Captain's Holiday. The true, bona fide episode where the #1 priority of everyone who was making it was to satisfy Patrick Stewart's desire for Picard to be given more action oriented stories with a little bit of romance and hopefully sex. The more successful Patrick Stewart was, the weaker Picard actually gets. And the results we get out of this episode feels so out of place and so convoluted I would sooner rank this episode near the bottom of the list as episodes you can skip outright, but the episode does present us with the character of Vash. A woman who, starting with this episode, has an entire trilogy of episodes devoted to her character that will start with TNG and go all the way to DS9. And if you've read Brannon Braga's Borg comic, Vash is the gal Picard ends up with at the end of all things TNG era wise.
Our episode opens with the crew of the Enterprise trying to get Picard to have some R&R on the planet Riza. It's a pretty long, drawn out open in where the only thing to come out of it is "Picard is annoyed" that gets old really fast. Unfortunately for us, this schtick represents a sizable bulk of Picard's attitude throughout this episode.
This is the problem with the episode in a nutshell. In order to indulge Patrick Stewart in a more action oriented episode where he gets lucky with the ladies, they would have to write Picard being out of character. The resulting performance and execution does not do this episode any favors, and it certainly doesn't make Picard out to be a good action hero. When I watch the constant smug attitude that Picard gives off in this episode, I sometimes wonder why the writers just didn't try giving Picard something to enjoy. Maybe when he's really off duty he'd be the kind of person to enjoy the customs of Riza. This episode had the advantage of showing us a different side of Picard in an environment that would allow such things to develop naturally without feeling out of place.
Than we get into the action which consists of a puny Ferengi with a gun. This would constitute the first time that TNG acknowledged the Ferengi less as a possible threat to the galaxy and more as a race who are pretty much a joke. Max Grodénchik plays the Ferengi Sovak and despite acting a bit like Rom, he does have some moments where he looks genuinely intimidating than Rom ever looked (even his mirror counterpart).
So in the end, the aliens from the future witness events transpire as they have foreseen, Picard and Vash share their goodbyes, and we get the iconic "Riker is happy and proud!" look that just captures everything I love when he's not being a total a-hole. It's funny how the more I think about the time traveling aliens, the more I think about the original series backdoor pilot episode "Assignment: Earth". It'd be hilarious that in a different reality, these two aliens had their own show, and the creator wanted to make a show about the Enterprise and made this the episode to launch the series. Ha.
Still, if there's one thing that I would implore to the writers, producers and directors of Star Trek to take from this episode is to not let indulging your actors be the number one priority in telling your story. Thankfully this kind of indulgence was done to keep Patrick Stewart interested in the show since there was some serious talk about him leaving the show by the season's end, and not because he was a huge star thanks to a bunch of comic book action movies.
CONCLUSION:
"Captain's Holiday" is a tough one. It's execution is lacking, the characters are boring and the action just feels out of place. The only reason I would recommend this episode is because of Vash, a character who will later become relevant in the next Q episode and later in Deep Space Nine. And despite Vash being a predictable rogue character, Jennifer Hetrick never the less turns in a pretty solid performance. Out of all the ladies that Picard would get to know over the course of the series, she's my favorite. Even if you don't like her, at least she doesn't come with baggage in the form of Wesley Crusher.
STINGER:
QFT! All one has to do is check my signature to know I agree with this. 
