“The Big Goodbye”
Written by Tracy Tormé
Directed by Joseph L. Scanlan
Season 1, Episode 12
Original air date: January 11, 1988
Star date: 41997.7
Mission summary
The Enterprise is en route to meet the Jarada, an insectoid species whose punctilious nature makes it difficult for the Federation to establish friendly relations. The Jarada must be greeted by the captain (and the captain alone) in their native tongue with no errors. Any failure on Picard’s part will result in unspeakable consequences. Despite another lengthy cram session with Counselor Troi (reknowned exolinguist?), Picard is at an impasse. Troi suggests he take his mind off the Jaradans for a while and try out the latest holodeck upgrades. Recess! Picard brightens immediately and agrees that a 1940s hard-boiled crime game is just the thing to take the edge off.
He begins the program of “Dixon Hill,” a sort of 1940s Philip Marlowe-cum-Sherlock Holmes, and discovers a beautiful woman sitting in Hill’s–his–office. Picard’s mildly interested in her flirting but is more fascinated by the cars zooming by outside the window. He only half-listens to her pleas for safety; she’s convinced she’s about to be murdered. But Picard’s really got to be getting back, so he puts the program on hold and calls a staff meeting to tell everyone what an awesome show this holodeck thingy is and I guess there’s some diplomatic thing he should be worried about but LOOK CARS DID YOU SEE THEM? He invites a 20th century historian and Dr. Crusher to join him next time. My instincts tell me it still doesn’t excuse them from the company retreat, but maybe it’ll look good on next year’s review.
Picard, Mr. Whalen, and Data (because why not?) return to the Dixon Hill program. Hilarity ensues (sort of) until Picard discovers that the femme fatale he met previously has been murdered. Two police officers bring Picard into the station to interrogate him about the woman but eventually the lieutenant, who seems to be an old friend of Hill’s, lets him go. Meanwhile, the Jaradans have sent a long-range probe to the Enterprise which disrupts pretty much every computer system aboard, including the holodeck. Dr. Crusher, about to enter the Dixon Hill program, notices the doors opening and closing randomly but doesn’t think this is remotely dangerous and manages to get into the program anyway. She meets up with her friends and they head to Dixon Hill’s office only to discover a gang of–well, gangsters–waiting for them.
In reality Riker, who has been struggling with computer malfunction after malfunction, tries to contact the captain but he can’t get through. La Forge goes down to the holodeck himself but the doors are locked, so Wesley is enlisted to try to bypass whatever protocol is keeping our heroes trapped inside. Riker tries to stall the Jaradans but they won’t even listen to a puny inferior like him, so all he can do is wait.
Back in 1940s San Francisco, the gangsters hold Picard and the crew hostage, referencing some “item” that Dixon Hill has in his possession. Mr. Whalen confronts the gangsters and is shot for his efforts. This wouldn’t normally be a big deal with all the holodeck safety protocols, but the Jaradan scan disabled them and now Mr. Whalen is lying bleeding on the floor of Dixon Hill’s office as Dr. Crusher attempts period first aid. Picard and Data try to find an exit but the way is shut. Lieutenant McNary, from the police station, shows up with some wine, but his timing is pretty terrible and he winds up a hostage, too. Ultimately Picard goes with the truth, and tries to explain to the gangsters that they’re imaginary creations in a 24th century game. This does not go over well, and soon Dr. Crusher is chosen as the next assassination target.
Outside the door, Wesley works his magic and discovers one way to save them–but a wrong move would mean that everyone inside the holodeck would disappear forever. The Enterprise has reached the rendezvous point with the Jaradans and time is officially up so Riker tells Wesley to do it no matter the risk. Wesley does, and soon Picard and his friends are zoomed to a freezing ice planet. They blink back in Dixon Hill-land with a wide open holodeck door. The gangsters are intrigued that this futuristic world does in fact exist and try their luck there, only to be dematerialized right outside the door.
Data and Dr. Crusher head to Sickbay with the dying Mr. Whalen, and Picard says goodbye to Lt. McNary, who is now having an existential crisis about the certainty of his own reality. Picard takes his leave and hurries to the bridge in time to deliver the Jaradan greeting perfectly, and all’s well that end’s well.
Analysis
This is the first episode of the season I had really been looking forward to, as I’ve always had a soft spot for the Dixon Hill plots (and noir in general). Watching it now was a huge disappointment. What had in my fondest memories been a fun and exciting crime story turned out to be a jumble of absolute nonsense.
The frame story of the Jaradans might have been an interesting one if a) there was any reason at all for Picard to learn their language; and b) we had actually seen these guys. I am utterly baffled as to why Picard is learning complex grammatical rules when all he has to do is memorize a standard greeting. Couldn’t someone romanize it?! Why does he have to learn the whole language? Is there going to be a quiz? And contrary to popular belief, abandoning your homework altogether does not give you a preternatural ability to absorb it airborne, through osmosis, or in this case I guess, magically.
The writing and plotting is so hackneyed that I could list the faults all day. Picard acts as if he’s never been in a holodeck, whereas everyone else seems to use it all the time. After his first encounter he walks out of the program with lipstick on his face, and yet when the gangsters try to leave they disintegrate (slowly, for effect… for some reason). How can the lipstick make it outside? Why does Picard not know what Halloween is when Kirk and McCoy identified it right away in “Catspaw“? How is it the lead gangster doesn’t know the word “computer,” which dates back to the 17th century and had a contemporary meaning of young women number-crunchers? And then of course there’s Data, who could take every one of those gangsters in a split second with his super-human strength and reflexes, but instead just sits there and stares. Don’t even get me started on Wesley saving the day–there’s absolutely no logical reason why ANYTHING about the holodeck program should make the real, living, breathing people inside the room just vanish. And how is Picard, a lifelong fan of these stories, totally lost in the plot of the very first one? He seems shocked the woman is murdered and has no idea what the gangsters are referring to with “the item.” (Really? The “item”? They’re not even trying! They should just call it “the MacGuffin.”) It would have been a million times more fun if Picard were in on all the jokes and twists and turns, and instead was fighting against the inevitable conclusion that he knows the story will reach. (Though I suppose that would have been “Spectre of the Gun,” a much better episode.) To have him wander wide-eyed through a story he has absolutely no familiarity with but we’re told he loves through and through not only strains credulity, but is boring to watch.
My least favorite scene is the staff meeting. We have Picard calling an officers’ meeting to discuss his holo adventure. That’s the equivalent of someone’s boss calling the bigwigs together to tell everyone how he just discovered this amazing TV show. You should all watch it but you know it’s totally voluntary. No pressure or anything. It’s one thing to chat these people–his friends–up informally. But to call a meeting? About antique cars in the holodeck? What’ll he discover next, texting? And why is Wesley invited to this meeting, except to make us all squirm when Data has that line about teen mating rituals? Ecch. There, I just squirmed again.
Most frustratingly, there’s no noir here. Did anyone notice that the Dixon Hill story doesn’t even contain a story? You have the femme fatale who dies about five minutes later, some gangsters who want something, and then it ends. Does the woman even have anything to do with the gangsters? There’s no plot at all, nothing to figure out. There are no clues, no surprises, no discoveries. Some things happen. None of them mean anything. Then it ends. What the hell kind of mystery novel is this? I know The Maltese Falcon influence is there and maybe we’re just supposed to fill in the blanks, but it seems unfair to compare the hodgepodge of events in this episode to that film. I would have liked to see something a little more coherent. It doesn’t have to be the crutch of “Look! The real life story is paralleling the holodeck story!” but I would have appreciated a Dixon Hill mystery that wasn’t just a setpiece for 1940s costumes and bad gangster accents.
The biggest surprise of the episode came at the end, though. Picard’s “big goodbye” is to Lieutenant McNary. My hazy memory had associated their dialogue (“I wish I could take you with me”/ “So this is the big goodbye”) with a sexy lady, so I was honestly taken aback to see the two of them exchanging such intimate (and, let’s face it, homoerotic) words. The scene would have had such a different tone if Lt. McNary had, for instance, been Picard’s favorite character. If Picard boots up this program next time, will McNary remember this conversation? There’s a hint at a more interesting theme–isn’t it kind of creepy to use realistic imitations of human personalities as playthings for amusement? But the episode doesn’t really go there, so I’m left wondering what that scene is meant to accomplish.
In the end, I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy this one. There are too many gaping holes with no payoff whatsoever. Maybe it was the modicum of expectation I had, but it’s no fun to watch a bunch of idiots lumber around in a time period they don’t seem to know anything about in which they act out a plotless series of seemingly unrelated events where no one learns anything (except, arguably, Lt. McNary, who isn’t real) only for everything to be magically resolved in the end. And now I’m worried about the other Dixon Hill episodes…
Torie’s Rating: Warp 2 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: I love, love, love the costumes here, and I wasn’t the only one: William Ware Theiss won an Emmy for Outstanding Costume Design.
Suits and fedoras look great on just about anyone, but Gates McFadden just blows the boys out of the water.
Best Line: PICARD: What a language!
TROI: But you spell knife with a “K.”
PICARD: I spell knife with an “N.” But then, I never could spell.
Trivia/Other Notes: The title is a mix of The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, two Raymond Chandler detective novels.
This episode won a Peabody Award for Excellence in Television Broadcasting. It must have been a slow year.
This is the first (of many…) holodeck deathtrap episodes. I cannot fathom why anyone would ever go into those things. When the days since your last catastrophic, potentially fatal malfunction remains consistently in the single digits, maybe they should just stick in a pool table and call it a day.
Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 11 – “Haven.”
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 13 – “Datalore.”
My god I had forgotten the unmitigated crap that this episode was. It won an award? Really? Was there a trading of ‘favors’ or something?
This is so bad on so many levels. The external threat, the aliens, is so patently obviously there just to give the episode a ticking clock. Hmm they won;t allow visual communications until they hear Picard speak the greeting. They can’t see Picard and there’s Data right next to him with his perfect parrot abilities. (okay okay Feddies don’t cheat ’cause they’re not real people I know.)
Trapped in the holodeck. What a stupid stupid idea and one that could not see as stupid so they repeateded it to no end. Let’s assume that the computer could not tell between real people and its own characters, so you can’t just switch the damn thing off, (There’s a horrorfying philosohpical implication — to the ships computer you, the crew, are no more real to it then the game pieces you play with,) certainly the scanners could tell you who has a pulse and who doesn’t. Go to the damned transporter, lock onto your team mates, and beam them the frack out of the holodeck. Problem solved.
As someone who LOVES the Maltese Falcon this epsiode turned my stomache and made me want to smash my big screen TV. If this was supposed to honor the characters of that story please please please never let me be honored in such a manner,
Of course the holodeck could have beena tool for character exposition, because the way we play our games is a clue to our inner natures. Instead of a big threat, life and death hanging in the balance, had the story been about character conflict and disagreements, with the game prodividing a context it could have been illuminating.
You know, I think you’re the first person I’ve ever seen who pointed out Picard’s complete lack of knowledge about something he supposedly likes a lot. I suppose they were going for the same sort of communication problem TOS gave us in “A Piece of the Action”, but if he reads these books, why does he not know the slang? The other thing that has always bothered me is the way the NPCs react to the real people in their regular uniforms. Why? Why is this programmed in? Sure you probably get a better experience if you dress up, but what if you’re on some teeny-tiny ship with limited resources and can’t create costumes? I’ll give Picard not knowing about Halloween. He’s French.
Still, the fashions do look good on everyone. We talked about this (I think) for “City on the Edge of Forever”. It’s a good look. Gates McFadden’s costume reminds me a lot of the one she wore in The Muppet Movie.
Despite it’s flaws I still kind of like this episode. It has a lot to answer for in setting the tone of almost every holodeck episode after it, but there’s an element of fun that excuses quite a bit.
I just can’t get past that title. “The Big Goodbye”? Really? The attempts throughout the episode to evoke The Maltese Falcon backfire horribly because, as film scholar Michael J. Nelson once pointed out, you should never remind people of a good movie in the middle of your crappy movie.
At least Picard shows a little more initiative in using the “Dixon Hill” program than he does in the episode “Manhunt”, where it seems like he wants nothing from the program than to sleep in his office. We had to wait until, of all things, First Contact for the “Dixon Hill” gimmick to furnish a scene that was actually cool to watch.
And it’s a Wesley episode too. Sigh. Although that at least gave us Wil Wheaton’s little anecdote about Lawrence Tierney.
I saw this episode out of sequence, much later, and have to agree that it doesn’t hold up. The excuse to get the characters into period costume keeps popping up in all the Treks, especially Voyager–Kate Mulgrew being a notable costume-drama property.
As far as the “holodeck deathtrap” goes, it’s still running second to the transporter in the Proven Unsafe At Any Speed category, and only barely ahead of antimatter reactors. Sending ships out onto patrol is confirmed as a hazardous business, and makes Roddenberry’s insistence on bringing families aboard all the more questionable.
@ 1 bobsandiego
If your computer program can’t tell the difference between real, living human beings and artificially created holograms, it needs more testing.
I think it does at a little to characterization, as we finally get a sense that Picard is fascinated with history, but since he doesn’t seem to recognize anything the implications fall flat.
@ 2 DemetriosX
Imagine if we saw Picard in that Henry V holoepisode wondering if this was supposed to be the War of 1812. That’s basically what’s happening here. He should know this stuff! He’s supposed to love it!
Though I do find it amusing that in the future, people read Shakespeare for fun on their downtime. Dixon Hill seems much more appropriate and realistic a choice for entertainment.
I remember McFadden looking dowdy in the Muppet Movie.
@ 3 etomlins
I love that First Contact scene so much.
@ 4 S. Hutson Blount
Captain Janeway, who forged an alliance with the Maquis and fought off the Borg, loves to pretend she’s a Jane Eyre-like governess with fake children. Because that’s what women fantasize about, children. Right. Pretty much all of those episodes were unspeakable, though I do remember one crazy science fiction one where she was queen of the spider people and that was fun.
Yeah… I’m glad someone else twigged to the “trapped on the holodeck? If only we had a magical device that could teleport people from one location to another without crossing the intervening space!” issue. But it’s just one of a number of things that show that nobody really thought about the problems set up in the episode — that the problems are there as arbitrary impediments to a previously set plot, with no writer ever bothering to think about how these characters and these people might try to solve them.
LIke… why not just turn it off? And bust out the crowbar?
I was particularly annoyed, though, at the author’s lack of commitment to the conceit — because look, here’s Picard struggling to learn a language. And here’s this computer system which can create a flawlessly detailed, live-in-able, interactive environment, complete with AI that can conduct conversations with you. DOES NOBODY SEE HOW ONE OF THESE IS A SOLUTION FOR THE OTHER? Why is Picard having Troi help him figure out some written text when he could be LISTENING TO IT ACTUALLY SPOKEN ON THE HOLODECK? I mean it was 1988, it wasn’t like nobody had thought of language-learning tapes before!
This, to me, is the real sticking point of the early episodes (and the one that I hope will get much better by season 3). It’s the unforced errors, or rather the errors forced (guessing charitably) by a rushed production schedule. When we’re calling out these episodes, it’s not just nitpicking — it’s that there’s a huge amount of potential that’s utterly wasted because nobody took three seconds to think about the implications of what they were writing. That’s why internal inconsistencies like the lipstick are so annoying; that’s why the fake “problems” facing the crew at every turn are such a drag — it’s just an arbitrary plot with stand-in characters who never try to solve their problems. There’s no commitment to this being a world with rules, at least not ones that its inhabitants think about and understand.
They would’ve benefited greatly from having some D&D players on set saying “let me look over my abilities sheet, oh wait why don’t I just do this?”
I suppose one could argue that the holodeck generates all manner of the kinds of force fields that block transporters… but, yeah, if that’s the case it would be nice to explain it.
Picard is depicted as some unhinged Luddite, cognizant neither of the past nor present. If he was really sweating the details of this meet-up, why not actually use the holodeck to simulate that instead of playing hooky?
Twelve episodes in and already the writers are wishing they were scripting for another series—that’s my takeaway on this episode. Sure, this one won all the awards and laurels… by being about something fundamentally different than Star Trek. As a result, this episode has no more consequence to the series than if Deanna Troi had just dreamed up the whole thing after a dinner of Klingon bloodworms chased by a strawberry daquiri.
It brings me back to something that’s been brewing in my mind these past several weeks. How much of the awfulness of seasons 1 and 2 of TNG is related to the fact that it is not being written by science-fiction writers? Look at the pedigree of the first seasons of TOS: old hands like Harlan Ellison, Ted Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Jerome Bixby, and even a few up-and-coming lights like David Gerrold and DC Fontana. Some of the shittiest stories were crapped out by Roddenberry (“Omega Glory, “Turnabout Intruder”), and here he is lord and tyrant over TNG’s early seasons, scribbling remarks over stories penned by Mel Torme’s kid. Things start to pick up for TNG when they bring on the comic book writers, Steve Gerber, Ron Moore, who at least bring a sense that industry’s sense of the story arc and the meta-plot.
TNG never really employs the imaginary writers with chops like TOS, but eventually manages to invest in and mine the character set they’ve developed. No wonder that Galaxy-class ship never actually gets out into the galaxy but ends up doing truck runs around the periphery of familiar space, chasing after familiar storylines?
And it is always Shakespeare, no other plays having survived apparently. (Myself, I’d progrmam a holodeck simulation where I could heckle Ibsen or maybe pelt Ionesco with fruit.)
Doesn’t anyone in the TNG world still like science fiction? Aside perhaps from Reg Barclay.
@5 Torie
You know, you’re right. Somewhere in my head her role in The Muppets Take Manhattan (not The Muppet Movie as I said before) got melded with her dressing up in this episode. For some reason, I had her as a slightly cheap and tawdry. Maybe I shifted her boss’s characteristics over to the secretary.
@7 Lemnoc
And yet David Gerrold was heavily involved in the first season. But you would think they could have gotten more established SF writers to do scripts for them. Part of it is that Hollywood was undergoing a shift in the way scriptwriting was done. They were moving away from freelance writers pitching ideas to producers to having a stable of writers. OTOH, this does mean a lot more consistency in shows and character development and growth is easier to handle, but it makes it a lot harder for outsiders to get a foot in the door. However, it is also significant that as Roddenberry became less and less involved in the operation, the show undeniably got better.
@8 etomlins
Shakespeare is shorthand for culture when it comes to literature. I think it’s mostly that he has the highest name recognition. There’s a chance that the average viewer wouldn’t have any idea who Ibsen or Ionesco is. You see the same thing on the music side. It’s always Mozart. Maybe Beethoven once in awhile, but 99% of the time, Mozart.
@DemetriosX: “I think it’s mostly that [Shakespeare] has the highest name recognition.”
Very true. But it has been shown I think that you can get away with more obscure cultural references; look at “Animaniacs”, which coincidentally was flourishing about when was losing steam in its later seasons. The “Animaniacs” writers must surely have known that, say, the life and works of Michelangelo were unknown to its young audience. Yet they openly parodied his career while throwing in references to a movie that probably nobody has seen (I’ve sern bits of it). And it worked.
But what about the complete works of Jacqueline Susann, the novels of Harold Robbins….
The giants.
@6 DeepThought: It’s all the more baffling since I remember in 1986 the production staff was making a big deal about internal consistency, and promulgating materials for potential writers so they could know all the rules.
(I recall being vividly shocked that all the stuff from TOS about warp-speed combat being chucked out the window!)
@5 Torie
Probably no more ridiculous than learning in “Generations” Picard’s innermost dream was spending eternal Christmas in a Dickens novel. Heck, I’d at least have credited that Francophile with Balzac.
@Lemnoc #7
That’s an interesting point about science fiction writers — though I wonder, by the late ’80s, what was happening in the sci-fi short story market? Was there even a bench there for them to go to? I suppose the short-fiction market has always been dying, at least ever since it stopped growing, but I wonder if the… intellectual ecology hadn’t changed significantly from when TOS was written in the heyday of short-form speculative storytelling.
@9 DemetriosX
You can’t blame the crappy epsidoes of season 1 on the production being closed to new writers. Star Trek TNG to great credit had an open door policy to scripts. LIterally anyone could send in one and they would look at them. Mine went in via an agent they were very open to new writers. Before this episode aired they production team was represented at LosCon and they were so pround that they had an episode set on Earth in the 40’s and no one in the con audience could guess how it was going to be done. (that’s because we were discounting the dea it would all be just a dream which what holodeck episodes are.)
@6 Torie: Because that’s what women fantasize about, children. Right.
I don’t think Janeway’s meant to be All Women. I think it was pandering to their lead’s established audience used to seeing her in antebellum hoop skirts.
@14 DeepThought
Maybe more significantly, though, the previous decade had unleashed a huge flowering of s-f, probably the most creative decade ever for that genre. You not only had a few breakout films (Star Wars, Alien, Bladerunner) but written material from folks like Le Guin, Herbert, Norton, Niven, Douglas Adams, etc. with greats like Asimov, Heinlein, Vonnegut, and and Clarke still pumping out the occasional masterstroke at the peak of their game.
The short story had perhaps more and better distribution outlets (Asimov, Omni) than at any other time in history. No shortage of gems to be mined.
There’s very little for me to add here. I also was very surprised when I re-watched this over the weekend and realized that Picard was acting as though he’d never read a Dixon Hill novel in his life. I also noticed that they claim the holodeck has been “upgraded,” which might account for the fact that this program is much more elaborate than anything we’ve seen so far–and could excuse some of Picard’s fascination with the whole thing. Perhaps it’s like getting your first color television when only black and white sets were previously available. But as others have pointed out, Picard would have been better off using the holodeck–which is supposed to be a training tool–to learn the Jaradan language instead of struggling along with Counselor Troi. I also don’t get why he couldn’t just read it all off phonetically; was the viewer on while they broadcast?
My annoyance with this episode mostly involves the meandering, pointless plot that Torie mentioned, and the inconsistencies with how the holodeck later works. I can accept that the holodeck actually replicates things like water and lipstick, which can leave the holo emitters, but having them step out and slowly disappear just doesn’t work. It’s dramatic, though, and I seem to recall they decided to do it that way on purpose for just that reason. But I might be making that up. They also debated filming the Dixon Hill scenes in black and white, but decided that didn’t make any sense… Which didn’t stop them from doing that on Voyager in Paris’ Captain Proton serials.
It didn’t make any sense at all for Wesley to show up Geordi; his only contribution seems to be that he has eyes with which he can peer through that little device, which is just insensitive.
My enjoyment of noir and the general humor in this episode makes it scrape by at Warp 3 for me.
@7 Lemnoc
How much of the awfulness of seasons 1 and 2 of TNG is related to the fact that it is not being written by science-fiction writers?
I think they were all writing for the Twilight Zone revival at the time.
@8 etomlins
It seems like they avoided getting properly SF-nal until DS9, with Benny Russell, and then on Voyager with Tom Paris. I think they were afraid to do a lot of things with TNG.
@15 bobsandiego
That open door policy was great, and it’s a shame they closed that door during Voyager’s run, just when they could have used good scripts the most. I remember being impressed that they took a season 7 script from a high school kid, which became the episode “Homeward.” That encouraged me to send in my own DS9 and Voyager scripts. I still have a copy of their guidelines: Anyone could send in up to two scripts, but needed an agent if they wanted to submit again after that.
@14 DeepThought
As Eugene points out, a lot of SF writers were involved in the Twilight Zone revival, most notably Harlan Ellison (not that he would have been willing to work with Roddenberry or Paramount). You also had George RR Martin working as a producer and script supervisor on Beauty and the Beast and developing a sideways in time show that was similar to Sliders. Steve Barnes was doing a fair amount of TV writing at the time. I’m sure there were others, but there seems to have been something keeping real SF writers away.
I was off on my timing on the closing doors and shift to dedicated writers. That actually happened about a decade later. I just grabbed it as seeming like the most obvious explanation, without double-checking the timing.
@ 18 Eugene
It’s because I love a good noir story that this thing irritated me so much. I’ll grant you few actors today could compare themselves favaorbaly to Syndey Greenstreet or Peter Lorre, but the charaters as written as offensive to their memory. (I’m currently trying to plot out an SF noir, tough work indeed, but I’m not know for having a realistic idea of my limitations.)
Aside aspect to this sort fo story – the holodeck story – that a friend of mine thinks is often forgotten is what he calls the Talsian Trap. In The Cage we learn that the Talsians had mastered the art of articial illusions, then slowly become so taken with their fantasies they withdrew from the real world losing their culture and techonolgy along the way. You can see that the holodeck is the same sort of trap yet not one person in starfleet seems to recognize the danger.
The only things about this episode that I really enjoyed were the little gags like Dr. Crusher in the police station trying to walk in high heels, swallowing the gum, and her little clap of “Bravo” when Whalen gets shot. Also Data’s reaction of befuddlement when he accidentally unplugs the lamp was fun. Otherwise, there was too much of a “golly gee, isn’t this neat?” reaction on the part of the cast. This would have been perfectly acceptable for the guests Picard brings along, but as everyone else has said, he should have been charging through the scenario as if everything was as he expected…until the shot injured Whalen.
I think everyone’s reactions when this first aired – and the awards – were more for what this episode seemed to be selling and not for the story they were telling. And what were they selling? The idea that the holodeck had matured into this great storytelling device – one that could transport your characters into believable and dramatic situations and locations. I think the reaction to the uniform was a part of that pitch. The other characters are no longer just script-following extras, they will react to you. Could it have worked as a regular storytelling devise if applied with better writing? Doubtful. I say that because it would have run the risk of becoming something other than Star Trek. You have a device that recreates past settings and situations. You have a device that recreates The Time Tunnel.
@21 bobsandiego
I agree with the idea of the holodeck presenting cultural and societal risks. Have you read The Unincorporated Man by Dani and Eytan Kollin? While most of the book has nothing to do with this discussion, the part when Justin Cord makes his required visit to the V-R Museum illustrates the point you’re raising with the force of a blunt object along the side of the head.
I also think that the holodeck technology offers opportunities to raise and explore ethical and social issues of the sort that were only danced around in the Barclay holodeck episode. (but – to a degree – have been raised in discussions here and elsewhere.) Can what happens on the holodeck really be expected to stay on the holodeck? Sometime during the first run of this season, I went with a friend to a gathering of some of her other friends. I spent part of the evening discussing TNG with a lawyer and when the holodeck came up I raised the questions “Can you commit a crime on the holodeck?” and “Can you get away with doing things on the holodeck that would be crimes in the real world?” (Really both sides of the same question and I’m not talking about just violating Star Fleet regulations. Also, for this discussion I’m ignoring the idea that a person with such desires probably wouldn’t make it into Star Fleet to get access to a holodeck. I’m thinking about the technology being widely and cheaply available – like in DS-9) If you set up a holo-program then go about assaulting, raping and killing characters in that program, are you committing crimes? Or, are your actions protected in the same way as they’d be if they were presented within a story you’ve written in which the lead – representing you – commits these actions? We couldn’t come up with a firm conclusion on the issue.
I’ve never seen them personally but, for what it’s worth, there were a couple of episodes of “Voyager” that touched upon holodeck ethics. In one, Tuvok creates a simulation in which he can murder Neelix. (Seriously.) In another, the Maquis crewmembers are found to have created a holodeck simulation of a potential mutiny.
I’m fully with @bobsandiego on this one: there’s something particularly vomitous about TNG’s failed attempt at film noir, a genre that gave us some of America’s best movies of all time. Not only does the Dixon Hill material fail as noir, it fails even as a parody of noir; as I’ve already it suggested, it reminds me of nothing so much as the dime-store imitation of Casablanca found in the terrible ’80s TV movie Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.
I hadn’t seen those Voyager episodes either. At least, not the murdering Neelix one. The simulated mutiny idea sounds familiar but I’m not sure if I saw it or just heard about it.
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. I had thought that title was just a joke until I came across it checking channels one night at work. I ended up leaving it on as background noise while I cleaned the decks (VCRs). A real ‘must miss” movie.
It feels to me like Tracy Torme and the people who produced this episode were as in love with noir as Picard is, and understood it just as poorly as he did. Everyone got excited about doing a show in the 40s… So they did a show in the 40s, that was only superficially noirish. They threw all the things they thought defined noir into the episode, but it was just set dressing and bad lingo, which doesn’t make it a parody so much as a cheap knockoff. “Homage” might be a kind term.
Noir was characterized by many elements–the femme fatale, the lone gumshoe, the play of light and shadow–but that’s not really what it’s about, and this script failed to engage in any of the genre’s deeper themes, or even deliver a coherent mystery or conflict. And most unfortunately, the cinematography just isn’t up to the standards of even the worst film noir, because as we frequently mentioned in the TOS re-watch, most modern television (and films, for that matter) lack a sense of cinematic style.
That said, at the time I originally watched this episode, I had only the most basic grasp of what was so great about film noir, so it did the trick. And nostalgia is a powerful thing. This is film noir fan service, and it must have pleased a good number of people who liked both Star Trek and mysteries.
I think one reason Star Trek does Noir so poorly is that noir is philosphically the oposite if Trek. Trek is at its heart a show about the best of humanity full of optimisim and the beliefe that people are perfectable and good. Noir is at its heart a dark and cynical look at humanity. People in noir are greedy, venal, and flawed. You may find love, as Sam Spade does in The Maltese Falcon, but it will not be a happy one. GIven these basic premises about people and what they are like, how can you expect Trek to make noir work without violating it precepts?
@ 13 Lemnoc
We must not speak of that scene. Ever. But at least there, the show had established years earlier that Picard did in fact regret never starting a family.
@ 22 Dep1701
I liked some of the little gags. The gum did make me smile, but it was ridiculous that she struggles with a make-up case when she’s clearly wearing a ton of make-up that she put on as part of her costume. Did she forget how it works in the last ten minutes? And Data should know how a lamp works, if he has the knowledge of generations of mankind. It’s human behavior that should be the mystery.
@ 23 Ludon
I really like the holodeck, both as a conceit and a storytelling tool, and I don’t think it strays from science fiction at all. It’s interesting to see how people choose to spend their recreational time in a largely sterile future. Some things, like storytelling and role-playing and fantasy, are universal human qualities from past to present. We like to play, and we learn about ourselves and others in the process. The reason why it always fails in Star Trek is because they make the challenge getting out of the holodeck because it’s going to kill you–the challenge is rarely, if ever, internal to the story.
The other time I think the holodeck really succeeds is in problem solving. I would have loved to see Picard use it to learn the Jaradan language, and I really love the episode where Geordi calls up the designer of the Enterprise engines to sort out an issue he’s having. There are so many uses to programming the personalities of people into this thing, and yet mostly I think the vein is shallowly mined.
@ 27 bobsandiego
I don’t agree at all. The show as it stands now, you’re right, it wouldn’t work. But as the series came to evolve more into a set of flawed people struggling to live up to an ideal standard, it could work. By season 3 the concept of the Federation and its long history of justice and peace are the standards to hold one’s (flawed, greedy) self to, with success never guaranteed.
@28 Torie
It’s human behavior that should be the mystery.
You mean like how he was creepily following people around at that party in “Haven” and encouraging them to argue? Gah.
@28 Torie
Damn I had a longish post in reply and I lost it. Anyway short form, Noir characters in my opion have serious moral failings that we do not see in Trek Characters. That Film Noir, maing Dark Film applies not only to the photography repleat with deep dar shawdows and sharp contrast but to the darkness of the human soul, that people deep down aren’t good. Trek really does feel that people deep down are good, yes that may fail, and they may occasionally dispair, but the sort of serious moral failings common in noir is not at all common in Trek.
I would say, bobsandiego @30, rather that Trek believes people can have failings, but that doing so makes them villains or morally weak people. In noir, everyone has failings, and they overcome or celebrate them as is their characteristic wont. In Trek, only the villainous or weak have flaws. Noir and Trek can’t combine well because of Trek’s narrowness of view, IME.
Apparently the future has moved beyond circuit breakers and disconnects. Maybe they are past electricity, but there is no way to control whatever they use? Holodecks are more difficult to shut off than M5 was?
Janeway as Queen of the
Demonweb PitsSpider People? Must’ve been after I gave up on Voyager.@12 S. Houston Blount- the Motion Picture is where warp drive/ warp speed changed. Klingons making warp speed attack runs at an Enterprise limited to impulse speed are a dream from the past.
@32 sps49
This is very obviously the case. TNG loves exploding consoles to a degree that would make Irwin Allen blush. In fact, consoles may rank ahead of both the transporter and the holodeck as the most unsafe technology in the Federation.
@ 30 bobsandiego and @ 31 CaitieCat
I have always disliked the argument that TNG is unlovable because all of the characters are “too perfect.” (I get this one constantly from my roommate.) I think that’s true of first and most of second season TNG, but as the series goes on the main characters prove themselves to be flawed, and they’re still not villains. In “The Enemy,” Worf, by his own abject racism, allows an innocent Romulan to die. Yet he gets to be one of the more honorable and noble characters on the show. We also see Picard and Riker making more obvious and dangerous mistakes. The show really does mature a lot, and I think we’ll find that the dueling forces of a perfect-in-theory Federation and a not-so-perfect-in-reality set of diverse individuals would make for great noir, if anyone had bothered.
It wouldn’t work without the goodness anyway. On the flip side you have a show like BSG where everyone is a loathsome sack of shit, which would make terrible noir.
I thought everyone was a Cylon on BSG? That seemed to be the plot twist reserved for every character of importance anyway. But I think I can cite a counterexample to this:
“…where everyone is a loathsome sack of shit, which would make terrible noir.”
Nuh-uh. Watch Billy Wilder’s Ace in The Hole, arguably one of his best movies. Not one good character in it. Everyone’s a total louse, particularly the hero.
@32. SPS49 Until V’Ger arrives in the Solar System, all the action is taking place at warp. At least, that’s the impression I was under. The Klingon squadron and Enterprise‘s initial approach would have had to have been at warp speeds, since V’Ger didn’t slow down until it reached its destination.
The starfield effect didn’t show it, but that hadn’t been nailed down until TNG, either.
@36 S. Hutson Blount
um, right. Inconsistent in the same episode. Okay, then it shifted when the refitted Enterprise tried to go to warp and had that wormhole/ asteroid/ wtf was happening moment. Ever since, as far as I can recall, warp speed was the stretch-out-ship entry and exit. No more engine acceleration/ deceleration sounds that I thought were so cool.
@ 34 Torie
It seems to me that when Trek has prinicple characters with flaws, the flaws are corrected or mostly corrected by the end of the story and that the flawa are the point of th story. Now, ther eis nothing wrong with that at all. IT’s a style of story telling I ahve tried to write on more than one occasion, but with noir the falws are simply part of the character and no the point of the story. At least not in the ‘learning a lesson’ point of a story. Sam Spade ends the Maltese Falcon greedy, like he started it, and I woulnd’t trust me with my wife if I worked with him.
Reviewing this episode, what really sticks in my craw for some reason is Capt. Picard’s lack of engagement with the Dixon Hill scenario. The more I think about it the weirder it seems to me: why go to the trouble of dressing up like a ’40s private eye and then act bored and distracted when you’re called upon to do some detecting? This happens again in a later episode in which Picard actually berates the computer for giving him “violence” and repeatedly demands that the Dixon Hill program be reconfigured to avoid it. A violence-free noir story? Huh?
Honestly, it’s not the least bit clear to me from either this episode or that later one what Picard’s getting out of his Dixon Hill role play other than slouching behind a desk with a fedora over his eyes.
Etomlins wins the thread for using “sticks in my craw.”
Well, it’s better than saying I’ve got a bug up my–
By contrast, if Kirk had a holodeck, he’d program it so Finnegan would beat the absolute living hell out of him for hours on end while an attractive woman looked on admiringly.
You horrible, horrible nerds have no sense of fun or appreciation of atmosphere, or even the fascinating philosophical questions brought to attention by such episodes. The was no only nothing wrong with The Big Goodbye, it was actually very entertaining and well done. Some people are afraid to enjoy anything unless they think it’s “dark” enough, and in the end, that’s the opposite of Star Trek.
I don’t know about you but I think we’ve just been insulted.
@43 Johann Popper
This episode was actually darker than most, seeing as it’s film noir and all.
It’s the sense of fun and my appreciation of atmosphere and the philosophical questions in “The Big Goodbye” that got it a Warp 3 rating from me. But there are quite a few things wrong with the episode, particularly in the quality of writing (which is very important to me) and its internal consistency with the series, which prevent it from getting top marks.
Besides everything that’s been mentioned here, the moldy icing on the crapcake for me was hearing Picard speak the alien greeting at the end and the second word was KLAXON. Any remaining vestige of Susp. of Disb. I might have had at that point flew right out of my head and crashlanded headfirst into a puddle of rancid oil in the parking lot. We picked it up in the gutter the next morning, stinking of gin and babbling something about “ootchie wootchie cootchie coo.”
Yes to all comments. I recently started what is effectively my first watch of TNG, and the problem, so far, is that even the “good” episodes, that get reprised later, are terrible. I think the worst thing about this one is how much worse it is in every way than “A Piece of the Action.”
The best things about this episode are seeing the crew in the 1940s costumes, and Brent Spiner’s James Cagney impression (at least he seems to be authentically having fun, unlike Picard, who is supposedly the true fan). Unfortunately, Kirk and Spock looked far better in their period costumes than any of the new bunch, and Leonard Nimoy showed us how much more comedy could be drawn from underplaying, than from Spiner’s excesses in this episode.