User Reviews

Picard is tired and everyone knows it. The problem is that he doesn't like recreation. His job is his recreation. After the crew won't leave him alone, he grudgingly heads for Risa, a pleasure planet, where there are half clothed women and sunshine from two suns. Instead of getting rest, he gets hooked up with bad girl Vash, who is one of those people who sparkle with joy, but are incredibly dangerous. She is sort of an Indiana Jones in space and can't stay out of trouble. Picard is immediately attracted to her and they become allies in some intrigue over an artifact, a weapon that is the stuff of mythology. She has ticked off a Ferengi, cheating him out of a lot of money. The neat thing about this episode is the parrying and thrusting of the two characters. Both are formidable and anticipate the moves of the other. If this were not Star Trek, they would make a neat kind of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, using deception and betrayal to get what they want. Now, where exactly is that planet?

In "Captain's Holiday" Picard takes a week's long shore leave on Risa on the advice if his crew. But he doesn't get too much R&R when he runs into a beautiful archeologist and a Ferengi both vying to find the location of a mythical weapon rumored to be from the future that has the capability to halt a star's nuclear energy. Two time traveling aliens going back in time to find Picard since the legend says HE'S the one to find it only complicates things further.

This episode is basically solely devoted to Picard. I feel like he's almost been underserved up to this point so something like this had to be coming. This one gave me real Indiana Jones vibes. Picard's love for archeology is at center stage here as he's off adventuring with his foil/love interest. The two actually make a fairly good pairing.

There's enough holes in this plot to drive a truck through but the episode is still exciting, all things considered. We get a few cool new sets. All the scenes in the Enterprise of them trying to convince him to go I found fairly annoying but it gets a lot better when he gets to Risa. Not a classic but it introduces Cash to us and goes along at a fairly quick clip.

"Captain's Holiday" is a nice little piece of escapism. Additionally, it is very unique in style, as it primarily concerns Captain Picard and you see very, very little of the crew otherwise.

When the show begins, the Doctor is concerned because the Captain has been under a lot of stress and he keeps refusing to take a vacation. So, with the help of the crew, they are ultimately able to get him to go for this long needed break. However, instead of rest and relaxation, Picard wanders into the middle of a treasure hunt--sort of like Indiana Jones, except that this relic is from the FUTURE! Along the way, he meets up with an annoying Ferengi, some time travelers and a hottie named Vash (Jennifer Hetrick). Vash is interesting because this is the first indication that the Captain MIGHT just have a libido after all!

I liked this one because it was such a change of pace. Additionally, they did this without invoking the holodeck--something I really appreciated. Well worth seeing and rather fun.

ST:TNG:67 - "Captain's Holiday" (Stardate: 43745.2) - this is the 19th episode of the 3rd season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Captain Picard takes a long needed vacation to relieve stress. In the process, he visits the tropical resort of Risa where he meets a beautiful adventurer named Vash (Jennifer Hetrick who will also make another appearance in the fourth season episode "Qpid"). Meeting her also means no peace for our stressed out captain as adventures await - together they search for a legendary and elusive historical object . . . from the 27th century!

Trivia note: the Ferengi appear in this episode again.

I enjoyed watching Captain Picard begrudgingly taking a vacation. I absolutely love how stiff and prim and proper Picard is and it is always a good time to watch him squirm a bit when taken out of his comfort zone.

This episode had a nice twist with Vash actually being two steps ahead of everyone (except Picard) with her clever misdirection in the caves. Makes sense that Picard would be attractive to a smart girl with style.

It was nice how Picard's private investigator pastime and archaeologist hobby came into play in this episode. Another episode that SHOWS the character is smart instead of telling me the character is smart ---- this is a good thing.

A solid episode with a nice little peak into Picard's personal life. What about Bev? Well, it's old 'love em and leave em' Picard at work again.

I would put this into the fun category. I enjoyed it.

Picard is being crabby so the crew convinces him to take a vacation on Risa. He encounters a female Indiana Jones and they go on a treasure hunt for a powerful artifact that was brought back from the future.

This is a great episode that manages to stand out even in a season full of great episodes. Patrick Stewert is phenomenal here, first as the grumpy, stressed-out Captain, then as the reluctant vacationer who just wants to be left alone, and the finally as the adventurous archaeologist who finds the treasure, out-foxes the fox, and saves the day. It's hard to imagine an actor with a performance to match Stewert's here, but Jennifer Hetrick manages do exactly that with her portrayal of Vash, and the chemistry between Picard and Vash is incredible.

Vash is a treasure hunter, an archaeologist, and a con artist all wrapped in one. She beats Ferengi at their own game, matches wits with Picard, and has no issue hiking over 20 kilometers through the jungle. And her chemistry and charm is bewitching. Her smile, the way her eyes flash with mischievous life, and the fact that she is so confident and sure of what she wants and isn't afraid to do whatever she needs to in order to get it all make her a desirable woman, even for the reluctant Picard. Quite frankly, she's the only woman who has ever hoped to match Picard's presence or hold his interest. It helps that she is very attractive, too.

The time-traveling Vorgons are an interesting inclusion to the story. I think that the writers of the episode intended us to take the ending at face value, but it's vague enough that I am left wondering what their true intentions were all along. They seem almost satisfied at the end when Picard destroys the Uthat. Maybe they were really sent back to prevent the Uthat from falling into the wrong hands, as they initially claimed, and the fact that Picard destroyed it was good enough for them. If the ending was supposed to definitively imply that the Vorgons were thieves trying to steal the Uthat and were foiled by Picard, then the writers did a bad job of making that clear. I prefer to think it was left vague on purpose.

This episode also features Max Grodenchik as the Ferengi Sovak. He would later go on to play Rom on DS9. His mannerisms as Sovak are very similar to Rom's (including that awkward bent-over shuffling walk), but Sovak is much more of a traditional Ferengi, being quite greedy and unscrupulous, and slightly less clueless than Rom (though still fairly clueless). One untraditional Ferengi aspect that he shares with Rom is his attraction towards alien women, being obviously smitten by Vash.

We also get our first look at Risa in the episode. It would become the go-to planet for referencing popular vacation spots throughout later episodes and series, especially on DS9, including a return to the planet on that show. The Risian catchphrase "All that is ours, is yours," is also re-used in that episode, as are the references to Horga'hns and jamaharon.

This story has everything you need for a great episode of sci-fi television. Time travel, mind games, adventure, space babes, and fun, compelling characters that make the story come alive. Definitely one of TNG's best ever.

THE GOOD:

-Vash

-Vash and Picard together

-Vash and Sovak together

-The scene where Picard is offered jamaharon, then has his confrontation with Sovak, and then gets properly introduced to Vash. The whole scene is gold from beginning to end.

-Riker's mischievous smirk at the end. He has his moments.

THE BAD:

Nothing worth noting here

THE UGLY:

-Time travel always gets messy. I love the storytelling possibilities it opens up, but the paradoxes and complicated interactions it introduces always require a bit more suspension of disbelief than I am able to muster. In particular, now that the Vorgons know exactly where the Uthat is, why wouldn't they just return to the spot before Vash's arrival and dig it up themselves? It makes no sense unless you willfully choose not to think about it, which is sadly the case with 99.9% of time travel stories. Alas.

-Making love in the cave. Anybody who has ever been in a real cave knows that they are gross and full of all manner of creepy crawlies-- especially in a jungle area like Risa. Not even the chemistry between Vash and Picard could overcome the mood-killing sensation of having a centipede crawl across your leg or seeing huge spiders on the cave wall. Sorry, but no sexy time in caves please.

In a slight departure from the norm, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is persuaded by his crew to take a little down time to relieve the stress from negotiating a peace agreement between a couple of hostile planets. However, once on the planet Risa, it seems that no one would actually leave him alone. After being visited by a pair of alien Vorgons from the 27th Century, he becomes embroiled in a search for a legendary weapon known as the Tox Uthat, a quantum phase inhibitor with the ability to halt a nuclear reaction within a star. He's drawn into the quest by the lovely Vash (Jennifer Hetrick), who has devoted five years of her life in search of the weapon following the death of her mentor, Professor Samuel Etragon. Complicating the pursuit for the Tox Uthat is the appearance of the Ferengi Sovak (Max Grodénchik), who is not only on the hunt for the Uthat, but also eyes Vash as a potential romantic conquest. You know right from the start that that idea is going nowhere, especially after Picard and Vash eye each other over as potential romantic partners. The intrigue in this episode doesn't get very far. The calculating Vash has already retrieved the Tox Uthat, but goes through the motions with Picard to throw Savok off the scent by feigning that they've gone to a wrong location. The frustrated Savok keeps up the effort by excavating the suspected site further, while the Vorgons later reappear at the Captain's retreat to claim the weapon, which Vash is attempting to abscond with. Even though the Tox Uthat sounded like it was a pretty valuable piece of weaponry, Picard had already prearranged with Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) to destroy it upon his signal, using a directive he called transporter code fourteen. Inadvertently, Picard actually fulfilled a historical note for the Vorgons, who already had it on record that the Captain would do so. But you know time travel stories - Picard theorized that the Vorgons might attempt the rescue again, but it didn't stop him from returning to the Enterprise for the next adventure after a touching farewell with the scheming Vash.

No. This one seems to be Star Trek meets Indiana Jones. The story certainly had a lot of promise and it was greatly helped by the inclusion of Sovak (who could be a twin brother of Rom). We also get to meet the Vorgans, a pair of aliens who have travelled back in time to locate a lost crystal, the Tox Uthat which is a dangerous device that can destroy suns. It's when the love interest starts to take over the story that I start to lose interest. There is no denying Vash is an attractive woman, and with all the other attractions on the Planet Riser, who can blame our captain for feeling a little frisky. But I sometimes get the feeling that TNG is drifting into soap-opera land, and this was definitely one of those episodes. No.

We get a continuation of a long star trek traditional established by that rapscallion Gene Roddenberry ---- hiring performers that you are (or had) slept with. Ahh, romance.

From an 'opposites attract' point of the view, the pairing of Vash and Picard makes sense and it's fun to see Vash take him out of his comfort zone.

Who can blame Picard? Vash has that Princess Leia sass and she has beautiful skin!

Picard is definitely captain material ----- he set up a plan to destroy the crystal WMD that required knowing he would bump into vash and the time traveling aliens would confront them and attempt to steal the crystal at that precise moment. My Man! What a guy, right?

The chemistry between Picard/Vash carries this episode. I personally like when star trek is either weird/creative or throwing some punches at me but I can enjoy a low stakes episode .... to a certain degree.

I do love the idea of Captain Picard finally going on a vacation and some massive calamity occurs. I think a spy story would have fit the character well ----- tie in to the private dick story lines of previous seasons. *shrugs*

New uniforms, new credit sequence and Doctor Crusher returned to us but was Season 3 of The Next Generation really as good as we remember? Some of that enthusiasm may have have been generated by relief that the series had not been cancelled but the 1990's also heralded an era of considerably more stability behind the scenes. Senior Trekker will continue to score every episode with a 5.

It's alleged that Patrick Stewart asked that the Captain had more exciting away missions and romantic incidents (although he didn't use the word "romantic") and so here the writers gave him both. An absolutely first class Indiana Jones style mystery for him to get carried away in is just the antidote the character needs to all that serious Captaining stuff.

Some of the innuendo around the Horga'hn (fertility symbol) and Jamaharon (basically, free love) is a bit stale after thirty years and Riker's leering insinuations are probably actionable but no-one minded at the time. This was the first episode in which we visited the Pleasure Planet Risa and, if it does look a bit too much like a somewhat toned-down Playboy Mansion for today's taste, we did at least get to see some scantily clad young MEN in the background.

We also saw two more important firsts. The fantastic Max Grodenchik, whose consummate portrayal of Ferengi characters has added so much to the Star Trek universe over the years and Jennifer Hetrick who, despite limiting her screen appearances, made an indelible impression as the perpetually scheming Vash.