3x19 Captain's Holiday

[5.8/10] According to Star Trek: The Next Generation writer Ronald D. Moore, the show’s star, Patrick Stewart once told him that the captain doesn’t do enough “screwing and shooting in this series.” “Captain’s Holiday” plays like a corrective to that, one where Stewart gets to play a more Kirk-ian version of the captain, who becomes more of a romantic lead and a pugilist than we normally see out of the staid and dignified leader aboard the Enterprise. And if that’s the case, it’s a damn good thing TNG didn’t go with this tack more often, as the results are, if not outright awful, than still far below the standards of the rest of season 3.

There’s a corniness and, frankly, a stupidity to all of this that drags down most of the episode. It centers on Captain Picard being cajoled by his subordinates to finally take a vacation, and when he does, he becomes inadvertently embroiled in a tangle of double-crosses, treasure hunting, and a love interest. I don’t mind the concept necessarily. Episodes where our heroes take a break from exploration and get to just be themselves outside of work can be revealing, endearing us to the characters as people, not just professionals.

But the way “Captain’s Holiday” goes about it leaves plenty to be desired. I’ll confess, while the humor is broad, I enjoy some of the attempts to trick, treat, or strongarm Picard to relax away his stress with a bit of shore leave. The humor is cheesy, but Riker’s horndog attempts to convey the “pleasures” of Risa to his captain, and Troi’s implicit threat that her mother might soon come aboard got a few chuckles out of me. I even like that what persuades Picard to take the trip isn’t any of these nudges, but rather the sense that everyone will just keep nudging him if he doesn’t.

Hell, there’s even some laughs to be had down on Risa. There’s something almost Frasier-esque about Picard wanting to just sit in the sun and read his book while getting increasingly annoyed by the hoverballs, splashes, come-ons, and eventually mystery and intrigue keep interrupting. Stewart as the uptight grump forced to vacation someplace tropical is a good beat, even if it’s not enough to sustain an episode all by itself.

But from there, “Captain’s Holiday” devolves into a cut-rate, tropical version of The Maltese Falcon, with a few sci-fi elements tossed in for good measure. The MacGuffin du jour is the “Tox Uthat”, a 27th century device that can neutralize a star. It’s being pursued by Vash, a wide-smiling former assistant to a professor researching it; Sovak, an unscrupulous Ferengi who accuses Picard of being in league with her; and the Vorgons, a pair of Rainbow Fish-headed aliens who claim to be from the future. Picard being annoyed by all of these people interrupting his mandatory holiday is a mild laugh, but once he gets mixed up in their actual business, the episode quickly becomes more and more tiresome.

Some of that is just the business with Vash. It’s not as though she and Picard completely lack any chemistry, but she feels like such an off-the-shelf, generic femme fatale. The bit of spark to all of this is that she likes archeology, and that’s Picard’s entire hook for getting involved in this nonsense in the first place. But their banter and foreplay is more reheated film noir dross. The rapport and sense of “knowing one another” happens way too fast. The best thing you can say is that she seems like someone who’s better suited to hold Picard’s interest than the random conquest Riker seemed to have in mind -- which seems to be the whole point of the episode -- but there’s not enough substance or charm there for the relationship to carry what “Captain’s Holiday” needs it too.

The convoluted mystery at the center of the episode isn’t much better. Sovak is the usual sniveling Ferengi, and the cloak and dagger bits of intimidation and threats don’t make the adventure more intriguing, just more ungainly. The hokey attempts to impose on one another or double cross someone else, or reveal some other mangled bit of backstory play like the results of someone who read half a Raymond Chandler novel on the ride over before switching to an Indiana Jones movie.

Then there’s the time traveling aliens, who just make the whole thing worse. Why Picard ever trusts them to begin with is puzzling (something that Vash points out). Their very existence seems to negate the import of the story, since even though Picard destroys the artifact after uncovering Vash’s deception, presumably they can just zip back in the past and recover it before he gets the chance to since they now know his location. So what was the point? Maybe they wanted to see it destroyed, and were trying to make it happen? Who knows. It’s vague and pretty pointless to begin with.

There’s an attempt at a playful, adventuring spirit in all of this. Picard is in his best explorer gear, and there’s hidden artifacts to uncover and byzantine plots to unravel. The players just aren’t terribly interesting, the macguffin’s too convenient, and the story’s too dull and overloaded. The hunt for the Tox Uthat, and Picard’s reluctant strapping hero routine, are rote and tonally off from TNG’s usual approach.

You can see what “Captain’s Holiday” is going for with all of this -- despite the unnecessary cheesecake shots sprinkled throughout the tropical locale -- and maybe it reflects Patrick Stewart’s feelings about his character. Picard is mentally exhausted from dull diplomatic negotiations, and while everyone thinks he needs rest, what he really needed, apparently, was a different flavor of adventure and excitement to recharge. It’s the difference between his dismissive “uh huh” when Riker congratulates him on a treaty versus his slightly more chipper and knowing “mm-hmm” when Riker expresses his gladness that the trip went well.

The path to get from one affirmation to the other is some combination of dumb and exhausting, with a watered down version of the old swashbuckler shtick that feels closer to the Star Trek of the 1960s than the 1990s. But as useless as this detour feels at times, maybe it’s the sort of thing that’s simply necessary to keep your star happy.

Lord knows I’m glad we didn’t see an increase in tales of Picard “screwing and shooting.” It’s telling that this episode scans as the closest predecessor to the abominable Star Trek: Insurrection. But if it meant that Patrick Stewart was willing to stay the course for the other 20+ episodes a season, it’s a concession I’d be more than happy to make.