Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Do you remember your “first contact” with the Star Trek franchise? The *very first* episode or film you ever watched?
Let’s set the scene! It’s the 19th of June, 1991. The Soviet Union, while in decline and wounded by the revolutions of 1989, still exists, and the coup attempt that finished it off hasn’t yet taken place. The England football team is still reeling from a semi-final defeat at last year’s World Cup in Italy. The World Wide Web doesn’t exist publicly yet. And Sonic the Hedgehog won’t be released on Sega’s new Mega Drive/Genesis console for a few more days.
It was also on this day that The Royale premiered in the United Kingdom, on the channel BBC 2. And this is the very first episode of Star Trek that I can ever remember watching. Thirty-five years ago this very day, I began my journey as a Trekkie. And I thought it could be fun to mark the occasion by taking a look at the episode together.
Photo: Ben Brooksbank / Eastcote station, entrance 1991, via Wikimedia Commons
Okay, let’s step back for a moment. The Royale is the first episode of The Next Generation that I can remember watching in its entirety. However, I’m reasonably sure that I’d seen at least *parts* of other episodes prior to that. And my uncle, who was big TOS fan, had certainly talked Trek with me when I was a wee bairn! I can very vividly recall being enthralled with a toy phaser that he owned when I must’ve been only five or so – a solid two or three years prior to this moment. So why pick The Royale, then? Fair question!
This is the moment at which I became a regular viewer of The Next Generation, kick-starting a love of Star Trek which has persisted to the present day. Even if I’d played with that toy phaser a couple of years earlier, or watched parts of other episodes… The Royale is the one that turned me into a Trekkie. This is the moment I decided that Star Trek was something I needed to see more of; a TV show that I couldn’t put down and a world I wanted desperately to explore. Is it a great episode in its own right, or one of the best offerings in the franchise? Arguably not – though I’m afraid the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia rather blind me to that! But it’s a special episode for me personally, as it marks the moment when I fully joined the Star Trek fan community.
At this moment in the early summer of 1991, I’d have been finishing Year 3 at school (which I believe is the equivalent of second grade in Ameria; not sure on that, though). My memory isn’t great these days, but I can remember some of the things I experienced that year. Year 3 marked the beginning of being in the “Juniors” at school, not the “Infants” with the younger year groups. It was around this time that I got my first taste of computing – at my small school in the rural north of England, there was only one computer, and it was in the Juniors classroom! I can remember sitting with another pupil – an older girl – as I had my first-ever lesson on a BBC Micro. I looked down at the keyboard and told the girl, with some alarm, that I wanted to use “little letters, not big letters” (meaning lowercase, not uppercase) and listened as she explained to me that the keyboard could write *both* sets of letters!
At home, we didn’t have a computer. My household had a landline telephone, a single television set, and a Betamax recorder that my parents would begrudgingly swap for VHS later in ’91. And we didn’t own a games console, either – although I’d played games before, at a kids’ club and at my uncle’s place, I wouldn’t get my first games console for another year. I finally got a Super Nintendo in the summer of 1992.
Sorry, this is turning into a stumble down memory lane, isn’t it?
But I suppose that’s a testament to the power of media. When I re-watched The Royale, I wasn’t just revisiting the episode and its story. I was stepping back in time to the moment I became a Star Trek fan, and that brings with it a certain amount of reflection. The world has changed a lot since that episode premiered here in the UK some thirty-five years ago. In fact, it’s almost unrecognisable in some ways. If I could magically teleport through time and sit down with my eight-year-old self, they’d be *stunned* to hear about some of the things that happened in the intervening years. And probably a little shocked at my appearance, too!
My point is that this episode holds a very special – and an utterly unique – place in my heart. Returning to it is always fun, but when I started to put pen to paper to write about it, I found myself wallowing in memories. Because this episode made me a Trekkie, I can’t help thinking back to that time in my life and reflecting on all of the things that have changed. Returning to The Royale today, on the thirty-fifth anniversary of its UK premiere, is something I’ve been looking forward to! I guess I just didn’t expect to take such a diversion back to my own past and my own schooldays.
Season 2 of The Next Generation coined the phrase “growing the beard;” the opposite of “jumping the shark.” This phrase means, in brief, that a television show has improved significantly after a rougher first season, and references Jonathan Frakes’ character of Will Riker, who first got his iconic beard this year. While I don’t agree at all with the sentiment that Season 1 of TNG is somehow “bad” in its entirety, I think it’s fair to say that the show went from strength to strength, growing into something better over time.
And it’s that moment that I joined in and became a Star Trek fan. That can’t be a coincidence, can it? In fairness, I’ve always wondered what I might’ve made of Star Trek if, at this seminal moment, I’d have watched an episode like Angel One, or a similar lowly-rated story from Season 1. Would I have persevered with Star Trek, or written it off? I suppose we’ll never know… but it’s an interesting “what if” idea, isn’t it?
If you’ve made it this far, thanks! I think we’re finally ready to get into The Royale and its story.
The Royale aired at the midpoint of The Next Generation’s second season, in between Contagion and Time Squared. It was broadcast in the United States more than two years ahead of its UK premiere, in March 1989, and was written by Tracy Tormé and directed by Cliff Bole. Bole had previously worked on William Shatner’s police show T. J. Hooker, and had directed three episodes of TNG’s first season, including the penultimate episode, Conspiracy. He’d go on to direct almost two dozen more, as well as seven episodes of Deep Space Nine and ten of Voyager.
Tracy Tormé, the episode’s writer, is credited under a pseudonym for The Royale, as a result of conflicts with Maurice Hurley, TNG’s head writer for Season 2; Hurley had made changes and revisions to Tormé’s original script for the episode. According to Chaos on the Bridge, William Shatner’s documentary about the making of The Next Generation, Tormé and Hurley regularly butted heads during Seasons 1 and 2, before Tormé ultimately left the series ahead of Season 3.
According to director Cliff Bole, The Royale suffered from having a low budget. The revolving door leading into the hotel – and, really, the entire surface of Theta VIII outside of the hotel – is, to be incredibly generous, “minimalist!” Even the remastered version of the episode doesn’t change this (for which I’m actually glad), but I think there’s a weird kind of low-budget charm to the way the planet and away mission are presented. It’s kind of like The Original Series with its papier-mache and polystyrene rocks; something about that, while objectively unrealistic in its appearance, just… “feels like Star Trek,” or at least it does to me!
Tracy Tormé has said that his original draft was much more surreal, and from what I can glean, it sounds like it might’ve been closer to The Original Series in tone, perhaps with more of a focus on comedy or even outright silliness. Allegedly, this version of the story was felt to be too similar to A Piece of the Action from TOS; both stories involve an alien society contaminated by a book from Earth, and both had gangsters in them. That version of the episode may have been a lot funnier… or it could’ve been a lot worse, but I suppose we’ll never know, eh?
The episode begins with the Enterprise-D arriving at Theta VIII, and a brief discussion between Riker and Geordi about the planet. This sets up Theta VIII as an inhospitable place; a freezing planet with high winds and ammonia tornadoes. It’s a cute little conversation, and I like the shot of Riker on the bridge, moving from the front, near the helm and conn positions, to Geordi’s station at the back. It’s not something we’d see a lot of across the show, this kind of panning shot, following a command character as they move between stations.
It’s also a bit of a rarity to see Geordi on the bridge after Season 1, and I think this moment worked a lot better than if, say, Riker had called down to Engineering. Having the two together, with Riker looking over Geordi’s shoulder for the chat, just felt a bit more personal and familiar, adding to the sense that these two are friends as well as colleagues. Not a huge moment in the episode, considering what’s to come – but I still really like it!
Riker’s conversation with Picard in the Ready-Room has drawn a lot of attention over the years, but not for the reasons the writer may have wanted! Picard talks about Fermat’s last theorem, which was a famously unsolved problem in mathematics, and uses it as an example of how much Starfleet and the Federation still have to learn about the universe. This point is interesting, and it establishes a couple of things about Picard: that he spends his downtime thinking about puzzles like this, and that he’s keenly aware of how far humanity still has to go to uncover the mysteries of the universe. It neatly encapsulates who Picard is, why he’d join an organisation like Starfleet – and why, all these years later, he’s a character that so many of us absolutely adore!
But this moment has been overshadowed somewhat by the solution to Fermat’s last theorem! Only a few years after The Royale aired, mathematician Andrew Wiles published his proof, rendering Picard’s statement inaccurate. And some fans and viewers hold up this moment not as Picard being philosophical about Starfleet’s mission of exploration… but rather, as an example of how Star Trek’s vision of the future can be invalidated as the world around it shifts. I don’t really like that approach, and while we can look back at this scene now, with the benefit of hindsight, and acknowledge that, factually speaking, Picard is now incorrect to say that Fermat’s last theorem was never solved… I think his point still stands! And it feels a little pedantic for folks to seize on this moment as a kind of “gotcha” to say that Star Trek gets its vision of the future wrong. Star Trek, for me anyway, kind of exists in a floating timeline, and while we wouldn’t make an episode today using Fermat’s last theorem in this way, the point Picard was making about how humanity still has a long way to go to understand the universe isn’t invalidated. It’s interesting, though, that the proof was published only a few years after the episode aired.
The teaser ends with the revelation that the debris detected in orbit of Theta VIII is from a NASA spacecraft. I like the little scene in the transporter room, and it’s always fun to see Chief O’Brien prior to his role in Deep Space Nine! However, I can’t help but feel like this moment – which is treated as a huge revelation by the episode – doesn’t quite make sense if you stop to think about it. Why wouldn’t either the Klingon cruiser or the Enterprise-D have been able to detect that the debris was of Earth origin? And given how much random junk and debris there must be in space, why would the Enterprise-D have diverted here just for that? Would the episode have been a bit more solid if it began with the message from the Klingons saying that they’d detected the wreck of an Earth spacecraft in orbit of Theta VIII?
I think this is an example of the passage of time – and the fact that I’ve seen this episode so many times over the years – getting in the way! The “big reveal” of the NASA emblem doesn’t shock me any more, and it hasn’t since I was eight years old and I first saw the episode! But that isn’t The Royale’s fault, and thinking about the mystery that the episode wants to establish going into the ad break… it’s done pretty well. I just get the sense that, if you think about it from an in-universe point of view, the Enterprise-D wouldn’t have necessarily diverted to Theta VIII for no reason, and the Klingons probably wouldn’t have even mentioned the debris unless they knew it was of human origin. Changing that would’ve completely ruined the shock of seeing the NASA emblem and American flag, but I’d still argue it would make more sense in-universe for the crew to have deliberately set out to recover the debris of a ship from Earth, rather than diverting the entire ship to take a look at some random space junk.
In the Conference Room, the crew briefly discuss what they’ve found. The damage to the debris could indicate it was hit by weapons fire, and Picard states that there’s no way a vessel from the mid-21st Century could have travelled so far into deep space. I think it’s fun to see, now we’re almost forty years on from The Next Generation’s premiere, how the show, especially in its first couple of seasons, was trying to remain consistent with The Original Series and its vision of Earth in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. Encounter at Farpoint showed us the aftermath of World War III and the “post-atomic horror,” and now we’re getting NASA spacecraft from that same kind of era venturing beyond the solar system.
As we get closer to some of these dates and moments in real-time, we can see how wrong those depictions were! And that’s kind of sad, in a way. But speaking as we were of Star Trek having a kind of “floating timeline,” where events in the real world can ultimately overwrite some of these ideas… I don’t think it really matters all that much. If you look at Star Trek episodes produced in the 2020s, they might not reference the “mid-21st Century” in quite the same way, but Star Trek’s internal timeline is, for me, vague enough to still come together! And my personal head canon, anyway, is that Star Trek diverged from the real world at some point in the mid/late 20th Century! But I think we’ve gotten a little off-topic, huh?
I love the handheld phasers that the crew use for the away mission. A lot of phaser designs feel “iconic,” but something about the models used in the first part of The Next Generation just feels even more special, somehow. Perhaps that’s the nostalgia talking again! This model, lovingly referred to as the “dustbuster” after a handheld vacuum cleaner that it resembles, was seen on a few occasions across Seasons 1 and 2, but was changed by Season 3.
To get back on topic, Wesley and Geordi show Picard and the others a “structure” that they’ve detected on the surface of Theta VIII. And here’s where I feel like the script and the production didn’t quite align! This structure, briefly glimpsed on Wesley’s monitor, is simply never shown at all; the away team beams down to a black void with a simple revolving door set into it, and the exterior of the hotel is simply never seen, nor even acknowledged. This is clearly a consequence of the budget issues we talked about, and I happen to find the black void and simple door to be suitably mysterious and otherworldly, especially for the kind of story the episode is setting up. But it’s also a bit of an inconsistency, if you think about it, and it makes me wonder why they didn’t rework this moment on the bridge to perhaps make note of a pocket of breathable air, but not draw attention to the existence of a “structure” that we never get to see.
The away team beams down to Theta VIII, and they encounter the revolving door! One thing I didn’t realise until looking into the production history of The Royale is that all of the sets for the hotel were constructed specifically for The Next Generation – they didn’t use an existing hotel or casino set, which is genuinely fascinating. I guess it must’ve been cheaper to do that than to try to book an existing location or reuse a set from another series, but… how?
Director Cliff Bole, who had previously worked on a crime drama called Vegas, described the set as being built with “curtains,” and recalled that whole scenes needed to be shot from very specific angles so as not to give the game away! The moment the away team walks into the hotel for the first time, though, doesn’t feel – to me, anyway – like actors walking onto a set. The number of people in frame, as well as the score and sound design, too, make the hotel’s casino feel like a very real – if mysterious and otherworldly – space.
The interaction with the assistant manager at the hotel’s front desk is still, all these years later, absolutely hilarious. Sam Anderson, the actor who took on the role, has absolutely perfect comedic timing, especially in this first encounter. As Riker and Worf push him on what the planet’s called… I can’t help but laugh every single time, no matter how many times I’ve seen The Royale.
Anderson would go on to have roles in films like Forrest Gump and TV shows like ER and Lost.
There’s a creepiness to this interaction, making us think that the assistant manager is hiding things or refusing to share everything he knows about the hotel or the planet it’s situated on, and that successfully builds up more of the mystery that The Royale is going for.
It’s also at this moment that we get the first signs of the episode’s other angle: the cheap story from a low-quality novel. Playing out like a tired cliché of the crime and drama genres, the hotel’s bellboy interrupts the away team to talk to the assistant manager about a girl. And the soundtrack here! It’s just pitch-perfect for this kind of over-the-top drama cliché; exactly the kind of thing you’d have heard in a B-movie or TV soap opera. The dramatic change in music adds so much to this scene, indicating to us as the audience that there’s something very strange going on. I love it!
This leads into the revelation that none of the people the away team has encountered are emitting life-signs. And this gets a little confusing; Data explains that they exist, but that they aren’t organic, nor are they machines. Again, the mysteries of the story are deepening. And we get a fun introduction to the character “Texas” to round things off.
We get a brief scene back aboard the Enterprise-D with Wesley and Geordi still working on a way to break through the communications blackout. Picard talks to them, wondering whether something intelligent may be blocking their signal, and then hears from Counsellor Troi that Riker doesn’t appear to be in danger; she describes his mood as “amused,” which obviously tracks with what we just saw! This little scene on the bridge doesn’t add a lot, but it’s a fun little cutaway in its own right.
I think it might’ve been interesting for Picard to ask Troi, rather than Wesley and Geordi, whether there was some kind of intelligence or life-form at work here. Surely she’d be able to tell whether there was anyone else down there besides the away team, and that could’ve impacted how the crew were reacting to the situation. Deanna’s empathic abilities are not always perfect, of course, but she might’ve been able to join in this conversation and share her perspective, at least. Again, a nitpick – but it’s a role we’ve seen Troi fill multiple times already, even at this point in the show’s run, commenting on the likes of Q or the Ferengi, to name but two examples. So I don’t think it’s out of the question for Picard to have asked her if she could feel another presence down on Theta VIII.
The blackjack scene with “Texas” is funny. Noble Willingham, the actor who played the role, would later go on to have a starring role in Walker, Texas Ranger with Chuck Norris, and he just feels perfectly cast as the old gambler in The Royale. He reminds me of The Simpsons’ character of the Rich Texan, thanks to a similar outfit, accent, and mannerisms, and I just think he’s a really fun and pretty unique character across really the entirety of Star Trek. He fits perfectly into this pulpy, low-quality novel, but there’s an edge to the character, too.
We get some genuinely cute moments with Texas and Data – Texas gives him his stetson hat to wear, briefly, and tries to talk him out of asking for another card during the game. I’m not a gambler, and I’m not all that familiar with blackjack as a game, but its rules are simple enough to understand – and Data explains them well – meaning it makes for a good choice of game to show off in a scene like this. Trying to explain the rules of a more complex game would’ve taken too long and could’ve been confusing or just less engaging for the audience.
After another short scene on the bridge, it soon becomes clear to the away team that they’re trapped in the hotel. The scene of the three of them running through the revolving door is a little silly, to be honest; they’re clearly just going all the way around and coming back out into the hotel, and it makes for a kind of comical presentation which contrasts with how seriously all three characters are taking it! But it does well enough to establish the core premise: they’re stuck in the hotel, unable to leave, and also cut off from communicating with the Enterprise.
The Royale always reminded me a little of The Eagles’ song Hotel California. Remember the line “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”? Isn’t that pretty much the premise of the story here, that escaping the hotel is impossible? I’ve never seen other Trekkies making that link, though, so maybe that’s just a me thing! And the song isn’t *literally* about a magically inescapable hotel, it’s a metaphor. Still, I find the comparison to be a fun one.
Riker attempts to talk to the assistant manager again, but makes no progress in figuring out how to leave the hotel. The Enterprise-D is able to briefly get in contact with Riker, but only long enough for him to tell Picard that they can’t leave the building. We get another scene with the bellboy and the assistant manager, with that absolutely wonderful scene-setting score again! And I just really love this incredibly cheesy story that’s unfolding at the hotel; it’s so silly, but it’s so… *Star Trek* at the same time.
Maybe you won’t agree, but I think The Royale is the kind of episode that modern Star Trek wouldn’t do. We’ve seen recent episodes involving time travel, including to the modern day, as well as stories involving aliens capable of generating illusions not dissimilar to the hotel in The Royale. But this kind of self-contained story – an alien recreation of a low-budget Las Vegas hotel, based on a book, and complete with one-dimensional characters played with self-awareness by the performers? I mean… would modern Star Trek do something like that? I doubt it… but it’s episodes like this one that make Star Trek what it is, at least to me. Recent stories all seem to be galactic in scope, with existential threats to the entire Federation and moustache-twirling villains who are played completely earnestly. The Royale is totally aware of the kind of books and TV shows it’s parodying, and I think that self-awareness is a big part of how well it works.
After a cute moment with Worf at the “turbolift,” the action moves to one of the hotel’s upper floors – and it’s here that the mystery begins to be explained. The away team reaches one of the hotel’s rooms, where Data’s detected “human DNA,” and they uncover the body of one of the NASA astronauts.
For a Star Trek episode, on a relatively low budget, produced in the late ’80s… the prop of the skeletonised astronaut is actually really good! At least, I think it is. It manages to feel old, decrepit, mouldy, and like it’s been there for centuries, and the reveal, I’m certain, would have shocked me when I first saw the episode all those years ago. It’s a well-executed moment, suitably creepy and intense for a mystery story, and it sees The Royale take a surprisingly dark twist. Yes, the away team has been trapped for a while, and yes, we know that, back on the ship, there are problems with communication. But this is the first time, really, after meeting some fairly whimsical characters and seeing a cheesy side-story right out of a mid-century soap opera, that the crew feels in danger. And if this prop had looked a lot worse… well, that feeling wouldn’t have been as strong.
Worf’s comment about how dying in one’s sleep is “terrible” didn’t pass unnoticed – a subtle nod to how Klingons view such things. He then goes on to uncover the dead man’s NASA flight suit as Data explains that the astronaut – Colonel Richey – has been dead for almost three centuries. The Enterprise is able to get back in touch at this point, conveniently allowing Riker to ask them to search for details of Colonel Richey’s identity, while Worf uncovers the novel Hotel Royale – a ficticious book created for this episode.
I like the flight suit, and how it feels comparable to NASA’s spacesuits of the Space Shuttle era. Riker’s comment about the 52-star American flag indicating a time period was also interesting; it continues Star Trek’s theme of depicting a positive future for the United States in particular! I wonder which two new states those stars are meant to represent? Puerto Rico, perhaps, and Washington, DC? Those are the two most-likely candidates for statehood right now, I believe!
As an aside, the remastered version of the episode contains one major difference from the original, and it’s at this moment. The original mission patch on Colonel Richey’s flight suit was much more basic; an Apollo 17 patch with the name scrubbed off. The remaster updates this, giving the patch a unique design, which I think looks a lot better – and certainly feels a bit more realistic for a mission of this type. It’s only seen briefly, but it is seen in close-up, so I definitely think it was worth updating it when The Next Generation went through the remastering process a few years ago.
After Worf discovers the novel Hotel Royale, Riker hands the book to Data to summarise it. And I’ve always loved seeing Data do these superhuman feats – reading an entire book in seconds, as in this case, just makes him feel like a unique character with special abilities. Data proceeds to explain, in brief, the plot of the book to Captain Picard and the away team, and they realise that the characters in the book are some of the people we’ve been seeing downstairs. It was a bit of a heavy-handed approach to have the characters say, out loud, things that we could’ve easily understood for ourselves, but that’s my only real criticism of this scene.
Things take a darker turn again when Worf and Riker uncover the colonel’s diary. Somehow (and it isn’t explained how, sadly), Colonel Richey pieced together that the illusory hotel was concocted by an alien that he claims was aboard his ship and killed his crewmates. The alien (or aliens), out of a sense of guilt, built the hotel for him and allowed him to live there. He then spent the next thirty-eight years trapped in the Hotel Royale, before passing away.
So now we know why the hotel exists on this barren, otherwise lifeless world! The mystery has been at least partially solved, and with the exception of a bit of heavy-handedness in some of the dialogue, this worked pretty well. The mystery connects to Star Trek’s fictionalised past – the 21st Century – and to a race of aliens who appear to have inadvertently caused the deaths of the other NASA crew. And the book being misinterpreted as a kind of almost religious text by the aliens would be funny… if it wasn’t so dark. Colonel Richey’s final words, that he would “welcome death,” really hammer home that much darker tone for this aspect of the story.
The next scene aboard the Enterprise gives us Dr Pulaski’s only lines in the episode. The crew come up with a plan – spearheaded by Geordi – to “slice” into the forcefield around the hotel, even though doing so would cause the frozen atmosphere of Theta VIII to rush in. If the away team couldn’t be beamed out in time, Dr Pulaski opines that, in theory, they could be resuscitated after being flash-frozen.
I like Dr Pulaski, and one of my biggest Star Trek “what-if” questions is what The Next Generation and the rest of the franchise might’ve looked like had she stuck around. Her role in The Royale is relatively minor, but I daresay it’s no coincidence that her presence in the first episodes I can remember watching is a big part of why I find her to be such a fascinating character. Dr Crusher’s return in Season 3 was welcomed by fans (and the cast) at the time, of course, and we’ve since seen different things from her. But Dr Pulaski is a unique character; her conflicts with characters like Data and her occasionally standoffish manner contrast in a fun way with other members of the crew.
If you’re interested to read more about Dr Pulaski, click or tap here to check out my thoughts on her character.
As the away team splits up, Picard and Counsellor Troi begin to look over the text of Hotel Royale. I absolutely *adore* Picard’s disgusted expression on reading the opening line: “It was a dark and stormy night.” Somehow, that line has become a byword for poor-quality writing, often criticised and parodied, and its use here really emphasises the low-quality nature of this fictitious book. Picard, who had been discussing complex mathematics and high-brow philosophy with Riker at the start of the episode, is forced to engage with a text he clearly detests – and it’s kind of funny.
Back on the casino floor, Data attempts to get “Texas” to leave the hotel, surmising that he may be trapped within its walls, too. But the blackjack game is still going, and Texas shows off a much creepier side, as he tries to leverage Vanessa’s losing streak to… well, you can figure out the rest. It’s a turn for this previously comedic character to end up looking controlling, manipulative, sexually aggressive, and creepy, but it fits with the tone of the kind of novel Hotel Royale purports to be.
As Riker and Worf reconvene to share that they found “nothing” of consequence to aid in their escape, we get another of the pulpy scenes with the bellhop. It starts with the assistant manager, as the TV drama-style music swells, and leads into the arrival of Mickey D: the gangster at the heart of the novel.
The only part about this I didn’t really like was the action cutting between the planet and Picard, in his Ready-Room, who could apparently hear everything going on through the comm channel. Picard, for me, didn’t seem to take it as seriously as he perhaps should’ve; in-universe, the characters don’t know how dangerous the situation is, and we know that even holograms can kill if they malfunction. There’s no reason to assume that, just because this is a low-quality story, Riker and the away team will be safe – Mickey D could, perhaps, have harmed them if they’d got caught up in the middle of it. It was just a bit… tonally weird, I suppose. And cutting away from the actual scene to watch someone listening to it, only to make yet another comment on the quality of the writing? It just didn’t add a lot to the episode.
The conflict between Mickey D and the bellboy, over a girl named Rita, escalates, despite the assistant manager’s attempts to defuse the situation, and the two seem to be heading outside for a confrontation. However, Mickey D shoots the bellboy in the back, quips about Rita not being worth dying over, and then departs.
Mickey D is a completely one-dimensional character – but in a self-aware way. He’s a typical “Vegas gangster” of this time period, with his mannerisms, style of dress, and everything made out to emphasise that. His one big action – shooting a young man in the back – also hammers home that this is a man who doesn’t play fair. I’d never say he’s a great or even good character (he gets far too little screen time for that), but he fills a role in this story in a way that makes sense, and he advances the plot both within Hotel Royale’s fictional story, and for the away team down on Theta VIII. They witness the shooting (complete with over-acting and no visible injuries or wounds), and that kick-starts the final act of the episode.
Riker and Worf watch Mickey D walking out of the hotel, surprised that he’s able to leave while they remain trapped. This leads to a conversation with Captain Picard, who recounts the scene from the book. Riker then asks how the book ends – and after learning that “foreign investors” buy out the hotel, he comes up with a plan for the away team to *become* the foreign investors. This was hinted at, by the way, in their first interaction with the assistant manager shortly after their arrival.
One thing that’s great about this moment is how the typical TNG music sting starts to play, then blends into the TV drama jazz music that had defined the scenes recounting the pulpy Hotel Royale story. I just think it’s really creative; a way to kind of symbolise that these two disconnected halves of the episode’s story are going to come together. And, for the first time since arriving, Riker and the away team now have a plan to get back to the Enterprise-D.
The away team re-encounters “Texas” and Vanessa, this time at the craps table, and begin their scheme to win enough money gambling to buy out the hotel and finish the story, hopefully allowing them to escape. Data’s unique skillset once again proves invaluable; he’s able to “fix” the dice to make sure they win, much to Texas and Vanessa’s enjoyment.
We get a tiny sub-plot with “Texas” trying to bet against Data, and taking it personally when he loses. It was of some interest, especially given his earlier creepy behaviour, and seeing him taken down a few pegs is definitely satisfying. But he isn’t a major antagonist, and this feels like little more than a minor stumbling-block on the way to finishing the story.
What I love about this sequence is how into character both Data and Riker get. Data adopts mid-century gambling mannerisms and terminology, despite not quite understanding all of it, and his line “baby needs a new pair of shoes” is delivered in a totally deadpan way that *only* Brent Spiner could ever manage! It’s really funny, really cute, and it’s one of the many reasons why I fell in love with Data way back when. He’s just such a fun, charming character, and every time he tries act “more human” he does it so earnestly and in such a fun way that it’s impossible not to root for him.
You know the rest of the story: thanks to Data’s interference, they win over and over at craps, breaking the bank in the process. They then announce they’re buying the hotel, to the surprise and gratitude of the assistant manager, and spread the rest of their winnings around. Even “Texas” gets to benefit, remaining at the craps table with Data’s loaded dice.
I think we’re meant to understand that, because the away team was believed to be the trio of “foreign investors,” they couldn’t leave the hotel until they’d completed their role in the story. Whether Colonel Richey was also assigned that role by the aliens who created the illusion isn’t clear, though, and the episode ends with the core mystery solved – but still some unanswered questions.
Back in the Ready-Room, Picard and Riker recall Fermat’s last theorem, and suggest that some of the mysteries of Colonel Richey’s story, and the hotel on Theta VIII, may simply never be solved. And while that may seem unsatisfying (which, in a way, it is), it’s also an interesting take on space exploration and Starfleet’s mission, isn’t it? We’re used to our heroes turning up at a planet, solving a puzzle or unravelling every aspect of a mystery, and warping away to a new adventure. But space… well, it isn’t always easy to understand. Who were these aliens? Why did they choose that book for Colonel Richey? What went wrong in their encounter with humanity – and what were they even trying to do? Why strand Colonel Richey on Theta VIII – is the planet their homeworld? Why not attempt to make contact with the Enterprise-D if that’s the case? So many questions left unanswered… but the lack of an answer is kind of the point.
So that was The Royale! Thanks for joining me on this re-watch of the episode.
I had a blast stepping back in time some thirty-five years to the episode that first turned me into a Trekkie, and I hope it was a bit of fun to come along for the ride with me. I adore this story, despite its low-budget sets, hammy acting, and kind of silly premise – and I hope that came across! As a kid, I was absolutely transfixed by this story, and desperately keen to go on more adventures with Riker, Data, Worf, and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise-D. From this moment on, I was a regular viewer of The Next Generation, watching the rest of Season 2, then Season 3, and going back to earlier episodes from Season 1 when they were re-broadcast.
Star Trek became a pretty big part of my life from then on. As I navigated school and social life, and especially as I grew into adolescence and attended seondary school, it became both a source of joy and, sometimes, an escape from the real world. I loved going on these adventures with the crew, and when TNG’s two spin-offs (Deep Space Nine and Voyager) came to the UK, I watched those religiously, too. And I may never have started to do so were it not for The Royale.
In Star Trek’s big sixtieth anniversary year, I thought it was fun to return to my own origins as a Trekkie, and with today being the thirty-fifth anniversary of The Royale’s UK premiere… well, it all just sort of fell into place!
It’s impossible for me to be in any way “objective” when dealing with an episode like this, so I hope that didn’t impact your enjoyment of this re-watch. I wanted to go back to The Royale not to criticise it or pick it apart – though I daresay there’s been some of that – but really to celebrate what it means to me personally, and to my journey into the Star Trek fan community. Hopefully that positivity came across, anyway.
It’s been a long time since June 1991, and a lot has changed. But my love of Star Trek – and of The Royale – hasn’t diminished. Star Trek has been a near-constant presence in my life since this moment, even when new episodes and films weren’t being aired, and without it… well, I probably wouldn’t be here running a small website! I really don’t know where I’d be without this wonderful franchise, to tell you the truth.
If you liked this format and want more re-watches of older Star Trek episodes, I have several here on the website. My most recent was Where No Man Has Gone Before – The Original Series’ second pilot. You can find that piece by clicking or tapping here. Earlier this year, I also took a look at The First Duty from The Next Generation’s fifth season. Click or tap here to check that out. And if you visit my dedicated The Next Generation webpage, you can find all of my commentary and other TNG episode re-watches. Click or tap here to head there.
Later this year, we’ve got Strange New Worlds’ fourth season to come, and I plan to write episode reviews for that, so I hope you’ll join me for some of those. And as the sixtieth anniversary gets closer, I have a few other ideas for articles and episode re-watches that I hope I’ll be able to find time for.
Thanks for reading, and as always… Live Long and Prosper, friends!
Star Trek: The Next Generation is available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available, and is also available to buy on DVD/Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including The Next Generation and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Skydance/Paramount. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 