Dixon Hill is a hard-boiled private detective from 1940s San Francisco pulp fiction, a role Picard loves to play on the holodeck.
Dixon Hill is the hero of a series of hard-boiled detective stories set in San Francisco in the early 1940s. Jean-Luc Picard became a devoted fan and liked to step into the role himself on the holodeck, complete with fedora, office and a cast of gangsters, clients and police officers.
The character first appeared in The Big Goodbye, when Picard relaxed with a Dixon Hill story before a delicate meeting with the Jarada. He took on the case of Jessica Bradley, who feared the gangster Cyrus Redblock wanted her dead, but a scan by the Jarada damaged the holodeck and disabled its safety protocols, making the fiction deadly.
Picard returned to the Dixon Hill programs several times afterwards. He brought crewmates along as characters, used the stories as an escape from stress, and once even used the setting as a distraction during a crisis aboard the ship. Picard was always the one who played Hill.