"The Naked Time" is the fourth episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek.

Mr. Spock and Lt (junior grade) Joe Tormolen beam down and find the researchers' life support system shut down and the team frozen—one fully clothed in a shower, one seated at a control console as if nothing was wrong, and the attrative woman member strangled (pictured).

Tormolen removes his environmental suit glove to scratch his nose and comes in contact with a strange red liquid.

While having lunch, Tormolen begins to act irrationally, expressing hostility towards other crew members, and threatening Lieutenants Sulu and Riley with a knife before turning it on himself.

Sulu runs about with a sword, like a swashbuckler from The Three Musketeers, while Riley revels in his Irish ancestry, locks himself in the engineering section, and proclaims himself captain of the Enterprise.

He develops a serum to reverse the effects, administering the initial doses to the command crew to allow them to bring the ship back under control.

Kirk orders Scott to make a full-power restart of the warp engines, a dangerous process that mixes matter and antimatter in a cold state to create a controlled implosion and drive the ship away from the planet.

The restart is successful, propelling the Enterprise at impossible speed away from the planet into a space-time warp that sends the ship back 71 hours in time.

[1] When the script required Lieutenant Sulu to reveal that in his deepest self he sees himself as a swashbuckler, George Takei had to learn how to handle a fencing rapier in a hurry.

[2] "The Naked Time" is the only episode of The Original Series in which the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade) was shown or referred to.

The sleeve insignia of that rank is a single broken stripe, and Joseph Tormolen is the only member of the Enterprise crew ever to be shown wearing it.

[7] In 2016, SyFy listed Uhura's rebuff of the maddened Sulu's offer to "protect" her as the character's tenth best moment in Star Trek.