“The Royale”
Written by Keith Mills
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 2, Episode 12
Original air date: March 27, 1989
Star date: 42625.4
Mission summary
A Klingon cruiser alerts Enterprise to some strange debris orbiting around Theta 8, an unmapped, poisonous ball of nitrogen and methane. They beam a chunk of the debris over and it’s a panel from a 21st-century spaceship, with the American flag and NASA’s logo emblazoned on it. But we’re too far from home! How can this be?
PICARD: We’ve got ourselves a puzzle, Number One.
Do we? Must we? Can’t we just tape the pieces together, pat ourselves on the back, then maybe dissolve it in acid over a live flame?
Wesley finds that the surface of the planet contains a large physical structure–a building, encased in breathable air. That seems legit so a small away team consisting of Riker, Data, and Worf beam down, probably just so they don’t have to listen to Picard go on about dead French guys. On the surface all they see is a dark desert highway… and an antique revolving door. As they enter, communication to the mothership cuts out entirely, otherwise we’d never get a B-plot.
The away team finds that the building is… a casino! Too bad they no longer believe in money. They approach the front desk clerk who says that he’s been expecting them, but the check-in takes longer than it should (doesn’t it always) when a bellboy interrupts asking after “Rita.” The receptionist tells him he should fear Mickey D–do you know how much trans fat is in that stuff??–and apologizes to the “foreign gentlemen” for the interruption. He gives them a stack of casino chips and wishes them the best.
Riker and Worf go around trying to talk to (or rather, at) various gamblers, who behave as if they’re not there. Data has more luck, and sits down to a game of Blackjack with a Texan and the cute, dumb blonde he’s trying to manipulate. Riker and Worf decide to hell with this place, but the doors just pop them back into the casino, and their phasers are useless against the structure itself. Eventually Worf picks up some kind of human DNA trace, and they reclaim Data to go search for it. Up the elevator and down the hallway is a hotel room… with a nice corpse in it.
DATA: Definitely human. Male.
RIKER: Looks like the poor devil died in his sleep.
WORF: What a terrible way to die.
DATA: He has been dead for two hundred and eighty three years, sir.
He’s got a flight suit with “Col. S. Richey” written on it, too–an early astronaut. Just in time the landing party re-establishes communications with the Enterprise, who look the guy up. Yep, an astronaut, lost in space. Good thing he left behind a diary:
I write this in the hope that it will someday be read by human eyes. I can only surmise at this point, but apparently our exploratory shuttle was contaminated by an alien life form which infected and killed all personnel except myself. I awakened to find myself here in the Royale Hotel, precisely as described in the novel I found in my room. And for the last 38 years I have survived here. I have come to understand that the alien contaminators created this place for me out of some sense of guilt, presuming that the novel we had on board the shuttle about the Hotel Royale was in fact a guide to our preferred lifestyle and social habits. Obviously, they thought this was the world from which I came. 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.
Thank god it wasn’t 50 Shades of Grey, eh?
They don’t want to be housekeeping nightmares themselves, so they head back to the casino to investigate other options. They’re already at the climax of the book–Mickey D shows up and shoots the bellboy. But hey, why does he get to leave?! Picard says it’s just part of the story, which will end shortly when some foreign investors buy the hotel for $12.5 million. Hey… maybe they can be the investors! All they need is a dirty gambling robot and bad dialogue. Check and check.
Data wins enough money to break the casino’s bank, they buy the hotel, and walk out of there happily ever after.
Analysis
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leeeeaaaave….
I’ve got it stuck in my head, can you blame me? This is essentially a 45-minute YouTube mashup of “Hotel California” and “Copacabana.” Are there any other top 1970s songs that the writer failed to mine? How about throwing in some “Love Will Keep Us Together”?
Actually, you know, this can be educational. I had a hard time coming up with anything to say about this foul beast, so instead I was procrastinating and reading up on The Eagles on Wikipedia. (Hear me out, I’m getting there.) I came across a quote from an interview Don Henley gave music critic John Soeder just a few years ago, and I swear to you this will be relevant to my discussion of the episode (and even if it’s not, it’s fantastic):
Soeder: On “Hotel California,” you sing: “So I called up the captain / ‘Please bring me my wine’ / He said, ‘We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.'” I realize I’m probably not the first to bring this to your attention, but wine isn’t a spirit. Wine is fermented; spirits are distilled. Do you regret that lyric?
Henly: Thanks for the tutorial and, no, you’re not the first to bring this to my attention—and you’re not the first to completely misinterpret the lyric and miss the metaphor. Believe me, I’ve consumed enough alcoholic beverages in my time to know how they are made and what the proper nomenclature is. But that line in the song has little or nothing to do with alcoholic beverages. It’s a sociopolitical statement. My only regret would be having to explain it in detail to you, which would defeat the purpose of using literary devices in songwriting and lower the discussion to some silly and irrelevant argument about chemical processes.
Not only is that possibly the most brilliant takedown I’ve ever seen, but it’s exactly the problem with “The Royale.” Here’s an episode that thinks it’s just so clever in asking, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if aliens thought our culture came from trashy novels? What would that Say About Us?” But actually, it has nothing to say, because it doesn’t even have a sociopolitical statement; it’s just a silly and irrelevant series of dull, pointless, idiotic drivel.
Books are powerful cultural indicators. They’re important, they transport us to other worlds, they let us feel and live and breathe the lives of other people in situations we’ll never face. And sometimes those lives are cheap and simple because our own lives aren’t and that can feel good, to pretend, to imagine. So what if aliens had taken a trashy novel and deduced from that a whole culture? What would that say about us? Anything? Everything? Should we be ashamed? Proud? But the episode doesn’t care enough to even ask those questions1. Instead it chooses to reduce what could be a devastating satire to its most superficial layer of meaning–a bunch of blank stereotypes playing out a tired story, with the occasional ho ho ho wink wink. It’s not that I think the writers missed their own point. I don’t think they even saw that a point could be made, thanks to a gigantic lack of awareness of the potential social commentary lurking beneath the surface of this idea.
It’s aggressively superficial. At first I thought it was trying to be meta–bad dialogue and incoherent plot elements, amiright?–but no, it’s actually just bland extruded science fiction product, probably reprocessed “A Piece of the Action” sausage that only bears resemblance to a smarter, savvier idea because this reviewer’s self-preservation instinct kicked in by the “it’s a puzzle, wrapped in an enigma” bit and she’s trying to hold onto something worth holding onto2. Maybe it was just supposed to be a lighthearted comedy, you say. Well, it’s not funny.
This episode is empty. Not meaningfully, existentially empty, but hollow. There are no characters. There is no theme. It’s not even shiny in a Michael Bay kind of way. It’s just nothing.
1 Futurama played with this idea, and did an infinitely better job.
2 OH NO THE CLICHES ARE CONTAGIOUS
Torie’s Rating: Dead in Space (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: I actually like the lady and her dress, but Tex here is just two guns away from the Rich Texan. I like to think he made just this face when they showed him the outfit.
Best Line: COL. RICHEY’S DIARY: 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.
[SO SAY WE ALL.]
Trivia/Other Notes: The script was originally Tracy Tormé’s, but he had a pseudonym tacked on in protest of Maurice Hurley’s rewrites. It was originally a surrealist satire. Tormé was so angry he left the active staff and took on the lesser role of creative consultant.
Oh how times have changed! There’s no longer a reason for Picard to puzzle over Fermat’s last theorem–someone did find the proof just a few years after this aired: Andrew Wiles.
Geordi must be dyslexic, or else Theta 8’s surface temperature (-291 °C) is below absolute zero.
Previous episode: Season 2, Episode 11 – “Contagion.”
Next episode: Season 2, Episode 13 – “Time Squared.”
Man, there really isn’t much to say about this, is there? I always felt this had more in common with “Spectre of the Gun” than “A Piece of the Action”. I guess that feeling is based more on the unreality of the situation, since the crew aren’t being tested or anything. There’s just no reason for anything that happens. Why is the thing still running 200 years after the guy it was built for died? Why is it just this one scenario, rather than a cultural situation? Shouldn’t the aliens have expected that he’d get bored with the same story over and over? Where are these aliens, anyway? If they were close enough to Earth to snatch a pre-warp ship from NASA, the Federation should have had contact with them by now.
I really can’t blame Tracy Tormé from wanting his name off this turkey. His original treatment was probably decent enough. At least this started pushing him out the door, so he could eventually go on to create Sliders. Of course he couldn’t work with the producers on that show either. (Not to mention, it prevented the development of a show with a similar context being pitched by George RR Martin.)
Dammit, that corner was around here somewhere!
@ 1 DemetriosX
I hadn’t thought of Spectre, but you’re absolutely right.
There’s no reason for anything. Are we supposed to assume that the three investors never showed up before, and that’s why they’ve finally fulfilled the win condition? And why keep the show going 300 years later when the dude’s dead? Or did they just boot it up when they saw Enterprise on the horizon? And yeah, where are these aliens anyway??
Who am I kidding, it’s not even worth it to ponder such questions.
I’m not calling it a corner until we’re past “Up the Long Ladder.”
This has all the hallmarks of those story ideas one writes down in the middle of the night, only to wake and discover they aren’t nearly as deep and insightful as they were at 2AM.
If only this were a major network show, with a writing staff and editors and consultants who could have added to the idea, or at least vetoed it.
on a dark desert highway
Oh, great, now I’m earwormed with Hotel California.
The show’s double-dipping on the dreadful by doing that.
S. Hutson Blount @3
They had a writing staff, editors, and consultants. Tracy Tormé was a staff writer and the editors rewrote his screenplay so badly, he insisted his name be taken off of the thing. When the show launched, David Gerrold was hired as script consultant (a job he had previously held on the original Land of the Lost) and he helped write the show bible. I believe that by the time the second season went into production, he had quit after effectively being shoved into a corner and ignored.
All I can say is that I’m just so sorry that Torie had to try to figure out what to say. Good job on the Don Henley quote! That was pretty interesting.
I can’t imagine writing this episode at all. I mean it is entirely pointless. It doesn’t advance any understanding of character, it doesn’t present them with an obstacle of any real difficulty, it fails even a basic understanding of reasonable story construction, and the central conceit is so weak it’s like the ending of 2001 done in crayon.
Oh well, on the plus side it makes me feel better about my own writing.
@5 DemetriosX
thatsthejoke.jpg
@8 S. Hutson Blount
Obviously I need to recharge the batteries in my sarcasm detector.
@2 Torie
After “Up the Long Ladder” the finding the corner again comes as a huge surprise. But really, the twofer of “A Matter of Honor” and “The Measure of a Man” made it look like the show had finally found its footing and its voice. OK, it slumped a little with “The Dauphin”, but that wasn’t totally awful. And then there’s this. I said we lost the corner. There’s only a couple of bright spots in the rest of the season and it ends with a real thud. But at least we’ve actually seen the corner, we’ve bottomed out on the curve and things will generally get better from here on out.
@ 3 S. Hutson Blount
Touche.
@ 4 CaitieCat
I’m sorry! Is “Copacabana” any better? You can have that one instead.
@ 6 Toryx
I really had nothing to say, and I’m not exactly the quiet type! Thank goodness for Wikipedia and cranky Don Henley.
@ 7 bobsandiego
Well said!
@ 9 DemetriosX
Can someone just call me when it’s season 3? I mean let’s look at what I’ve got ahead: “The Icarus Factor” (daddy issues!), “Q Who” (okay this is actually something to look forward to), “Up The Long Ladder” (AHHHHHH), “The Emissary” (lady issues!), and “Shades of Grey” (though maybe for that one I’ll just take clips of previous reviews and paste them together).
If there’s anything I’ve discovered from this re-watch, it’s that I will never understand how this show kept an audience through these two seasons.
@ Torie 10
We were just that desperate youn’un! Things were tough in the 80s, real tough. LOL
There is so little to say about this episode, I have instead a confession: In and around this time I actually wrote and submitted a screenplay for TNG. I shopped it to the TNG folks at Worldcon, to no success… too wet behind the ears to be taken seriously, I guess.
The plot went something like this: Lt. Bailey never actually returned from his year aboard the Fesarius, as depicted in the “Corbomite Maneuver.” Several months out, Balok—who was a demented, low-achievement sort—died suddenly. The ship was sentient, all that was left of the First Federation, and needed a biological pilot. That duty passed to Bailey, who was essentially listed as a decorated MIA for eight decades, and became essentially a captive hostage as Balok had been (no wonder he had a drinking problem!).
The Enterprise comes across the ship and, to make a long episode short, rescues a slowly aged Bailey. The Fesarius reacts, badly, dangerously, and the only possible no-win solution is for Bailey to return to that ship. Which he does.
I admit, it had a kind of “Charlie X” vibe to it, and a kind of a “Green Mile” vibe to the long, long, long, lonely life awaiting Bailey, prisoner to a device that will never release him. A, frankly, lot of the essential concepts in my idea were explored in the TNG episode “Tin Man.” But more than anything I wanted to reprise the plight of the character Robert Lansing played in the Twilight Zone episode “The Long Morrow,” where he sacrificed everything for the longest, loneliest and most futile voyage ever known. And I wanted the captain to reprise the role of the commander in that episode, marveling, humbled at the man and the sacrifice.
So I make this confession for a few reasons: One, I don’t have anything to say about this terrible episode. Two, I think my own script might have done a better job of illustrating the kind of torment faced by Col. Richey in this episode, really the only emotional center to this episode that is given such terrible shortshrift here, torment played for laughs. And three, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t take the script of a dumb-yet-eager kid over this dreck. Somehow, darn it, I think my episode idea was better.
Well, I’ll say one thing for this episode….
actually, I can’t.
I agree that this episode is extremely shallow, based on a flimsy premise that borrows elements from several much better episodes of the original series. Again, my love for noir must be responsible for whatever fondness I might have once felt for this waste of 47 minutes, but no more.
The writers themselves seemed aware of how mediocre the story is, both in their commentary on The Hotel Royale and the structure on the planet. “It doesn’t make any sense,” Riker says. “We may never know the truth,” Picard replies. Bleh. Lazy, lazy writing all around.
There are some nice reaction shots throughout, and a couple of jokes even work; I really liked Worf’s “What a terrible way to die,” when they discover Colonel Richey’s body, who had “obviously” died in his sleep. There’s some fun when Data starts playing craps, but it doesn’t fit the character at all. He’s confused and uncertain by gambling and human traits one moment, then in the next it’s like a switch has been flipped and he is doing a pretty good job at replicating human behavior. Maybe he saw someone acting this way, but I don’t think so.
Riker’s and the others’ actions serve the plot as much as the two-dimensional NPCs in the hotel do. Why do they beam senior officers into an unknown, possibly hazardous situation? Because the plot needs them to. Why does Riker break protocol? Just because.
So, you’re going into space on a long mission, and weight on your craft is a premium. You’re allowed to bring only one physical book… and you choose The Hotel Royale? If Enterprise has the complete text in its database, they surely had electronic copies in 2037. I also don’t understand why aliens always mistake our books for some kind of basis for reality. Non-fiction on the Chicago mobs is one thing, but something which is clearly fiction? Why force someone to relive the same dramatic events over and over again? How does this even work? Some kind of holodeck program on infinite loop? Where’s the underground power source?
One thing that worked for me in a meta way was the characters recognizing they had become part of a narrative and then using that to their advantage, but of course we’ve seen even that before.
It was also kind of nice to see actor Sam Anderson as the hotel manager, but this installment offers few delights, so I’ll take them where I can.
Erm… I’m rating this one a full stop. This season’s gonna turn around again soon, yeah?
@3 S. Hutson Blount
If this site were some kind of social media platform, I’d be +1ing and liking and RTing the hell out of that comment.
@7 bobsandiego
A thousand times yes. And I love, “the ending of 2001 done in crayon.”
@12 Lemnoc
I would have bought your pitch. Sounds interesting and most importantly, emotionally engaging, and I like the sentiments behind it. I’m always moved by “The Long Morrow,” and you’re right: Richey deserved to be the focus of this story. Perhaps if he’d been alive somehow, maybe forced to play out a role over and over again, and begs the Enterprise crew to help him find a way out, even (or especially) if it causes his own death, sort of like Walenski in Dark City. But basically, almost any treatment would have been better than this.
—soooo weak!—i wish i could say the worst is behind us–but there is still “shades of grey”—and “pen pals”—the next episode isn’t so hot either—
I have to admit to liking this one. Yes, I agree that it isn’t a great episode but it works for me because it reminds me of the Original Series. Think about it. Wouldn’t this story fit right in with the third season of the Original Series?
As I see it, the revolving door bringing them back trick was to keep Col. Richey from going outside and getting into trouble. Additionally, the foreign investors hadn’t shown up yet because that plot point from the novel was set aside to be the open door for a rescue team should one arrive. As we saw, one did arrive, but a bit too late.
Maybe that book had been on the ship because someone packed it hoping it would be a good read. (Maybe that it had not been available as an E-book should have told him or her something.)
@10 Torie
“Q Who” isn’t bad, although I really disliked most of the Q episodes. “The Emissary” is flawed, but has some good moments and begins to set up the long Klingon arc. “Peak Performance” sort of works; it’s a sound mid-level quality episode that looks better than it is since it’s surrounded by dreck. “Shades of Gray” isn’t really their fault; it was forced on them by the studio to make up for the Holmes cost overruns. But we are getting there.
@12 Lemnoc
That would be a terrific episode/graphic novel/novel. There are so many dangling threads from TOS where you have to wonder what happened down the road. Not just all the computer-driven or otherwise broken societies Kirk shattered, but places like Neural (“A Private Little War”) or Gideon.
@14 Eugene
There’s nothing to say that the book was actually brought on board by Col. Richey. It could have belonged to someone else with appalling taste and then been the only book that survived the accident. That would have made it even worse for him, of course.
@16 lane arnold
I seem to recall “Pen Pals” as a good one. Well, we’ll see…
@17 Ludon
Fitting into the third season of the original series is a good thing?
@18 DemetriosX
Yeah, I didn’t think Richey had brought it aboard, but someone sure did. But hey, at least it wasn’t a copy of the Bible, which would be a more likely discovery in a hotel drawer.
@ 18 DemetriosX:
“Q Who” isn’t bad, although I really disliked most of the Q episodes.
Oh, thank the FSM, I thought I was the only one who thought the Q episodes weren’t Teh mOST Awesumz EVAR. I’m always reluctant to mention it, because it’s like saying you don’t like puppies or kitties or something.
@ CatieCat 29
You are far from alone. The Q episodes are spaceduchery and that never works for me, what is appealing it watch the actor work it. (John deLanice is I am spelling his name right.) He plays that role so well that I think it causes people to lose sight of how bad the writing and plots generally are. (He was great in his brief role in Torchwood:)
@21 bobsandiego
I do like most of the Q episodes even if they’re more space douchery, because they are often focused on the characters; Q’s MO is to better understand humanity and the crew of the Enterprise, after all. But mileage does vary.
One of my favorite John de Lancie roles was in the short-lived Richard Dean Anderson series, LEGEND, one of the many casualties of UPN’s fledgling year.
Watching de Lancie chew the scenery is usually amusing, but the stories usually feel very contrived. Maybe some of my dislike is a holdover from “Squire of Gothos” and TOS APPDEB spacedouches. I’d still rather have a Q episode than a Lwaxana episode, though. With the possible exception of Q being responsible for one of my favorite Worf lines (“Sir, I must protest. I am not a merry man” — Literally the only good thing about that episode), the only Q episode I really liked was “Tapestry”. And you could debate whether or not that really was a Q episode. It could have all been in Picard’s head.
De Lancie is at his best when he gets to play someone really malevolent and calculating. I bet he’d make a great Shakespearean villain, though he’s getting a little old for it.
Legend. I know it well. I’ve noticed that some tend to confuse it with Adventures of Brisco County Junior.
@19 Eugene
I grew up with the original series and for many years that was the only Star Trek my friends and I had regular access to. So, even though it fits best with the third season, for me, this episode was like visiting an old friend.
@17 ( and the follow-up comments about the comment:
I’d like to think that if TOS had done this episode, even in the third season, there might have been SOME point to it. It might have had some ham-handed moralizing ( ala “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, or “The Cloud Minders” ) or some sort of “can’t we all just get along?” message like “Day Of The Dove”. This one is just filler.
@25
I think this gets it exactly right. Solving a puzzle for the sake of solving a puzzle is not good drama.
@ 12 Lemnoc
Your ideas are intriguing and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
But really, thanks for sharing, and I would pay good money to have seen your idea instead. Hell, I’d even take Ludon’s season 3 TOS-inspired idea. This episode has no soul.
@ all
Aw, I love the Q episodes, again mostly because they challenge the characters, and de Lancie is such a fun presence. But then Vash gets attached and it all goes downhill anyway…
This Richey guy is exactly what Picard’s opening narration represents: an explorer, a human striving to boldly go where no one has gone before, and a pioneer to the achievements that led the characters into space in the first place.
But no one cares about this. If this was TOS, Kirk would make a speech at the end of the episode about Richey’s sacrifice for mankind or there would even be a ship-wide service. The TNG cast ignore him and even leave his diary and body on that planet. He’s nothing to them.
A proper rewrite of this script, as it stands, would pose the events in the hotel as a sci-fi ghost story: Richey is trapped in the simulation, wanting to die and move on, and only by helping him can the cast help him move on. Take out all the pulp novel nonsense and replace it with the hotel being his most important memory from his time on earth before he went into space (could involve a lost chance at love or a mystery or whatever) and only by “solving” this mystery can his consciousness let go (his body is already dead.) You can even save him already being physically dead as a surprise for the closer. The main emotional thrust can be around the cast interacting with this unknown (to them) man who made mankind’s flight into the stars a possibility.