Anyway, Sci-Fi is airing TNG in a 4-hour long block on Mondays now. Right now they're showing Season 4 - First Contact, Galaxy's Child, this episode and The Drumhead. Yeah, that's nowhere near in order as a lot of episodes in between were skipped. Whatever, I guess.
The episode begins with the Enterprise going to an archeologist's symposium. Snore. You ever notice how the Enterprise - the freakin' "flagship of Starfleet" - is sent to some of the most boring and asinine of assignments? Deployment to the Romulan Neutral Zone? Observing a recently discovered interstellar life form, or a new planetary system? Nope, let's go to the archeology symposium because the captain has a passing interest in archeology! Well at least someone the captain has more than a passing interest in shows up - Vash, Picard's love interest from the episode "Captain's Holiday."
I'm sorry, but every time I think of "Vash," I can't help but recall Vash the Stampede from the anime Trigun.
Anyway, Vash (the love interest, not the Stampede) seems to be rather upset that Picard has kept quiet about her and not told the rest of the crew. What, do you think Picard is going to admit that he had a fling with an outright scoundrel, someone who continuously misled Picard in order to obtain an ancient artifact that turned out to be a weapon of mass destruction? A person who needless to say is of questionable character? Yeah, Starfleet will be really down with a captain that goes around and openly admits he fooled around with a borderline criminal.
Well, she quickly runs into Riker who tries to charm her with lines that, let's face it, only work in Star Trek. You know, things like this kinda-sorta reinforce the image that people who watch Star Trek don't have a lot of interaction with women - it certainly doesn't help that the writing staff themselves tend to demonstrate this through the show. But before Riker can finish his lines, Vash does it for him, proving that, yes, Riker really needs to learn some new pick-up lines.
If you're thinking we're finally going to, you know, get into an actual plot, well, we still have a ways to go. Riker invites Vash into the bridge, and - maybe it's just me, but I always thought the bridge of the Enterprise-D came off as looking as if it was designed by Lexus.
Seriously, look at that and tell me it doesn't remind you of the Enterprise-D's bridge?
Apparently it isn't just me, because Vash takes a quick liking to Picard's chair and certainly seems settled into it. It's good to be the Captain, indeed!
Just when she's all settled in, Picard comes in and crashes the party. He and Vash talk in his quarters, about why Picard never talks about Vash, blah blah blah. Well it turns out that Vash is also interested in digging up the ruins of the planet below and selling whatever she finds to the highest bidder, even though local law strictly forbids this. In fact that's really the whole reason why she's even here and why she's trying to smooze to Picard again. Yeah, she certainly is such an upstanding citizen, is she? Picard discovers some of her equipment, including a futuristic-looking shovel. Now, let's look at some things here. It's a freakin' shovel. It's a stick with a spade on one end! After seeing stuff like this, it's kinda easy to see why people like Mike Wong would say that in the Federation, instead of having a kid take a bucket to the beach, he's much more likely to take some sort of holographic generator in order to manipulate forcefields in the shape of a bucket, because it's the Future(TM) and everything has to be needlessly technologically complicated.
Then when Vash leaves, Q and the episode's plot show up. Seems Q wants to repay Picard for helping him get back into the good graces of the Continuum in DejaQ but Picard refuses. Well, Q gets the bright idea that proper repayment shall come in the form of making Picard realize how much he loves Vash, so he transports all the Enterprise main cas...bridge crew into a recreation of Sherwood Forrest. Really, the episode could've ended right then and there, and Q consider his debt repaid, because he saved Picard & Co from having to get through with this boring-ass speech.
It's pretty clear to the crew that they're meant to play the parts of the famous Robin Hood stories, and just for good measure Q shows up as the Sheriff of Nottingham and tells them if they don't rescue Vash from Sir Guy of Guilford (who, as an aside, was played by the same guy who did the voice of the Emperor in EP V, at least according to Memory Alpha) she's going to lose her head. The crew offer to come along but Picard insists on going by himself since this is a "personal matter." Yeah, we can all see how successful this one-man rescue attempt's going to be, it is Star Trek after all, and when he doesn't have a lot of technology backing him up and masking his readings, Picard has demonstrated the only thing he's useful for when it comes to covert operations is to get captured, stripped naked and yell out that there's only four lights. Despite that, he does manage to sneak in completely undetected right under their noses dressed as a common laborer. Not exactly original, but hey, it works.
Meanwhile, as soon as Vash figures out what's going on she throws a monkey wrench into Q's plans and offers to take up Sir Guy on his marriage proposal. Picard shows up, only to be held at swordpoint by Vash -apparently both he and Q failed to realize that when it comes down to it, Vash really only looks out for Vash. Definitely a big switch from the whole "Love & Peace" message we hear from the other Vash.
Anyway, Vash attempts to warn Riker that Picard is going to get killed, but Q discovers it so it looks like there's going to be a double-execution. Vash and Picard are led to their execution, all the while complaining about who's fault it was. Yup, Q was right - they do act like a married couple. Fortunately the rest of the crew are there, and Data sets up a nice distraction by pulling out something from his arm and tossing it into a fire (hope he didn't need that, kinda hard to fight with your arm not working). So everyone naturally stares at the explosion except for Picard, who promptly puts an elbow into the stomachs of his would-be executioners who naturally have the reaction speed of Ralph Wiggum. Everybody breaks out their swords and starts fighting, except for poor Dr. Crusher and poor Consoler Troi, who have to resort to using potted plants as weapons. You know, Memory Alpha states that Marina Sirtis and Gates McFadden were the only ones to have any actual sword training, so it's nice to see Star Trek continuing to defy pre-assigned gender roles and have the women actually doing most of the sword fighting and clearing a path through the enemy masses for Picard...or not....
Sir Guy of Guilford manages to get off his ass and begins fighting Picard, proclaiming him to be the greatest swordsman in all of Nottingham. Because the bad guy has to be the greatest at whichever particular means of combat will culminate in the ultimate showdown, just like how Colonel Standsin Fo'Quaddaffi was somehow the greatest fighter pilot in all of StandsInForLibiyastan in Iron Eagle. Because Sir Guy is such a great swordsfighter, he gets run through with the sword of someone who has never used a sword for anything beyond a few fencing matches in under a minute. The crew gets to go home, but Vash is still missing - she and Q later appear in Picard's quarters, because Q took an interest in her and now they go about exploring the galaxy, blah blah blah.
In Conclusion: Overall, this isn't a bad episode per se, but it's nothing special either. We don't get any aggrevious abuse of science in this episode at least (since this episode is fortunately very light on technobabble or special effects) and most of the episode takes place far and away from the Trek universe anyway. Storytelling wise, it could be better, as pretty much nothing of real consequence happens in the first half except that Vash is pissed off that Picard is apparently ashamed of their previous relationship and they're at an archeology symposium (snore); nor is there anything really special in the second part other than a pretty standard and bland story, which is perhaps of little surprise since it's based on one of the most oft-told stories in the entirety of Anglo-Saxon tradition (not to mention Memory Alpha suggests that the whole episode was changed as a cash-in on the popularity of the then-new Christian Slater film).
I tend to shy away from point-based rating systems since they tend to be arbitrary; someone's 3 out of 5 can be interpreted as "average" by one person while someone else can interpret it as "above average". That said, I'd say that the episode was certainly watchable, but definitely fails to stand out, especially given that it takes place in a season with such episodes as First Contact, Future Imperfect and least of all, the second part of Best of Both Worlds with only its ultimate silliness being memorable. In other words, it's a pretty average, run-of-the-mill episode.