“The Game,” episode 6 of the 5th season. The show starts out with Riker on Reisa enjoying the flirtations of a female who hides his communicator and then introduces him to a game in which the wearer puts on headset with two scopes that point toward the eyes. The object of the game is to put the 3-D disk into the funnel. Once successful, the gamer gets a jolt of a stimulate and then moves on to the next level.
Riker than brings this game onto the Enterprise and the crew becomes addicted. Troi, Dr. Crusher (who has just welcomed Wesley back onto the ship for a visit) and Riker sabotage Data in sickbay and then Riker introduces the game to Geordi.
Crusher tries to introduce the game to Wesley, unsuccessfully. Instead, he goes on a dinner date with a young Ensign who tells him about this game that the engineers are playing. They brush it off as a fad„ but intelligently decide to examine it before playing it. Smart move as usual, Wesley!
Wesley decides to bring it up to the captain. Safe move, right? You’d think. But stupid Jean-Luc has already been playing it.
This is the first stupid thing. Captain Picard would normally want something tested out first, especially if it came from a planet that’s games are of unknown origin. But nope, he’s addicted just like the rest! Showing once again that Wesley is the grown-up in this episode (just like he was in Datalore).
Second thing, Wesley and the young Ensign manage to enter sickbay after it’s been quarantined off.
Now the alien ship, captained by the woman Riker was playing around with on Reisa, give commands to Picard and the bridge crew. Their scheme is to take over the Enterprise and the federation.
In an exciting action sequence, Wesley is pursued and chased by Riker and other crew members as Wesley is figuring out how to fix Data and bring the Enterprise back on track. He is captured in the crawl spaces and forced to wear the game device. Like something right out “A Clockwork Orange,” his eyes are forced open to watch as the disk goes in the funnel.
Then it’s Data to the rescue, activated and shining a strobe light into the eyes of the bridge crew, snapping them out of it and they realize what they were about to do.
Wesley says good-bye to his Ensign friend, played by Ashley Judd.
If this were a real life scenario, Commander Riker would probably be court-martialed for what he’d done and stipped of his command. This is one episode that should not have been produced. An otherwise brilliant bridge crew are reduced to trance-like idiots while the young Wesley saves the day.
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