We are back with another Star Trek episode review! After a pair of forays into the wildly uneven third season of the original show, time to jump forward a couple decades into the Trek show I grew up with: good old Next Generation.
The Royale is a season 2 episode, which like TOS season 3 was extremely chaotic. Gates McFadden had temporarily left the show (her and then producer Maurice Hurley did not get along, to put it mildly), there was a writer's strike looming (an explanation, not a forgiveness, for the all-time worst Shades of Grey) and the overall quality of TNG was still lacking. However, the show was improving and pieces were falling into the right places, such as La Forge becoming the chief engineer or Worf getting some character development. Season 2 features some truly exceptional episodes and of course Riker growing his trademark beard (he just looks dopey without it).
While not good, The Royale could be described as a guilty pleasure. The Enterprise-D discovers traces of a destroyed Earth vessel from the mid 21st century, the wreckage of which when transported aboard has 'NASA' printed upon the hull fragment. How lucky they beamed up that exact piece! Or that it is still intact enough to spell 'NASA'. The debris leads them to a planet completely uninhabitable to human life, aside from an inexplicable small pocket of breathable atmosphere. Riker, Worf and Data beam down to investigate, find a revolving door within the dark void, and then the episode gets real silly.
The biggest problem is how little of a story there is, and as a result the episode is filled with scenes that carry little purpose. To its benefit there is some creepy atmosphere, with most of the characters of the casino completely ignoring our heroes as they inquire what's happening... and the reveal when they realize they're trapped here is unsettling. But then the story farts around a bit, with the (annoying) Texan character and the vacuous woman he's clearly bamboozling... or the hotel manager who is clearly not helpful yet they keep asking him questions... or the bellboy with the cliche lovestory and even more cliche dialogue.
It is meant to be a parody of such drugstore novels of course, and its self-awareness of this is what salvages the episode. This isn't taking itself too seriously, which gives it some charm. Picard's visible yet subtle exasperation at the grating, awful plot of the Royale novel (revealed as the basis for this simulation) is quite amusing. Same with the little bits where Data, Worf and Riker are confused how an elevator works, or what room service is. The episode over indulges on this though, as it does the overall corniness of the Royale world... which is to its greatest detriment. As for the ending, with our heroes winning enough at Craps to buy the casino thanks to Data manipulating the dice... it's cheesy and predictable. Which is the point! It's just way overdone by its own parody and isn't particularly enjoyable as such.
Plus there's the weird coda with Picard discussing Fermat's Last Theorem, a famously unsolved mathematics problem that tries to be some kind of allegory for the episode... but just doesn't fit in here thematically at all. Riker and Picard try to make sense of the Royale simulation (window dressing for a NASA astronaut marooned accidentally by aliens) and Picard muses how like Fermat's Last Theorem it is a mystery that may never be solved. Except it was, in 1994 (six years after this episode aired). Ah well, can't blame the show for that one I suppose.
Overall... it's a bad episode but with enough charm here and there to save it from being completely pointless and terrible. How dated it feels, in story and style, hurts it quite a bit, and it really needed more in the way of substance or perhaps a more immediate threat. Still, if you're like me and enjoy rolling your eyes at laughably bad drama (which the characters of the simulation definitely provide) then you'll probably like this episode more than its weak reputation suggests. It's definitely below average though, a Warp 4.
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