'The Big Goodbye' emphasizes a detective story more so than any of its embeddings in the Star Trek world. It has dark humor, good acting, subtlety, and interesting character development. It unluckily aired after three mediocre episodes, so it gets on my nerves with its lack of SF and tangential storyline going into the 'rabbit hole' far away from Star Trek.
I liked the detective story for its own sake since I'm a huge 'Maltese Falcon' and film noir fan. The dark humor is witty: 'oh I'd like to be interrogated under the lights; why does he get to have all the fun' (from Dr. Crusher; these are my favorite types of lines in the episode).
The plot: Picard's next mission is to try to initiate diplomatic relations with the Jarada, a touchy and formal race that requires a precise greeting given in their language. If the Captain makes the slightest error, then the Jarada will take offense and refuse any further diplomatic negotiations.
But Dr. Crusher recommends to Picard that he take his mind off perfecting the difficult greeting. He likes the idea and decides to go play make-believe in the holodeck room, using his favorite Dixon Hill reality hologram program. During his game, the Jarada scan the ship and create a series of malfunctions that lock the Captain in a Holodeck room -- allowing him to use most of the episode playing Dixon Hill.
So my take on "The Big Goodbye" (Episode 11, Season 1, Air Date 01/11/88, Star-date 41997.7) is that it misuses Star Trek themes to essentially employ a detective story for most of the episode, giving it an odd invasive quality into the personal time of the characters.
I noticed a few things of interest to me and the Star Trek world:
(1) Picard notes that the Holodeck is often used for crew training and relaxation. I'd rather see crew training and SF, and not personal Captain play time.
(2) I noticed the limited way in which Data learned all of the Dixon Hill stories; he had the computer spin through all the pages. We also see his brother learn from the ship library in the next episode, 'Datalore', in a similar way. So Data apparently doesn't have all of the ship's library of information already in his neural net and he doesn't have Internet-type connections to the ship computer library.
(3) I also noted that a fake bullet caused real blood to flow from a ship historian (Mr. Whalen). I don't buy that a hologram bullet could puncture skin, so this goes to show that much of the "hologram deck" is actually a recreated world of physical characters and substance (perhaps programmed and designed from teleport and food dispensing type technology). It seems they violate the disconnect from holograms and physical people, so it's not really much of a hologram room at all: it's a teleport/materialization room (with a little hologram technology around the edges)! If so, how could a computer control safety settings and prevent a metal bullet from harming you? Does it usually create Styrofoam bullets?
But I'd rather Star Trek stories arise more naturally and through the context of the Star Trek world, and not from out of context reasons, such as 'let's do a western', 'lets toss in Sherlock Holmes', 'let's do a film noir theme'. Sometimes the holodeck really works, as in '11001001', but sometimes it just allows the writers a way to seemingly broaden the appeal of the show and turn it into a side quest or a short film festival.
I wish the Enterprise crew would spend their personal time in the holodeck in private and didn't allow us to spy on them; if NASA did this it would bring shame and dishonor on science, civilization, and common decency. Sometimes the holodeck side quests really work, if they have strong SF elements. But this episode was more like a week off Star Trek for me, as if an English student took over the show!
I liked the detective story for its own sake since I'm a huge 'Maltese Falcon' and film noir fan. The dark humor is witty: 'oh I'd like to be interrogated under the lights; why does he get to have all the fun' (from Dr. Crusher; these are my favorite types of lines in the episode).
The plot: Picard's next mission is to try to initiate diplomatic relations with the Jarada, a touchy and formal race that requires a precise greeting given in their language. If the Captain makes the slightest error, then the Jarada will take offense and refuse any further diplomatic negotiations.
But Dr. Crusher recommends to Picard that he take his mind off perfecting the difficult greeting. He likes the idea and decides to go play make-believe in the holodeck room, using his favorite Dixon Hill reality hologram program. During his game, the Jarada scan the ship and create a series of malfunctions that lock the Captain in a Holodeck room -- allowing him to use most of the episode playing Dixon Hill.
So my take on "The Big Goodbye" (Episode 11, Season 1, Air Date 01/11/88, Star-date 41997.7) is that it misuses Star Trek themes to essentially employ a detective story for most of the episode, giving it an odd invasive quality into the personal time of the characters.
I noticed a few things of interest to me and the Star Trek world:
(1) Picard notes that the Holodeck is often used for crew training and relaxation. I'd rather see crew training and SF, and not personal Captain play time.
(2) I noticed the limited way in which Data learned all of the Dixon Hill stories; he had the computer spin through all the pages. We also see his brother learn from the ship library in the next episode, 'Datalore', in a similar way. So Data apparently doesn't have all of the ship's library of information already in his neural net and he doesn't have Internet-type connections to the ship computer library.
(3) I also noted that a fake bullet caused real blood to flow from a ship historian (Mr. Whalen). I don't buy that a hologram bullet could puncture skin, so this goes to show that much of the "hologram deck" is actually a recreated world of physical characters and substance (perhaps programmed and designed from teleport and food dispensing type technology). It seems they violate the disconnect from holograms and physical people, so it's not really much of a hologram room at all: it's a teleport/materialization room (with a little hologram technology around the edges)! If so, how could a computer control safety settings and prevent a metal bullet from harming you? Does it usually create Styrofoam bullets?
But I'd rather Star Trek stories arise more naturally and through the context of the Star Trek world, and not from out of context reasons, such as 'let's do a western', 'lets toss in Sherlock Holmes', 'let's do a film noir theme'. Sometimes the holodeck really works, as in '11001001', but sometimes it just allows the writers a way to seemingly broaden the appeal of the show and turn it into a side quest or a short film festival.
I wish the Enterprise crew would spend their personal time in the holodeck in private and didn't allow us to spy on them; if NASA did this it would bring shame and dishonor on science, civilization, and common decency. Sometimes the holodeck side quests really work, if they have strong SF elements. But this episode was more like a week off Star Trek for me, as if an English student took over the show!