Star Trek: The Next Generation 3.19

Captain's Holiday

Captain Picard returns from mediating a treaty exhausted. He has no interest in taking some time off but the crew conspires to make him take some time off on Risa.

Picard finds himself caught in the midst of some intrigue involving a human archaeologist, a Ferengi, and a pair of Vorgons from the 27th century. All of them are looking for the Tox Uthat, a device of great power that originated in the 27th century and that they believe to be hidden on Risa in the 24th century.

Sivak, the Ferengi, sees Vash, the human archaeologist, kiss Captain Picard when he first arrives. Sivak assumes that Picard is working with Vash and confronts him while he is trying to read a book. Sivak demands that Picard give him a disc with information revealing the whereabouts of the Tox Uthat. Picard has no idea what Sivak is talking about.

Picard subsequently meets Vash and the Vorgons, separately. The Vorgons explain who they are and why they are there. Vash explains that she was the assistant to Samuel Estragon, a scientist who spent years searching for the Tox Uthat. She says that she plans to donate it to the Daystrom Institute once she finds it.

Picard agrees to help Vash find the device without telling her about the Vorgons. They find the site but not the device. They eventually give up after being forced by Sivak to dig a very big hole where the Tox Uthat was supposed to be.

Picard and Vash return to the resort. He catches her trying to leave without saying goodbye. He intuits that she found the device a long time ago and was just trying to convince Sivak that the device didn't exist. His guess proves to be correct. The Vorgons come for the device. Picard has the Enterprise destroy it. The Vorgons explain that's exactly what they were expecting to happen. Picard and Vash say goodbye to one another and he returns to the Enterprise.

Thoughts

This is the first of three episodes that Vash appeared in. Q is in both of the other two. One is an episode of The Next Generation and the other is an episode of Deep Space Nine.

Sivak was played by Max Grodénchik who later played Rom on Deep Space Nine.

This would have been a much better episode if there had been some chemistry between Picard and Vash, but there wasn't. Their "romance" felt fairly wooden and forced. It felt like she was talking down to him every time she called him by name. The irony here is that Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) and Jennifer Hetrick (Vash) dated around this time.

On the whole this was just an okay episode, which like the romance between Picard and Vash, lacked a spark or anything that made it feel special. I also feel lukewarm about this episode because everything seemed to get wrapped up so neatly in the end. A little bit of subtlety would have gone a long way towards making this a better episode.