2x12 The Royale

[4.4/10] “The Royale” is both better and worse than I’d remembered. I’d remembered it as a boring episode, and sometimes it is, but no worse on that front than other light-on-incident early season episodes. But it is very annoying. What it lacks in doldrums, it makes up for in irksome characters and tepid bits.

But as I always strive to do in these write-ups (however often I fall short), let’s try to find the positives in this one. For one, there’s the germ of a cool idea at the bottom of this one. The notion of a 21st century astronaut running afoul of some powerful aliens and being trapped for decades in a world constructed for him based on a two-bit novel could be engrossing and terrifying. The personal hell of Colonel Stephen Richey is a disquieting one, and the prospect of losing all your comrades and living out the rest of your days in this maddening construct is a disturbing one. And there’s even hints of past Star Trek tales like “The Menagerie” and “Metamorphosis” in the tale.

The problem is, we’re only told about that story. We don’t get to see it. It exists to convey the risks that Riker, Data, and Worf are facing every second longer they spend at The Royale. Except we know that they won’t be stuck there forever. The demands of episodic television ensure that. So all hearing Col. Richey’s story does is make me wish I could have seen that episode instead (which, in fairness, would probably be a better fit for The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits than Star Trek.

The other thing “The Royale” has going for it is that it’s funny when the episode is making fun of how bad the writing of Hotel Royale, the novel Richey happened to have when he was swept up by the aliens, is. Part of the annoyance of this episode is that it’s just not very entertaining to watch Riker and the others wrapped up in a dumb, cliché-ridden crime story.

But there is something amusing in an equal and opposite manner to the officers having the same reaction to the material that the audience is. Picard’s disgusted reaction to the opening line is a hoot, and Troi laughing while she asks if she can be excused as they listen to the book’s horrid dialogue had the two of us on the same page. Acknowledging that the realm our heroes are trapped in is full of hacky tropes and tired characters doesn’t make it any more fun to be trapped there with them, but it does at least provide for a few soothing chuckles amid the rest of the episode’s trespasses.

That said, it speaks to the strange tonal imbalance at the heart of “The Royale”. The episode simultaneously wants to be a creepy, Twilight Zone-esque scenario where our heroes are trapped in a gilded cage and also a loony romp where they have to deal with exaggerated caricatures in a dimestore crime novel. The two pieces don’t really go together, and neither is especially good on its own.

On the mystery side, it’s not really clear why Riker and company need to go down there in the first place, but I suppose one can write that off as the standard idle curiosity. Even forgiving that, it’s just not a terribly engrossing setup. It plays as just another, “We’re mysteriously trapped on another set in the Paramount backlot” story, and the antics inside a “Hotel California”-style locale where the main characters can check out but can neer leave grow tired very quickly.

On the other hand, there’s not a lot of fun to be had when the show wants to get a little looser at the casino either. The skeevy character Texas perving on the naive young woman, Vanessa is gross, and “The Royale” spends an awful lot of time on his shtick. The actor gets a “special appearance” credit, so presumably he’s some kind of a big deal, but based on this episode, I can’t imagine why. The writing of the character is awful, but his cornpone banter and very presence are just as irritating, so I hope TNG didn’t spend extra to import such terribleness.

Throwing those two halves together just makes an unfunny, unscary Frankenstein’s monster of an episode, with stitched together gags and scares that have negative synergy together. The tonal inconsistency saps the episode of ability to lean into either the horror or comedy aspects of the episode. I’m not saying that, given the results here, sticking solely to one would have paid dividends. But horror comedies are tricky to pull off in terms of getting the tone right, and sticking to one or the other might have at least lowered the degree of difficulty for the episode.

The only saving grace is that there’s a few decent laughs to be had from Riker, Data, and Worf being puzzled by 20th century customs and terminology. The trio not understanding phones or “room service”, or Data being puzzled by Texas’s “bid-ness” earns a few mild chuckles. It’s a well Star Trek’s gone to plenty of times before, but there’s still some water to be collected from it.

Unfortunately, the ending isn’t especially clever. Riker and company poses as the “foriegn investors” mentioned in the original novel; Data cheats at craps enough to earn the money to buy the hotel, and somehow completing that part of the story allows them to leave and beam out when they couldn’t before. Why is that the key to escaping these aliens’ trap? Why would they ensnare our heroes in this fake casino in the first place? Why do they have to play these roles to be able to leave the simulacrum? Who knows! It just does.

“The Royale” gets a bad rap, and it’s mostly deserved. Its story makes little sense, and its efforts at injecting charm and character into the proceedings are hit-or-miss at best. But I have to admit, as irritating and tonally compromised as the episode is from beginning to end, it’s certainly not boring, which is about the best compliment I can give this nevertheless underwhelming hour of television.