Star Trek TNG: Season 1, Episode Twenty-Three “Skin of Evil”

Stardate: 41601.3
Original Air Date: April 25, 1988
Writers: Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer
Director: Joseph L. Scanlan

“She’s dead.”

The Enterprise is crossing through the Zed Lapis sector to rendezvous with Shuttlecraft 13 which is carrying Deanna Troi as she returns from a conference. Engineering is currently involved in preventative maintenance of dilithium crystals, and thus the ship is currently traveling on impulse power.

Suddenly, the Enterprise receives a distress call from Shuttlecraft 13 as it begins losing impulse power and spirals dangerously close to a nearby planet (Vagra II) before crashing on the surface. Since the Enterprise transporter is strangely unable to beam the injured up to the ship due to an inexplicable debris forcefield, a landing party is formed of Riker, Dr. Crusher, Lt. Yar, and Data. On the surface of this barren planet, a strange slick puddle being seems to block their path –it has no proteins, skeleton, brain, blood, nervous system, or signs of intelligence; it also has an unknown cellular structure. Then a strange voice bellows out from the oozing creature –“very good, tin man!” And a somewhat humanoid creature emerges from the slick ooze calling himself “Armus.”

Lt. Yar attempts to bypass the creature in order to help the wounded in the crashed shuttlecraft, but she is quickly attacked and startingly killed by the creature (it is a sudden and unsatisfying death for a character who has been a mainstay of Season 1). Picard orders the crew to return to the ship immediately, but Dr. Crusher is unable to revive Lt. Yar because she has suffered too much synaptic damage.

Meanwhile, Deanna Troi engages in conversation with the creature from her crashed shuttlecraft. What does it want? Why does it not kill Deanna Troi? Armus begins tormenting the crew for its own amusement, as Riker becomes enveloped in the creature, and Deanna Troi learns the creature was once abandoned on Vagra II by a beautiful race of aliens, or “titans.” When expressing its emotions, Armus’s powers are somewhat limited. Armus requests transportation off the planet from Picard in exchange for the lives of his crewmen. Picard forces Armus to confront his loneliness, and when Armus’s energy field is lowered slightly, Worf and the crew are able to beam the crew back aboard the Enterprise, leaving Armus entirely alone once again.

As the ship speeds away, the Enterprise then destroys the crashed shuttlecraft so that Armus can never have the possibility of escape. The Federation is then alerted for all future ships to avoid Varga II. This episode concludes with a heartfelt memorial service in the holodeck on a green field featuring a recording of Tasha Yar as she praises each member of the crew.

“Death is that state in which one exists only in the memory of others,
which is why it is not an end.”

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My Thoughts on “Skin of Evil”

The malevolent being “Armus” is a fascinating non-humanoid creature in the Star Trek universe (in some ways Armus reminded me of TOS’s “Devil in the Dark” –though Armus is like no other known life form). He is a defiant, all-powerful creature who is lonely and bored while living on a remote planet wearing the “skin of evil.” However, his cartoonishly villainous voice is also a bit goofy, and Armus is somehow fully capable of understanding the nuances of the English language. In some ways, Armus is reminiscent of the sillier outings in TOS (right down to the colorful planetary sound stage), though his backstory as an abandoned, lonely creature is compelling. Whereas in other episodes of Star Trek the Enterprise ends an episode by solving a problem, redeeming a perceived villain, or improving a situation; in “Skin of Evil” Armus is simply abandoned once again, left for a long, lonely existence devoid of civilization.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this episode. The death of Tasha Yar about 11 minutes into the episode was somewhat anti-climactic and underwhelming, though it was surely a risk for the show to send her off with such a sudden, unexpected, casual death. On the flipside, her death offers an extensive emotional conclusion to the episode. Initially, the episode started with a jarring unresolved potential romance sub-plot between Worf and Tasha Yar. Why was this included in the episode? Wouldn’t it have made more sense if there were at least a few prior episodes building up this tension? And while I found Armus to be a darkly disturbing creature in concept, ultimately in this episode he is more of a wacky Saturday Morning cartoon than a fearsome, malevolent demon. His voiceover, performed by Ron Gans, is even laughable at points, especially when communicating with Deanna Troi). Though I will say the effort put into physical effects in this episode by the props department was nothing short of extraordinary.    

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Writer/Director

The story for this episode was written by Joseph Stefano, who previously worked on The Outer Limits and was best known for adapting Robert Bloch’s Psycho for Alfred Hitchcock. The original title for this episode was “The Shroud.” It was Gene Roddenberry who suggested the sudden death of Tasha Yar while keeping Armus alive.

The teleplay was credited by Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer, and it was directed by Joseph L. Scanlan.

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Star Trek Trivia:

• Denise Crosby’s character Lt. Tasha Yar was killed off in this episode because her time on Star Trek TNG was “miserable” and she asked to be released from her contract. She was unsatisfied with her character on the show, though she liked her brief moment of hinted romance with Worf in this episode.
• Gene Roddenberry insisted that Tasha Yar’s death be senseless, an act of random violence that was part of the daily risk a security officer faced.
• Denise Crosby later returns as Tasha Yar in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and in the series finale, “All Good Things…” as well as Lt. Yar’s half-Romulan daughter, Sela, in several later episodes.
• The prior episode “Symbiosis” was actually filmed after “Skin of Evil” though released earlier.  
• The character of Armus was performed in a suit by Mart McChesney who had to hold his breath while underneath a vat of oil. The oil itself was composed of a water-soluble Metamucil substance which was dyed black using printer’s ink.
• Guest stars in “Skin of Evil” include: Walker Boone as Leland T. Lynch, Brad Zerbst as a nurse, and Raymond Forchion as Ben Prieto (another member of Shuttlecraft 13).
• In a flirtatious conversation with Worf, Tasha Yar mentions the “Mishiama” wrist-lock and break. She also mentions Science Officer Swenson and Lieutenant Minnerly’s kick-boxing.
• This episode features a unique scene of Engineering aligning dilithium crystals by hand for warp drive.
• At one point, Picard quotes a great poet: “All spirits are enslaved that serve things evil.”
• One fan theory suggests the aliens (i.e. Titans/Vagrans) who have abandoned Armus are actually the Greeks from the TOS episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” However, in “Skin of Evil” there is no such explicit connection made.  
• Armus was played by Mark McChesney in a suit.