Counselor Cleavage
Troi plays Armus like a fiddle. She’s none the worse for wear from the shuttle crash but can’t get out because Armus is being a dick. She feels Yar die and is pretty upset about it.
Dancing Doctor
Crusher does everything she can to save Yar but to no avail.
Security Chief Dead Meat
And now we come to the episode that inspired my header for Yar. She starts out talking with Worf about a tournament. He shows such confidence in her that he’s placed a wager in ship’s betting pool. She’s touched by it. Unfortunately we never find out how she does since Armus kills her without a second thought early in the episode.
We get her message to her shipmates in a recorded message in the holodeck which comes out nice.
Shut Up, Wesley
Wesley watches the scanner on when Armus’ force field weakens.
Canon Maker
Back in TOS during The Tholian Web, I mentioned that Kirk’s video message was one of the first times this was ever depicted. With it being 1968, it was just not a thing people did. Now we see that it’s still a thing but in holodeck form.
Canon Breaker
When Lynch is starting back up the engine, he sets the matter/antimatter injectors to a ratio of 25:1. But in Coming of Age it was clear that the only intermix ratio is 1:1. Of course if was that easy, then why did the Enterprise in the Motion Picture have such a complex intermix ratio?
I don’t know about this but Worf throughout the show as security is alway gung-ho to go down to the planet in full bodyguard mode. Half the time he has to be told to stay on the ship. So it was a little odd to see him decide to stay on the ship and run scans from the security station. Now my issue is he was probably right in this case. It just struck me as odd given how he is most of the time in the show.
A Little Bloody Nose
Yar dies. Everyone is sad.
Technobabble
While they had the dilithium chamber opened up and the engines shut down, the nacelles went dark. That was a nice touch.
Please Repeat You Communication
“Hailing Frequencies closed, sir.” — Yar’s last words in her recorded message.
Library Computer
Jonathan Frakes actually went into the black goop and was pushed out onto the ground. LeVar Burton commented after the shot, “Frakes, I would’ve never done that.”
I Know That Guy:
No real guest stars in this one. Ron Gans did his voice and stuntmen played the creature.
Oh and Walker Boone played another chief Engineer, Lynch. He didn’t do much except he was the voice of Mario on some Super Mario animated series.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
So we finally get to a pivotal episode that begins to put people where they should be, in this case, Worf at security. It’s amazing how much of a difference it makes. But I get ahead of myself.
This episode is completely designed to kill Yar. Denise Crosby was unhappy with her role and to be honest, she just doesn’t quite mesh with the other 7… or 8 if you count Wes. It keeps Worf out of his natural position as security and weapons officer, and quite frankly her acting was so so at best. She just wasn’t compelling and she knew it. To be fair, she will re-appear a few more times as well as a different character which I’ll get into when that happens.
Her subsequent appearances actually gave her something to work with so I have to wonder if she might have grown into the role. But such was not to be.
As for this episode, many have said it’s pretty on brand for a security officer to be given a red-shirt death. I understand their points and it’s not wrong if you like that. But for me, main are characters are there for a reason and they should get a meaningful death, otherwise why bother to have you get to know the characters? This isn’t real life, this is storytelling and characters, side characters, and background characters all have a role to play for the story. There’s nothing wrong with doing the expected, it’s all about the execution.
A lot of the reshirt deaths are shorthand to show how dangerous the obstacle is. It’s how you do it that makes you tense or makes you roll your eyes, but the unknown character death is perfectly legitimate story telling tool. Main character deaths usually are far more emotional and thematic. Yar’s has none of that.
Is it a wrong choice? Not necessarily, it’s just not a choice I would’ve made or prefer. Your mileage may vary.
The story itself is fine. I do wonder where Armus came from. He says it was a race of titans. Given that we already saw that the Greek gods existed, and the myths say they came from titans, then maybe that’s where Armus came from?
He is evil and hates himself for it but embraces his role. Intriguing. Picard and Troi play him like a fiddle though the damage is done. It’s all pretty well done. I admit that Troi really shines in this episode rather than just saying what everyone can already figure out without her.
Picard is also bad ass. Telling Armus to go fuck himself and beaming everyone out? Brilliant.
Finally the funeral at the end was well done. At least Yar got a chance to say good-bye, so to speak. All in all, there are probably a lot worse ways to go out, Enterprise sure would prove that later. But it’s more interesting for the death of a main character than anything else.
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