Wesley Crusher is on Spring Break and instead of going to Risa to do Jello Shots off the navel of Orion Slave Girls he decides to go to the Enteprise to recalibrate sensors. Wesley is a nerd.
On the other hand, he gets to mac on Ashley Judd so I guess he still comes out on top.
At the same time Riker has returned from vacation and has brought with him Google Glass, introduced to him by a woman he met on Risa. And like any Google Glass tool he decides it's the best thing ever and *everyone* must try it and those people become Glasser Hipster Tools all playing Future Farmville.
So everyone is walking around with their Google Glass and they become brain-dead fools unwittingly pawns in the plans of an evil force wanting to take over the Federation.
Wesley and Ashley manage to avoid becoming Glassers long enough to allow Data to go around and smack common sense back into everyone. They then throw down their Google Glass devices with disgust and bust the aliens trying to take things over.
This episode is meh.
It's not exactly "terrible" but it's just not too good either.
First of all, it's odd to me that *one* use of this game is enough to get the user permanently hooked and reprogrammed. It also seems to the aliens' plan is ultimately doomed to fail because there's no way they'd get the entire population of the Federation/Starfleet leaders programmed because at some point someone is going to realize what is going on and stop it.
The game's overuse also seems odd because everything we're told about people in this time period is that stuff like this just really isn't done anymore. Yeah, the game is addictive but in the episode Ashley tells us that it's a "fad that'll be gone in a week." Which while may work to explain the fads that've plagued humanity pretty much since the beginning of the 20th century, not so much on a ship full of professionals in semi-military some 400 years into the future.
Wesley also seems to accept everyone's addiction to the game and insistence to use it in pretty good stride. Yeah, his mom is an over-protective freak who'd fit in well with 21st century "Helicopter Moms" but her behavior towards wanting Wesley to try the game seems like it should have set off some alarms. That it doesn't really speaks to what Wesley dealt with when being raised by this woman.
Wesley and Ashley also make nonfunctional mock-ups to fool Crusher and Worf into thinking they've become addicted as well. Oddly they never seem to wear them again to continue the ruse. (Leading to Ashley getting programmed and the bridge crew hunting down Wesley.)
And, really, when someone returns home from even a friendly alien world with a strange device you'd think it'd need to be vetted and tested before allowing it to be used on the ship. Is it really that easy to sneak a foreign device that psychologically reprograms people on a starship? Apparently so. Also apparently it's conceivable to sneak this device all the way back to the Academy on Earth (the seat of the Federation) since Programed Picard thinks such an avenue is possible through Wesley.
I dunno, maybe this episode is less than a meh.
I don't "hate" it, it's just a dumb episode that doesn't make sense. And, really, I don't think anyone involved in this episode in front of or behind the camera cared. And I have proof.
Near the end of the episode the bridge crew captures Wesley, holds him down and forces his eyes open in order to become addicted to the game. While Worf is standing there playing the Clockwork Orange eye-holding-open device on Wesley, Wesley very clearly and very obviously BLINKS! You can almost hear the director saying, "Whatever, that's good, let's wrap this baby up! We got an episode people will care about more next week to start filming!"
Whatever. Ashley Judd was fun in this episode, Troi sexualizing her chocolate sundae is fun and apparently Data has created a multi-part dancing course on the holodeck using a variety of dancing parters. Which, sure.
Wesley, go back to the academy and crash a space-ship or something.
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