A Fistful of Datas

The Holodeck malfunction returns in this charming tribute to the Spaghetti Western

Captain Picard is trying to practice playing his Ressikan flute, but the crew keep bothering him in his quarters. Last up is Worf, who is trying to weasel his way out of spending time with his son, Alexander. No dice, says the Captain, go spend your time being a parent. Tough break, Worf! So off we go into the Holodeck, for an old timey adventure in the ‘Ancient West’. But of course, nothing goes smoothly when the episode centres upon the Holodeck, and before we know it we’re beset with malfunctions and the cowboy adventure is positively overrun with copies of Data. Can Worf and Alexander overcome their android antagonist and save the day? Pardner, it’s a done deal.

Words

This was Patrick Stewart’s third at-bat as director, but it wasn’t originally assigned to him. The original director wasn't available, so Stewart stepped into the breach.

Stewart was hugely excited by the opportunity!

There had been rumours around the production offices for some months that there was a Western episode coming up, and, of course, every director was eager to get a hold of it because everyone feels they have at least one Western in them.

But despite his gung ho attitude, Stewart knew basically nothing about Westerns! However, he was a quick study, as Jeri Taylor recalled:

Patrick approached this with such zealousness – he went out and rented two classic Westerns every night. The next morning he’d come in and tell us what great ideas he’d had, and we could always tell just what he’d watched.

As a result, a great deal of scenes were tributes to classic Westerns - for example, the shot where Alexander peeks under the saloon doors is a homage to Shane.

The screenplay itself began as Robert Hewitt Wolfe’s very first Star Trek screenplay. He would go on to write a whopping 37 episodes of DS9, but this is his only episode of TNG. He’d been in the running for a long time, as he later remembered:

I’d pitched to TNG a few times. I didn’t sell anything, but Michael Piller liked my pitches enough that he invited me back. Finally, I came in and pitched two stories, one of which I was sure they’d buy – but didn’t – and another one which they actually did buy.

The original title was “The Good, the Bad and the Klingon”, but was eventually switched to another Sergio Leone classic ‘spaghetti Western’ (so called because they were shot in Southern Italy, which offers a passable facsimile the US ‘Old West’). That said, the story they ran with is more like the 1959 John Wayne Western Rio Bravo (a suggestion by Ira Steven Behr).

Brannon Braga passed on working on “Relics” to take the script editing assignment for this one, and he shares the teleplay credit with Wolfe. Amusingly, Braga (like Stewart) was also not really familiar with Westerns, and like the director had to immerse himself in the genre: “I became a lover of the Western genre and watched dozens of them.”

And of course, this story brings back that hoary old TNG chestnut, the Holodeck malfunction. As scientific advisor Naren Shankar later points out:

We hadn’t done a holodeck malfunctioning story in three seasons, which is a perfectly good track record. It was a lighthearted show and it was a nice show. People love “Shore Leave” and this show reminds me of that way.

A few scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, but what remains is a fine cowboy romp with a very silly - and very TNG - twist.

Acting Roles

This is a Worf and Alexander episode, but this is Brent Spiner's show.

He had an absolute blast!

I had the chance to play five or six characters in a show and Patrick directed, which made it additionally fun. It's certainly the most fun episode I've had to do and I would have liked to have done a show called “For a Few Datas More”.

Producer David Livingstone thoroughly enjoyed Spiner’s hokey acting here!

Brent chewed every piece of scenery in sight and there wasn't any left by the time he got done.

Michael Dorn’s Worf and Brian Bonsall’s Alexander Rozhenko work brilliantly as the focal characters of the story, and this is easily my favourite Alexander story in TNG.

But the big surprise here is that Marina Sirtis' Troi gets to join the fun as a sidekick!

You will be unsurprised to read that the writing team originally proposed her playing the dancing girl from the saloon. Nobody seems to remember who rescued her from this fate, or who came up with the role-within-a-role of Durango. However, one anecdote does survive: during the early shots, Sirtis tried to blow smoke rings - but apparently Dorn cut her off and said: “Stop it! Don’t be funnier than me, this is my show.”

John Pyper-Ferguson, who plays the pre-Data Eli Hollander, was cast because of his small role in Unforgiven as Charley Hecker.

He got a lot of Western roles in his long career (more than 150 roles in all!), but you’re most likely to recognise him for his recurring roles in Alphas, Agents of SHIELD (one of the Watchdogs), Suits, The Last Ship, or The 100. He’s fine here, but all he’s really doing is warming up the role for Brent Spiner.

His bandito sidekick is played by Jorge Cervera, Jr (and of course, by Brent Spiner).

Cervera has been in a fair few shows (including Airwolf and Automan), and has more than a few roles in Western stories too. I rather suspect his casting here was based upon his bandito role in the dud comedy Western The Three Amigos.

Finally among the guest stars is Joy Garrett’s Miss Annie.

Her role here is basically to set up the punchline to the episode, when Brent Spiner gets to appear in drag, and she does it with great panache. She’s most famous for playing Jo Johnson in Days of Our Lives for a whopping 403 episodes! Garrett sadly died the following year, and apart from her long running daytime soap role, this was her final role.

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

There’s one studio miniature in the episode, footage from “The Drumhead” (which also appeared in “The Game”) is recomposited here with a planet in the background to represent the USS Biko (named after the South African civil rights activist).

But the SFX team’s challenges this week are all about the location shoot. Every one of those Western sequences were shot in just one day on the backlot of Universal Studios - a set known as the ‘Western Town’. It’s at Six Points, about a quarter of an hour’s drive from Paramount Studios with good traffic, which is to say two hours away during a typical day in Los Angeles!

Shooting on the backlot was uncomfortable for everyone, as production designer Richard James remembered:

The temperature must have been a hundred and thirteen in the shade. It was awful. The guys in makeup, particularly Michael Dorn, were just miserable.

Guy Vardaman (below) was one of three people acting as a body double for Brent Spiner on the day.

Vardaman also remembered the shoot being a nightmare:

Everybody felt for Michael because of the Klingon headpiece and the wig and all that. It all came down to the heat, with all of us periodically running back to stand in front of whatever air-conditioning unit was functional – anything to avoid sweating makeup onto the wardrobe. Data should never be observed sweating.

But regardless, Patrick Stewart had a wonderful time!

That was one of the most exciting days of my life. I had three cameras rolling almost all the time there, including an action slow-motion camera. I had the biggest crane that you could get in Hollywood. I had some wonderful toys to play with.

He particularly enjoyed the crane shots:

I was buckled into the spare seat alongside the camera, and someone actually found a megaphone for me. I was able to call ‘Action’ through a megaphone, on the Warner Bros lot!

Here’s Stewart in action!

This episode won an Emmy... you’ll be unsurprised to learn that it was in Outstanding Individual Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Drama Series. Still, at least it got a nod, and awards or no, this episode is enormous fun, and quite possibly the best of the TNG comedy episodes. Oh, and who could forget that wonderful closing shot!

See ya next time, pards.