Paramount/CBSIn 1991, Star Trek: The Next Generation was in the middle of its golden era. After producer Michael Piller transformed the series into a character-driven show in Season 3, the episodes of Season 4 represented the fulfillment of that promise. When one thinks about the cozy, ensemble feeling of TNG, that aesthetic largely comes from Seasons 3 through 5; a time when anything was possible on the show, but the stakes were almost always deeply personal for the characters. By going smaller, TNG was able to get a much bigger audience, around 20,000 million viewers in syndication per week at its height. And so, when you have characters as beloved as these, one of the best ways for the show to have fun was to put everyone into absurd scenarios.Enter “Qpid,” a Next Generation episode which aired during the week of April 22, 1991, and is commonly remembered as the One Where the Crew Does a Robin Hood Adventure. This episode could probably be called a TNG classic, mainly because it features Worf (Michael Dorn) uttering one of his funniest lines ever: “I am not a Merry Man!” And yet, when you rewatch “Qpid” today, one fact will hit you at warp speed: This episode didn’t even need the Robin Hood thing to be interesting, and in fact, that conceit doesn’t even begin until about halfway through the episode. Spoilers ahead.Crusher (Gates McFadden), Picard (Patrick Stewart), and Vash (Jennifer Hetrick) share one of many awkward moments in this episode. | Paramount/CBSIf you’re watching “Qpid” for the first time, and with the knowledge that it is an episode in which the trickster space god Q (John de Lancie) forces Picard (Patrick Stewart) to play the role of Robin Hood, you might wonder if you were watching the right episode. And that’s because the initial story of “Qpid” doesn’t seem to be about Q, or any kind of historical playing-dress-up shenanigans. To put it another way, the famous Sherlock Holmes episode in Season 2, “Elementary, Dear Data,” begins with Geordi (LeVar Burton) and Data (Brent Spiner) playing Holmes and Watson on the Holodeck. The Season 1 episode, “The Big Goodbye,” puts Picard into the 1941 hardboiled detective world of Dixon Hill within the first two minutes. But it’s not until 20 minutes into “Qpid” that the Robin Hood fantasy conceit is even revealed, and there’s nothing that specifically teases a Robin Hood twist at all prior to the moment where Q makes certain hats appear on the heads of Crusher (Gates McFadden) and Troi (Marina Siritis) before whisking the entire crew to Sherwood Forest.So before the Robin Hood twist midway through, what is “Qpid” about? Well, the plot of the episode is actually about quite a lot, well before the Robin Hood shenanigans start: Picard’s girlfriend Vash, (Jennifer Hetrick) from the Season 3 episode “Captain’s Holiday,” returns and instantly gets offended that Picard didn’t tell anyone on the ship that he met someone during his adventure on Risa. This conflict alone is already amazing; Crusher shows up for her morning tea with Picard, finds Vash already there, and within moments, is sitting down, drinking Picard’s tea, and gossiping. Could this episode have simply been about Picard being totally embarrassed by having a girlfriend who is also a scam artist who steals archaeological artifacts? A big deal is made of Picard being “embarrassed” by Vash, but part of that is because Picard is a rule-follower and Vash is a renegade, sort of like Star Trek’s version of Batman and Catwoman.Again, this premise could have carried the entire episode — and if you don’t think TNG would do an episode just about Picard’s weird dating habits, please see Season 6, Episode 19, “Lessons.” The point being, TNG very well could have just done an episode about Picard having to deal with having a quirky, rogueish girlfriend, even without an overt sci-fi element.The first sign of some Robin Hood stuff, about 20 minutes in, Troi (Marina Sirtis) finds a strange hat on her head. | Paramount/CBSBut then Q appears, and no, he’s not instantly noticing that Picard is reading a Robin Hood book (Picard isn’t), but instead is focused on the idea that he owes Picard a favor. This references the events of the Season 3 episode “Deja Q,” in which Q was exiled from the Q Continuum and, briefly, forced to live as a mortal. So, in terms of Captain Picard’s wacky social life, this episode is a sequel to two Season 3 episodes simultaneously..In fact, the idea that Q wants to do something nice for Picard is again a great premise on its own. “You are simply the most impossible person to buy a gift for!” Q declares at some point. And perhaps, even more hilariously, Q offers to help Picard rewrite a speech on ancient archaeology. Make no mistake, a huge portion of the runtime of this episode is devoted to these two conflicts: Q trying to repay Picard, and Picard being super annoyed, while Vash gets increasingly annoyed with Picard for ghosting her and acting like he doesn’t still like her in front of his friends.And, finally, this results in Q deciding that he’ll gift Picard with an experience: the Robin Hood scenario, in which we are assured that this is a no takesies-backies situation; if the crew gets mortally wounded in the Robin Hood world, Q can’t bring them back to life. From there, the more memorable aspects of the episode unfold: Stewart does his best Errol Flynn impression, Hetrick is a welcome addition to the Trek ensemble, de Lancie is having the time of his life sowing discord and chewing the scenery, and the rest of the crew is...well...they’re mostly there to play dress up.Geordi (LeVar Burton), Worf (Michael Dorn), and Data (Brent Spiner) as Robin’s Merry Men in "QPid." | Paramount/CBSYes, “Qpid” gave us Worf in that outrageous costume, and Data as Friar Tuck, but if we’re ranking sci-fi fantasy episodes of TV shows that really give us the true Robin Hood flavor, the 2014 Doctor Who episode “Robots of Sherwood” will beat this TNG romp any day of the week. And that’s because the weird thing about “Qpid” is that it's not really a Robin Hood episode, the way “Elementary Dea Data” is very much a Sherlock Holmes episode. It’s fun to see the crew in these costumes, and it's great to see Stewart sword-fighting, but at the end of the day, the set-up for this episode is just as funny, if not slightly more funny, than the result.Could “Qpid” have worked without the Robin Hood idea? Hardcore TNG fans will certainly disagree, but one has to wonder if this isn’t really two great episodes fused into one. As it stands, “Qpid” probably isn’t one of the greatest TNG episodes of all time, even if it is one of the most iconic. But, in some alternate universe, perhaps, Q snapped his fingers slightly differently, and we got a quiet, strange episode all about Picard navigating his own strange social life, without the need to put on a silly costume or a fake mustache.Star Trek: The Next Generation streams on Paramount+.Phasers on Stun!: How the Making — and Remaking — of Star Trek Changed the WorldAmazon -