Acclaimed Star Trek Director Calls Out Captain Picard’s Favorite Hobby As Sadism

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 minute ago

In Star Trek: The Original Series, we got small glimpses of how characters in the far future were still obsessed with art and literature from their distant past. The Next Generation took this storytelling trope to the next level, primarily through the character of Captain Picard: when he’s not commanding the starship Enterprise, Picard likes to read Shakespeare and listen to classical music. But his most beloved form of entertainment is the last thing you’d expect: he likes to visit the holodeck and recreate gumshoe detective adventures from the 1940s.

Intellectual Sadism (noun) – the tendency to derive pleasure from demonstrating one’s mental superiority by exposing, correcting, or humiliating an inferior person’s perceived ignorance or errors.

You see, Picard is a huge fan of Dixon Hill, a private investigator who solved crimes in 1941 San Francisco. Most fans treat this as a fun affectation, one that gives the stodgy captain some much-needed personality and texture. But on one occasion, a veteran Star Trek director called out Picard’s hobby for what it is: throwing his advanced intellect around with a bunch of virtual cavemen.

Captain Picard, The Gumshoe Detective

Rob Bowman directed “Manhunt,” a Season 2 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Picard faces something much more dangerous than the Borg: an extra-horny Lwaxana Troi (she’s currently going through “the Phase,” which makes her Betazed people especially randy) is on the prowl for a new husband. She sets her sights on Picard, who decides to do the grown-up thing and go hide out on the holodeck. There, he once again recreates one of the Dixon Hill stories he loves so much, donning a hat and trenchcoat to look the part of a hard-nosed private investigator.

This is a mostly lighthearted episode that fans generally like, but they might change their minds after hearing what the director had to say. As published in the tenth issue of The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine, he noted how weird it is to have “characters that are several hundred years in the future from where we are now” revisit the ‘40s in such a robust way. He particularly called out Captain Picard, “who is so far advanced intellectually,” for how he wants to deal “with what are, essentially, cave people.”

Captain Picard Versus The Cavemen

Personally, as a nostalgic man with many quirky hobbies of my own, I found the director’s observation quite funny. But he makes a really great point here: it’s downright weird that Picard and others are so fixated on the past that they go out of their way to recreate it on the holodeck. Sure, it makes for great television (who doesn’t love seeing Data as Sherlock Holmes, for example?), but in-universe, it’s strange that characters who are so advanced would want to digitally slum it around with primitive people.

Ironically, Star Trek emphasizes this point whenever the holodeck isn’t involved. In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Kirk reveals that humanity has moved past the use of money, and Dr. McCoy compares ‘80s medicine to “the Dark Ages.” First Contact further emphasized humanity moving beyond capitalism, with Kirk saying, “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” Furthermore, shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation often portrayed people from the 20th century and earlier as idiots, as evidenced by the antics of those weird, unfrozen hillbillies in “The Neutral Zone.” 

Is Future Humanity Really All That Advanced?

At almost every single turn, Star Trek points out that characters in the far future are so advanced that they barely recognize or understand the way of life for those in the 20th century. Why, then, does Picard want to spend his spare time hanging around with virtual versions of people from over 300 years in the past, ones who would seem like knuckle-dragging cavemen? One has to wonder if this is like a weird power trip for Picard, or maybe just an excuse to turn his brain off and let his hair down (so to speak).

Rob Bowman’s observation doesn’t make the Dixon Hill episodes any less fun, of course, but it does forever change how I will view everyone’s fixation on the past in Star Trek: The Next Generation. These are characters who are trained to never interfere in the development of undeveloped worlds, but they spend all their spare time hanging out with primitives on the holodeck. It could be worse, though: they could, like me, spend all their time writing about TV shows that went off the air over three decades ago!