OK, my two cents.
On another website I have a thread running entitled "Star Trek The Next Generation - The Best and Worst Of". I reviewed this episode as part of that thread, and thought I would reprint that review here.
For those interested.
WARNING: Those of you who liked this particular episode....may not be pleased.
And now my review of:
THE ROYALE
“You’re traveling through another dimension--a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. Only this dimension will ruin your sight, sound awful and fry your mind. A journey into a wasteland whose boundaries are that of someone’s witless imagination. You’re moving into a land of both dark shadow and no substance, of things without ideas. There is a signpost up ahead, your next stop, The Extreme Boredom Zone!”
Apologies to Rod Serling.
The Hotel Royale. Scripts check in but they don’t check out! If ever a Trek episode needed to be cast into the Sea of Forgetfulness, this was it.
So, the Enterprise is in orbit around an uncharted planet named Theta Alpha Pi, rumored to be the last known location of an ancient Frat Party. Riker wants in, of course, so he goes to see Picard, and finds him engaged in trying to solve a mathematical puzzle which has been plaguing the Captain for hours and the best minds in Starfleet for over 800 years. The problem reads:
“A train leaves Chicago at 8 A.M. heading West traveling at 53 miles per hour……”
But their permutations are interrupted when Chief O’Brian calls and says they have intercepted some space junk floating past the ship. When they beam a portion of this junk on board, they find the NASA emblem painted on the side. Oh noes! Another mystery for Picard to send his minions off running around trying to solve by way of an improbable and at times impossible series of idiotic events leading to one of the worst, not to mention most boring, episodes ever to be produced.
Data tells Riker that the atmosphere of the planet below is comprised mostly of methane, but this is simply the result of the emissions of the Frat boys after their extended party. But wait! There is one place the intrepid crew of the Enterprise can safely beam down to, a structure built on the frozen Frat boy methane but which mysteriously is surrounded by breathable oxygen. That is all Riker needs to hear, and he, Data, and Worf are off to see if the party may still be going on.
At this point, dedicated fans knew there would be no real conflict in this episode, because Ensign Ricky was not assigned to the away team. Therefore, no one was going to die. Except perhaps the viewer, succumbing to the effects of the Extreme Boredom Zone.
The away team materializes inside a ZONE OF DARKNESS. Oooooh! They see a revolving door in the distance, and Doctor Who steps out and invites them inside, where they find the Frat boys have all grown up and are now shooting craps and playing blackjack in a casino. The Enterprise three join the fun, until they find out they are trapped, get this now, in a dime-store novel the events of which cannot be escaped until they play out the novel’s sequence of events.
Wow. Now there was an original idea. I kept waiting for Alice to run by, looking for the Queen of Hearts. Or perhaps Bugs Bunny poking his head up through the floor saying he must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque. The “plot” of this episode certainly would have been right at home in a Warner Brothers cartoon.
During one scene on board the Enterprise, Picard is reading the actual novel the events happening below are based on. He comments on how badly the novel is written. So I guess that is the excuse for the entire episode. Counselor Troi, attempting to display some optimism in the face of the intense boredom threatening the entire ship, says that maybe it will get better. Picard responds:
“Not until the third season, Counselor. Provided we all survive that long.”
Test time, dear readers. See if you can correctly identify where the “aliens” who created this travesty of writing got the idea for the “Hotel Royale” story.
1. A bad dream the result of eating an entire bag of Doritos and having to breath your own methane emissions.
2. They stole if from an old “Lost in Space” episode.
3. They stole if from an Original Series episode.
Or, and no-one would ever have seen this coming:
4. One of the astronauts on board the ship found floating in pieces around the planet had brought it with them.
The answer is 2, 3, and 4. This episode was written, perhaps after the events described in number 1 above, by Tracy Torme. He was actually proud of it, even though he had originally pitched the idea for season one of TNG but was told it didn’t suck enough to be in season one. Kirk and company did something much like this in the TOS episode “A Piece of the Action”, and Lost in Space did an episode like this as well. The notion of characters becoming caught up in the events of other famous novels is as old as storytelling itself. One notable example is Clarke’s 2001, A Space Odyssey. Consequently, there was nothing new to see here. Well, there was one thing new to see, defined as how TNG took the ideal of “The Crappy Episode” to a new low.
WWKD: Set the auto-destruct on his ship simply out of pride.
There is one brief, and I stress brief, moment of worth in this otherwise completely forgettable piece of crap. When the Enterprise crew find the body of one of the Earth Astronauts, Riker comments:
"Looks like the poor devil died in his sleep."
Worf responds:
"What a terrible way to die."
Speaking of death, Riker and company find the last log entries of the dead astronaut interred at the Hotel Royale. In it, the astronaut states:
“I hold no malice toward my benefactors. They could not possibly know the hell they have put me through, for it was such a badly written book, filled with endless cliché and shallow characters. I shall welcome death when it comes.”
The fan watching this episode understood that sentiment only too well.
To end this episode, Picard suggest that, like the math problem involving the two trains, they may never be able to solve the puzzle of the Hotel Royale. Allow me to help out with that. The producers of TNG got caught with their pants down, and had nothing other than this juvenile sophomoric boring what qualified as a script in name only piece of crap to produce so that something would go on the air.
Puzzle solved. Oh, and the answer to the train problem? 123.5 miles out.
