Is this goofy or what? In the
cash cow world of Star Trek, evidently no concept is too silly
not to milk dry.Okay, okay, he's listed. Now leave me alone...
Dixon Hill
Dixon Hill character created by Tracy
Thorne
Based on characters and concepts created by Gene Rodenberry
Is this goofy or what? In the
cash cow world of Star Trek, evidently no concept is too silly
not to milk dry.
In one of Star Trek: The Next Generation's more popular episodes, "The Big Goodbye," we discover that USS Enterprise Captain Jean-Luc Picard likes nothing better than to kick back and enter the Holodeck, and pretend that he's DIXON HILL, a tough guy San Francisco private dick straight out of the 1940s pulps.
Picard first discovered the Dixon Hill character while reading some old detective fiction -- the first Dixon Hill story "The Big Goodbye" was supposedly published on Earth in 1934 in Amazing Detectives Stories Magazine.
Fascinated by the two-fisted gumshoe, Picard programmed a holodeck simulation so he could play detective. Dressed in period clothing and sporting a spiffy slant brim hat, Hill had an office, complete with a sexy secretary and a bottle of Scotch. However, due to the inevitable holodeck malfunction, and compromised safety overrides, Hill/Picard is soon caught up in a real case where the consequences could prove fatal indeed.
It's was a cheesy but popular enough concept that it was used a few more times in subsequent episodes, and in the 1996 Star Trek flick First Contact. And no doubt there are endless toys and trading cards and posters and games and bikini briefs and all sorts of essential collectibles featuring an image of Patrick Stewart with a Dixon Hill-era fedora clamped down on his shiny dome.
It even inspired at least one novel, 2002's Star Trek: The Next Generation #65: A Hard Rain by Dean Wesley Smith. In that one, Picard has to enter the Holodeck to become Hill and locate the 'Heart of the Adjuster' (actually a golf ball-sized hunk of space metal or something) or else the Enterprise will be blown to smithereens.
Even Trekkies (or Trekkers or whatever they call themselves this month) -- generally not the most discerning and discriminating of readers -- found this one not quite up to the high standards of literary excellence that other Star Trek spin-off novels are so well-known for.
TELEVISION
- "The Big Goodbye"
Original broadcast: January 11,1988
Written by Tracy Torme
Directed by Joseph Scanlan
Starring Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard/DIXON HILL
Guest starring Lawrence Tierney, Harvey Jason, David Selburg, William Boyett, Gary Armagnal, Dick Miller
Picard, Dr. Crusher and Data are placed in actual danger when the holodeck malfunctions while they are playing a Dixon Hill program. .
.- "Manhunt"
Original broadcast: June 19, 1989
Written by Terry Deveraux
Directed by Rob Bowman
Starring Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard/DIXON HILL
Guest starring Carel Struycken, Robert O'Reilly, Rhonda Aldrich, Mick Fleetwood, Wren T. Brown, Majel Barrett, Colm Meaney, Robert Costanzo
The Dixon Hill program is accessed briefly, when Picard tries to escape the attentions of a promiscuous ambassador by hiding out, but the ambassador follows him in and becomes infatuated with one of the characters.
.- "Clues"
Starring Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard/DIXON HILL
Guest starring Whoopi Goldberg
Picard introduces crewmember Guinan to the Dixon Hill program. She's not impressed.
FILM
NOVELS
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
