A Fistful of Dollars

DVD, TNG S6 (A Fistful of Dollars)

It wouldn't be 'Star Trek' without the Wild West connotations, and this holodeck malfunction story pays tribute in part to the frontier style of storytelling that gave Roddenberry the idea for his wagon train to the stars. Foremost it is a novelty, and one that doesn't quite work on all levels, but at the same time it was inevitable that this theme would crop up eventually, and indeed it did on more than this occasion, though not as commonly as might have been expected (or as much as the Nazis!). Patrick Stewart's direction doesn't grab me, though he's allowed some rarer shots in keeping with the period nature, such as the must-have of seeing Worf's boots idly swaggering into town before we see more of him, and a nice long shot where the camera zooms out at the site of the prisoner transfer. Picard actually says the words Stewart would never have cause to utter in real life - "I'm not a good actor," but perhaps it could be amended with the word 'Director'? I think it's fair to say that his work as an actor far outshone his directorial contributions, at least on 'TNG.'

The chance of some R&R for the crew might have been better handled, as though we do get a very few scenes featuring Beverly and her acting group or Data and Spot (and best of all, Picard, trying to practice on his Ressikan or Kataanen flute when people keep interrupting him), but they tend to be purely for the purposes of demonstrating things are going wrong aboard ship. I'd have liked to have seen more of the other characters and what they were doing in their off-duty hours, but it's definitely a Worf episode, even if the big guy doesn't come across brilliantly. Somehow he's an expert engineer who can jury-rig a communicator into a personal forcefield, yet has trouble doing his normal job of security! He is operating in the Old West, but I would have liked him to demonstrate more of his skills where most of the time his actions are dictated by those around him.

The episode is saved from the unremarkable by Brent Spiner's brilliance in not one, not two, not even three or four, but five roles! Six if you include Data himself. While it doesn't match 'Brothers' for intensity and is much more a range of comedy Western stereotypes, it remains a delight to see him bend his words around with a twang, especially when Data takes on the accent! I didn't understand why Geordi was back to growing a beard, but I expect it was the actor's choice for some reason other than the series and the writer's threw in a line to accommodate it, but it still seemed out of place. My personal favourite of Spiner's roles in the story was the Hollander boy locked in the jail, putting on an air of false confidence yet also being a bit wary of Worf, and like Buck Hennessey in 'The Big Country,' he was just a snivelling coward in reality, lying to his 'paw' about how bad he'd been treated an' all.

The location looked great, a real change from the blackness of space or the usual planet settings we see, and there's even a nice hint of the old Westerns in the music, as well as the sight of the Enterprise heading off into the sunset at the very end, but Holodeck malfunctions can wear thin, and though I love 'em (any excuse for fancy dress or fish out of water situations), I don't think the setting was played up enough and became too much about solving a problem before it was too late. It wouldn't have killed them to simply have the characters having fun in the Holodeck, perhaps getting most of the main cast involved as they were in 'Time's Arrow.'

***