The Royale

Investigating the wreckage of a 300-year-old spaceship from Earth, the Enterprise finds a building capable of supporting life in a very unlikely place. But what they find inside is even more unlikely: a staffed and operating, mid-1990s hotel, complete with a front desk, room service and a casino. How did it get there? And how do Riker, Data, and Worf get out? Find out when The Mission Log check into The Royale. I love this episode. In my opinion, it’s underrated and perhaps a little bit unfairly disliked. The genius of this one is the fact that the source material is acknowledged to be bad. While it’s essentially a “holodeck goes bad” episode, the crew doesn’t have to spend the entire show being amazed by the technology of the holodeck (and its distressing lack of safety protocols). Instead, the weaknesses of stories like this, such as the cheesy acting and narrative plot holes, can be explained away as being true to the source novel. It’s a great way to get around the issues of “holodeck” type episodes. Other things I love: Picard’s reaction to the book kills me every single time. Some of the best comedy in the entire series, so well played by Stewart. The tone switches between comedy and creepy very effectively. The hotel room scene with the corpse is creepy and so memorable. The Riker-Data-Worf away team is maybe the best group of characters to be on an away team. Micky D is the greatest of all time. Things I’m not crazy about: the crew on the Enterprise has nothing to do for the first half. The casino set is extremely cheap. The character of Tex and his mistress are totally useless. This should go on the list of episodes that show that Data actually does have emotions. I have a personal theory that Data was built with simple emotions that were suppose to grow. “It was dark and stormy, McKnight.” – Riker explaining the conditions on the away team to one of the helm officers. I could have sworn it was NORTHERN California that was always crying to be made its own state? It’s not even a Noth vs South California thing. There are several proposals for splitting California into several states, the most recent one splits it into 5… Also with regards to this discussion, there are arguments for New York City to be it’s own state, having more population by itself than most states have. Another is converting D.C. into a full state. But considering this is the 80s when this was made it is far more likely the creators of the show were thinking of the US territories that should already be states but aren’t. There are plenty to choose from. Come on, everyone. It’s obvious this astronaut was really Dave Bowman. In the end of 2001, he’s shown growing old in the hotel room, dining on room service, and finally dying in his bed. The aliens who set this up sucked him through a wormhole (or whatever those special effects were supposed to be), and were represented by the monolith, which may or may not have been a physical object. At any rate, it represents the unknowable motivations of the aliens who are masterminding this situation. I think John’s talking about how the aliens are repentant for killing the others, or trying to be nice to the astronaut miss the mark … we can’t always understand the motivations of alien minds. That’s what the whole Fermat’s Last Theorem thing in the beginning was supposed make you think about … some problems are just not understandable, yet we must try to understand them anyway. Dave Bowman….wOw…mind :blown! great idea! man, how cool that would be to have some sci-fi tie ins… This is such a bland and boring show. I’m amazed it has devout fans. And this is coming from someone who adores TNG. The thing we learned early on with Mission Log is that EVERY episode of Star Trek is someone’s favorite episode. A corollary to that: Every TV series that’s ever been made, is someone’s favorite. I’ve seriously noticed that. It currently costs over $10,000 per pound to launch anything into space, which means someo