The Royale
- FIRST SHOWN (US)
- 27 March 1989
- ON
- First-run syndication
- STARDATE
- 42625.4
- DIRECTED BY
- Cliff Bole
- PRODUCTION NO.
- 138
WRITTEN BYWritten by Keith Mills
Keith Mills is a pseudonym for staff writer Tracy Tormé, who was unhappy with Maurice Hurley's rewrites of his script.
Wreckage from a 21st-century NASA craft leads Riker, Worf and Data to an old Earth hotel and casino standing impossibly on a hostile planet, and the revolving door only turns one way.
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSIS
Orbiting a planet with a lethal atmosphere, the Enterprise finds a fragment of an early 21st-century Earth spacecraft. Riker, Worf and Data beam down to a small pocket of breathable air and walk through a revolving door into the Royale, a period hotel and casino full of strangely repetitive guests and staff. They soon discover they cannot leave. In one room they find the remains of NASA astronaut Colonel Stephen Richey and a pulp novel called Hotel Royale. His diary reveals that his crew died after an encounter with aliens, who then built him a home based on the only guide to human life they had: the book. Richey lived out his days there alone. Realising the hotel follows the novel's plot, the away team plays its part. Data fixes a winning streak at the craps table, they buy the hotel, and, just as the story's ending demands, they finally walk out free.
- 01Tracy Tormé took the pseudonym Keith Mills in protest at Maurice Hurley's rewrites, and later disowned the episode.
- 02Tormé first pitched the idea in season one as “The Blue Moon Hotel”. It was one of two scripts that won him a staff job.
- 03Picard ponders Fermat's Last Theorem, still unsolved in his century. In reality it was proven in 1995, six years after broadcast.