One of the cheesier episodes to come out in the first two seasons. But cheesy in a likeable kind of way. This episode resembles an episode of Twilight Zone more than Star Trek. But I've always had kind of a soft spot for it. Maybe I'll remember why as I'm writing about it.
It's got a good, mysterious beginning. The Klingons aren't behaving like animals for a change. Instead they're being normal allies; they report some debris floating around a nearby planet. It turns out to be an old NASA vessel of some kind. They find out that the planet is completely uninhabitable except for one tiny spot that can support life, so naturally they have to investigate further. Predictable, yes. And the revolving door in the middle of nowhere is another cop out for an appropriately creative set design. These elements are the bad sort of cheesy.
But, the away team is there to investigate so they go right on in and find themselves trapped in a bad novel. I guess that's one reason that even, though it's clearly an inferior episode, it still has a lot of appeal especially to avid readers like myself.
Of course they don't know that at first. They just find themselves in a mid-twentieth century American casino and unable to transport once they're inside or pass back through the revolving door, although they can still communicate with the Enterprise. Weak science fiction. Again, they were counting on the drama within to distract from the fact that it's not a solid plot. Or in this case the comedy for the most part. They decide to split up and get to know the patrons while watching the seedy details of a bell hop's love affair with a gangster's girlfriend unfold before them. Worf's confusion is genuine... not just because he's being portrayed as a stupid Klingon because Riker is equally baffled by the twentieth century layout. And Data's part is the funniest. He takes up with a sleazy gambler who is trying to take advantage of the lady he's "helping." I think it's more digestible than other episodes with weak base storylines because it behaves like a holodeck episode. Nobody notices Worf is an alien or sees Data's skin and eye colors or anyone's uniform. The people they meet are completely unhelpful because they have no place else to be in their little world than right there in the casino. It's actually perfect for a holodeck scenario, it's just that they chose to make it a planetary adventure and that's why it loses credibility.
So, they explore the rooms upstairs and discover that the astronaut that had died there had been kept there by the aliens that accidentally caused his ship to crash. Feeling guilty and having nothing else to go on, they thought that life on Earth was genuinely represented in a pulp novel that the astronauts had aboard and decided to set up a living version of it for the remaining astronaut to survive in as compensation for his loss of ship and crew. From his diary they learn all of this and also that he couldn't leave through the revolving door either. But, really, where would he have gone? (That's my question, not theirs.) I guess I'd want to leave too if I had to live a bad novel over and over again for years until I died of old age. But for the Enterprise people, you can see their sense of urgency in wanting to find a way out now.
So they tell the Captain about the book and he gets right on it. He calls it up and looks it over with Troi. I would like to point out that although the phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night" is often used as a spoof of the beginning of bad novels and stories over the years, this episode included, that it's also the opening sentence of A Wrinkle In Time which is still a classic and award winning young adult book. So, it's not always an unpromising start to a story.
They allow the novel to play out as it was written without interfering. I assume that's what the astronaut had tried several times himself, but it still seems like the logical course of action. I did do a little research and there is in fact no real novel called The Hotel Royale which is the title of the book in this episode. I think what they have lined out for its story in this episode is an altered version of Casino Royale without the James Bond element and with a sufficiently corny plot that a person would become depressed about having to live through it repeatedly.
At some point they had to get back to the shaky plot of this story and figure out a way to get the away team out of there. They discover that the casino is bought out by foreign investors at the end of the novel so they gamble until they break the bank and simply buy the casino from the manager thereby taking the parts of the foreign investors for themselves. For whatever reason, this allows them to go out of the mysterious revolving door and into the empty space where they can transport back to the ship. It's so painfully thin and makes no real sense at all. And it's obviously something the astronaut could never have done on his own. They could never have done it either if not for Data.
Data really is the saving point of the show. I would call this a Data episode even. His interaction with the southern gambler, and his adoption of human mannerisms when he fixes the dice and gambles them into the fortune they need is really priceless and always great to watch. It isn't overdone and an excellent example of Data learning and imitating behavior like he so often does in the series. Most of the time during the first two seasons it was awkward, but in this episode it's very smoothly executed by the writers and Spiner. The thing I've noticed about this episode is that people either hate it - understandably because like I said, it's inferior - or they can't help but like it. I fall into the latter category and the clip above of Data saving the day is one of the reasons. The comedy isn't overdone and there's some genuine heart in it. And on the whole I'd call it a "for fun" episode that could never have been meant to be taken too seriously anyway.
It probably only deserves two and a half stars for content but I'm giving it three because I do have a soft spot for it. There were a lot of worse episodes than this anyway. It's good harmless fun.
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