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star trek - Does "The Naked Now" refer to any particular TOS episode?


In the TNG episode The Naked Now, the crew of the Enterprise come across a strange contagion which they discover is almost identical to one found by the Enterprise under Captain Kirk:



RIKER: Historical. That's it. I remember I was reading a history of all the past starships named Enterprise.

DATA: Enterprise history. Aberrant behavior. Medical cross reference.
RIKER: Captain, I believe we've have the answer to what happened over there.
PICARD: The Constitution class Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk commanding.
RIKER: Similar conditions. They were monitoring a planet that was breaking up, not a collapsing star as in this case. But there were the same huge shifts in gravity ...
PICARD: Which somehow resulted in complex strings of water molecules which acquired carbon from the body and acted on the brain like alcohol.



Out of universe, this is obviously a nod to TOS, but is it a nod to a specific episode/event from TOS, or just to the Kirk era as a whole?


What specific TOS episode, if any, is this a reference to?



Answer



It's a reference to The Naked Time, which featured an earlier epidemic of the same disease based on strings of water molecules. From the transcript:




MCCOY: McCoy to Bio. We've isolated it. Start preparing serum.


HARRISON [OC]: What, Doctor?


MCCOY: It's water. Somehow on this planet, water's changed to a complex chain of molecules.


HARRISON [OC]: What's that, Doctor?


MCCOY: That's how we missed it. It passed from man to man through perspiration. Once in the bloodstream, it acts like alcohol, depresses the centres of judgment, self-control. Now get someone to the lab. Tell them the serum works, and start preparing more.



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