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| Playing "The Game." |
THE PLOT
Wesley Crusher returns to the Enterprise for a short vacation. He is happy to see his old friends again, and particularly a chance to catch up with Picard and compare stories about Starfleet Academy. He is also happy to help the crew work on a scientific survey of an uncharted area of space. It's while working in Engineering that he meets Robin Lefler (Ashley Judd), a bright young ensign who quickly catches his eye. It takes no time at all for them to arrange a dinner date. But even by then, the game has begun spreading through the ship...
It's a video game that Riker brought back with him from shore leave on Risa. A simple enough device, worn on the user's head. The goal is to move discs into funnels. But every time you get a disc into a funnel, it acts on the pleasure centers of the brain. Wesley and Robin study it out of curiosity, and discover that it is addictive. But by the time they go to the captain with this information, Picard has already become a player - and the Enterprise has all but fallen into the hands of an alien invasion!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: Given the workings of the game, it stands to reason that the characters' basic intelligence remains intact. Picard is shrewder than most of the crew. While the rest of the crew simply try to push wesley to "play the game," Picard pretends he isn't playing it. When Wesley comes to him, he listens reasonably and attentively and promises an investigation. He only puts the game on after Wesley leaves.
Riker: "I brought something back from Risa," he intones to anyone who will listen. I'm surprised one of them doesn't tell him to go see Dr. Crusher about that. Jonathan Frakes is in full leering mode. Not just in the teaser, but after he gets back to the ship. When Geordi introduces him to Robin, Frakes speaks to her as if sizing her up for a notch on his Number One bed. Once the game is spreading through the ship, he recedes into the background.
He does get a nice character beat at the end. Realizing that he's been used, he becomes visibly angry in a very controlled way. When Etana (Katherine Moffat) threatens to fire on Enterprise, Riker asks Worf to compare the combat capabilities of her ship vs. Enterprise. He then takes great satisfaction in ordering Etana removed from the screen. Clearly, he does not enjoy being used.
Data: The first step to taking the Enterprise by using an addictive videogame? Get rid of the one crew member who is likely to be immune. Neutralizing Data is a logical step for the takeover plot, and it's an effective way of raising the dramatic stakes. Brothers showed us exactly how capable Data is. If he were around for this story, it would feel very strained for the takeover to actually get anywhere. When he is removed, so is the story's safety net.
Wesley: Wesley returns and saves the ship again... but he does so without making me want to reach into the screen and throttle him, so the return of the "Shut Up, Wesley" heading will have to wait for one of his later guest shots. Wil Wheaton actually does very well in his first return. The time away has done him good, as he's clearly more engaged here than in many of his late Season Three/early Season Four appearances. Plus, he gets to kiss Ashley Judd - a fairly nice reward for coming back, I'd think!
Hot Space Babe of the Week: Ashley Judd returns as Robin Lefler. When I saw Judd in the background of Darmok, I figured it was just a case of dues-paying, a young actress still in the earliest days of her career taking whatever part she could get. So it's a pleasant surprise to get a second appearance. Even this young, she's highly appealing. She also knows how to play to the camera. She doesn't simply deliver her lines to camera or to the character she's talking to. She looks toward both camera and character at angles, and gives a lot of quick, darting looks to really sell her character's attraction to Wesley. She's still relatively untried, and some of these mannerisms come across a bit self-conscious. But her camera instincts are visible, and her performance in a fairly stock part is well above average. There's not much here that would make one sit up and say, "Future big star." But in retrospect, you can see that the potential is there.
THOUGHTS
This episode may be the easiest one in the entire series for the dirty-minded to read into. Never mind the obviously intentional ones, like Troi's seductive ice cream speech. Troi inviting a curious Dr. Crusher to her quarters to "show (her)" her the game also comes across as a seductive come-on. Even Dr. Crusher telling her son to invite Robin to her quarters so that they can "all play the game together" is giggle-worthy, and I have to imagine some younger kids were confused when their parents began snickering.
The actual game in The Game hasn't dated well. The graphics are more than a little cheesy and - if I recall my reaction at the time - they seemed so on original broadcast. I'd add that some of the character material is a bit ham-handed, particularly the scene in which Robin fills Wesley in on her backstory ("Let me tell you, word-for-word, what is written in my character sketch").
The Game is silly "B" movie stuff, and probably not for those who like their Trek to always be serious. Still, Brannon Braga's script moves the plot along at a good pace. There aren't any real twists, with even the reveal of Picard playing the game easy to see coming from literally the start of that scene, but it keeps moving along. The script even does a good job of making the Wesley/Robin romance feel plausible without letting it slow down the pace.
Praise is due to Corey Allen's direction. This is a highly visual episode. I love the POV shots by people playing the game, with the game foregrounding background action. A very effective use of special effects, and one which shows how far the series' capabilities have come in just a few short years. There are also some entertaining echoes of 1970's paranoid thrillers at the climax, as Wesley runs through the corridors from the now-malignant forces of the Enterprise crew. It's eerie enough to have our regulars suddenly made into villains, with everyone - Wesley included - knowing that he has no actual hope of escape. But Allen uses some clever camera angles to emphasize Wesley's isolation. The scene in which he is finally cornered is particularly well lit and shot.
Not one of Trek's greats by any means. Like Disaster, this is purely a "B" episode. But also like Disaster, it's a lot of fun to watch. For the second week in a row, I find myself awarding a filler episode a fairly high score.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
Data: The first step to taking the Enterprise by using an addictive videogame? Get rid of the one crew member who is likely to be immune. Neutralizing Data is a logical step for the takeover plot, and it's an effective way of raising the dramatic stakes. Brothers showed us exactly how capable Data is. If he were around for this story, it would feel very strained for the takeover to actually get anywhere. When he is removed, so is the story's safety net.
Wesley: Wesley returns and saves the ship again... but he does so without making me want to reach into the screen and throttle him, so the return of the "Shut Up, Wesley" heading will have to wait for one of his later guest shots. Wil Wheaton actually does very well in his first return. The time away has done him good, as he's clearly more engaged here than in many of his late Season Three/early Season Four appearances. Plus, he gets to kiss Ashley Judd - a fairly nice reward for coming back, I'd think!
Hot Space Babe of the Week: Ashley Judd returns as Robin Lefler. When I saw Judd in the background of Darmok, I figured it was just a case of dues-paying, a young actress still in the earliest days of her career taking whatever part she could get. So it's a pleasant surprise to get a second appearance. Even this young, she's highly appealing. She also knows how to play to the camera. She doesn't simply deliver her lines to camera or to the character she's talking to. She looks toward both camera and character at angles, and gives a lot of quick, darting looks to really sell her character's attraction to Wesley. She's still relatively untried, and some of these mannerisms come across a bit self-conscious. But her camera instincts are visible, and her performance in a fairly stock part is well above average. There's not much here that would make one sit up and say, "Future big star." But in retrospect, you can see that the potential is there.
THOUGHTS
This episode may be the easiest one in the entire series for the dirty-minded to read into. Never mind the obviously intentional ones, like Troi's seductive ice cream speech. Troi inviting a curious Dr. Crusher to her quarters to "show (her)" her the game also comes across as a seductive come-on. Even Dr. Crusher telling her son to invite Robin to her quarters so that they can "all play the game together" is giggle-worthy, and I have to imagine some younger kids were confused when their parents began snickering.
The actual game in The Game hasn't dated well. The graphics are more than a little cheesy and - if I recall my reaction at the time - they seemed so on original broadcast. I'd add that some of the character material is a bit ham-handed, particularly the scene in which Robin fills Wesley in on her backstory ("Let me tell you, word-for-word, what is written in my character sketch").
The Game is silly "B" movie stuff, and probably not for those who like their Trek to always be serious. Still, Brannon Braga's script moves the plot along at a good pace. There aren't any real twists, with even the reveal of Picard playing the game easy to see coming from literally the start of that scene, but it keeps moving along. The script even does a good job of making the Wesley/Robin romance feel plausible without letting it slow down the pace.
Praise is due to Corey Allen's direction. This is a highly visual episode. I love the POV shots by people playing the game, with the game foregrounding background action. A very effective use of special effects, and one which shows how far the series' capabilities have come in just a few short years. There are also some entertaining echoes of 1970's paranoid thrillers at the climax, as Wesley runs through the corridors from the now-malignant forces of the Enterprise crew. It's eerie enough to have our regulars suddenly made into villains, with everyone - Wesley included - knowing that he has no actual hope of escape. But Allen uses some clever camera angles to emphasize Wesley's isolation. The scene in which he is finally cornered is particularly well lit and shot.
Not one of Trek's greats by any means. Like Disaster, this is purely a "B" episode. But also like Disaster, it's a lot of fun to watch. For the second week in a row, I find myself awarding a filler episode a fairly high score.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
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