5.6 — “The Game”
Plot: Wesley Crusher returns to the Enterprise, only to discover that everyone is obsessed with a creepy VR game that gives out sexual pleasure. He takes his study breaks with Ensign Robin Lefler, and they look fetching together. Meanwhile, Counselor Troi eats an exceptionally erotic chocolate sundae.
Thoughts: Sex, sex, sex, sex, sexety-sex! Anyone want to count the innuendos? The creep factor isn’t turned up to eleven until Wesley’s mom tries to seduce him with the orgasm machine. EWW! They knew exactly what they were doing here.
It’s interesting that Wesley has a closet full of sweaters. I didn’t see the classic orange one, though. The plot is a hard riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers (they’re all pod people!), but I guess that’s okay.
I laughed at the story Picard tells about getting in trouble at the Academy for carving initials into an old oak tree. That’s such a 19th century thing to do! “I carved your initials into a tree with my pocket knife, because life is boring, and no one has invented Nintendo.”
Besides being a pod person episode, it’s also (metaphorically) a drug episode. Almost the first one, at least the first to involve the crew and not some warring alien races that no one believes in or cares about. Harlan Ellison’s first draft of “The City on the Edge of Forever” dealt with drug addiction among the crew, and he told flatly no, it would have to be rewritten. This is not the old Star Trek anymore.
Did y’all like Ensign Lefler?
For being memorable, and the horniest horndog episode since TOS (or maybe TAS? Remember ”Mudd’s Passion?”), 4 out of 5 bulkheads installed inside access tubes.
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