Captain’s Holiday (⭑⭑)

Maybe the best way to sum up “Captain’s Holiday” would be to say that it represents TNG kind of trying to be something that it’s not—and, predictably, failing in that effort. I haven’t tagged this with my “Outside the Trek Milieu” story type, but in a lot of ways, it does sort of feel like an episode that takes place in a different universe from the rest of the show. In part, this is intentional; it’s clear that the point of the episode is to remove our captain from his usual element (but without actually taking him out of the larger world in which he exists, like a holodeck or time travel episode would do) in order to explore aspects of his personality that we don’t ordinarily get to see. And to that extent, I at least appreciate the effort. But unfortunately, the world of “Captain’s Holiday” ends up feeling too different from the Trek world of the rest of the show for my tastes. On top of this, the episode clearly wants to be a lighthearted, sexy romp—something a bit more romantic and adventurous, less meaty, and less…straitlaced, than a typical TNG episode—but struggles to achieve this in a competent way. If this had been more successful, I would probably regard the episode with a certain tolerant indulgence; it’s not really what I want from the show, but it could have been entertaining enough (and there’s no rule that the show can only ever be one thing). This, in fact, is approximately how I expected to feel about “Captain’s Holiday” prior to rewatching it in order to write this review. Alas, though, I came out of this rewatch liking it rather less than that.

To begin with, I have little patience with the trope of characters who are so married to their jobs that they resist taking vacations. If an episode like this one is meant to round out and humanize Picard, then beginning by showing him acting as though taking some time off to relax and pursue personal interests would be an unbearable chore is not the right approach. The scene in which Crusher “alerts” him to the problem of a member of the crew ignoring his health is tolerable only because Picard doesn’t take the bait, and the subsequent smirky scenes in which Riker and Troi push him into the decision to take a “holiday” attempt to derive laughs at the captain’s expense in a way that I don’t enjoy (although I’ll allow that “and of course—the women” gets a smile from me). Of course, lurking beneath the surface of these ineffective scenes is the more fundamental problem that a place like Risa is just not where Jean-Luc Picard would go on vacation. Riker? Sure. But not Picard. Yet the episode needs him to go there, so…it starts at the opposite extreme of showing him as anti-vacation in general, then resorts to a series of cheesy scenes with the other characters needling and manipulating him into going to Risa specifically, and ultimately asks us to accept that their tactics have worked.

Even after he gets to Risa, the episode continues in the mode of attempting comedy at the captain’s expense. Hey, writers? Has it occurred to you that some people might legitimately enjoy relaxing in the sun and losing themselves in a good book, and that there’s no need to imply that this impulse is stodgy or that it merely masks a repressed desire for romance and adventure? Okay, I chuckle in spite of myself over Riker’s mischievous request that Picard bring him back a horgh’an, but overall, this aspect of the episode really leaves me cold. The thing is, too, it needn’t have gone this way. That Picard sets out to have a peaceful, relaxing sort of vacation, but ends up stumbling into an adventure, is fine. We don’t always know what it is that we need before we find it, and in my personal experience, the great thing about a vacation is the way that sometimes, when you’re on one, anything feels possible, and you open yourself up to experiences that you wouldn’t normally gravitate toward. If the episode had attempted to put us in Picard’s head and dramatize that, rather than mocking him and validating Riker’s smirking point of view, that could have been something! But no.

Eventually, the episode morphs into a thinly plotted adventure story about recovering some pointless macguffin, complete with time travelers from the future and an irritating Ferengi adversary. When the time travelers make their initial appearance in the teaser, there is some genuine mystery about who they are and what they want with Picard, but by the time they show up in his room, they feel like just one more entry in the series of wacky guest characters who have been pestering the poor captain since his arrival on Risa. He proceeds to pretty much take them in stride (which is weird), yet is also appropriately awed by the dull exposition that they spew at him about the “Tox Uthat.” And of course, he inevitably warms up to “the woman” (as Sovak the Ferengi calls her, despite having allegedly known her for years), even if he is not naive enough to actually trust her. Here is a brief list of things that this story entirely fails, even for a moment, to accomplish:

• Make rudimentary plot sense.
• Make me care what happens to the “Tox Uthat.”
• Make me believe in Vash as a real person, or get me emotionally invested in Picard’s romantic dalliance with her.
• Redeem anything about the Ferengi as a compelling or believable people.
• Feel like it belongs in an episode of Star Trek.

I’m being harsh, admittedly. I don’t hate much about the story at the center of this episode; I just don’t really like much about it, either. The macguffin is something that, from its description, ought to be the center of a more weighty and consequential story, but is just sort of tossed in here. Vash seems to latch onto Picard for no better reason than because he’s our protagonist, so wouldn’t it be fun for an attractive, mischievous woman to take a fancy to him and involve him in her shenanigans? It’s hard to see what about her could particularly interest Picard, either, beyond the most superficial of levels. Plus, she just seems fundamentally out of sync with the fictional universe in which she exists. She double-crossed Sovak because she otherwise “couldn’t afford” to go to Risa? She wants to sell the Uthat to the Daystrom Institute? Trek’s writers have always struggled to come up with any consistent take on economic life in the Federation, but it is supposed to be a post-scarcity society that doesn’t use money, right? This is by no means the only instance in TNG where something appears inconsistent with that premise, but it’s one of the most blatant. Finally, about the plot: How exactly does Picard destroying the Uthat (right in front of the Vorgon criminals, no less) accomplish anything, given that they are time travelers? And when Picard himself calls attention to this gigantic plot hole (!) during his final scene with Vash, do the writers imagine that this somehow lets them off the hook?

I’ll conclude by noting that it makes perfect sense to me for this to have been the first Trek episode written by Ira Steven Behr, whose unaccountable fascination with the Ferengi, dubious sense of humor, and willingness to play it loose with fundamental premise elements of the Trek universe will all rear their heads repeatedly during his tenure as showrunner on DS9.