Entertainment
The Secretly Raunchy Star Trek Episode That Could Never Be Made Today
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Star Trek: The Next Generation had several surprisingly naughty episodes, including “The Naked Now” (where Tasha Yar finds out Data was programmed to be a love machine) and “Sub Rosa” (where Dr. Crusher gets down and dirty with her grandmother’s ghost boyfriend). Nobody really thinks of “The Game” as a dirty episode, though, because it features very little sex outside of Riker picking up a dangerously addictive game from his latest alien booty call. However, episode writer Brannon Braga later revealed a raunchy little secret: all of the Enterprise crew who get infected by the parasitic video game experience onscreen orgasms.
First, some context: in “The Game,” Starfleet Academy cadet Wesley Crusher has returned to the Enterprise, eager to catch up with his mother and his many shipboard friends. But they are more than a bit distracted because Riker got everyone hooked on a weird video game that feels insanely good to play. That’s because completing levels stimulates the pleasure centers of a player’s brain, causing intense addiction; this leads to the ship nearly getting hijacked, but Wesley and his new friend Robin Lefler (played by Ashley Judd) manage to re-activate Data and save the day.
Getting The High Score On Sex
One of the most notable features in “The Game” is that we can see the effect that the titular game has on fan-favorite Next Generation characters like Riker. When someone completes a level, the game lights up their pleasure centers, making them feel good right away. Most fans always assumed this was to emphasize the game’s addictive nature; after all, the faces these actors pull make it seem like their characters just replicated and consumed the finest heroin in the galaxy.
However, “The Game” writer Brannon Braga later set the story straight when discussing the Next Generation episode “Sub Rosa.” If you don’t already know, this episode is infamous for making Dr. Crusher impossibly horny: she reads her grandmother’s erotic journal entries and ultimately has ghost sex with grandma’s spooky slampiece. Oh, and Picard walks in on her, an interruption that prevents the, um, warp core breach that Dr. Crusher is working towards.
Paging Dr. Love
In Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, Brannon Braga mentions how he thought the sex in “Sub Rosa” (an episode he wrote) was “mild by comparison” to what he had written for his earlier episode. According to him, Dr. Crusher’s infamous scene in “Sub Rosa” wasn’t a big deal to him because, “I scripted the first orgasm in ‘The Game.’”
That’s right, Star Trek fans! Every time you see your favorite Next Generation characters making those happy faces in “The Game,” they are supposed to be experiencing honest-to-God orgasms. This is straight from Braga himself, who apparently took his own perverse pleasure sneaking a series of “O faces” past network censors without getting any real pushback.
A Raunchy Episode Hiding In Plain Sight
In retrospect, Braga wasn’t exactly subtle in his writing; pull up the script for “The Game” online, and his description of the game’s effect on the Enterprise’s first officer makes things quite clear. “Suddenly, Riker’s entire body tenses up,” the script reads. “A moment, then he relaxes and lets out a small gasp. Like he’s experienced a brief moment of internal pleasure.”
As he gets better, the erotic nature of the game gets the better of him. According to Braga’s script, after Riker completes the second level, he ‘lets out a gasp of even greater pleasure,” which is the last thing we see during the cold open. Riker’s own ecstatic O-face is the last thing you see before the opening credits, perfectly setting the tone for one of TNG’s naughtiest episodes.
Nobody ever really clocked how raunchy “The Game” was, and most fans chalked the characters’ apparent onscreen pleasure up to the drug-like effect of the game. Now, we know the truth: that our favorite characters were getting their rocks off onscreen, over and over again. Given this information, I don’t need to be a Betazed to read Brannon Braga’s mind: I sense great freakiness, captain!
Entertainment
Meta AI can now animate your Facebook profile picture
Facebook is rolling out a new, Meta AI-powered feature that will allow users to animate their profile pictures.
Was the online public necessarily clamoring for Facebook profile pictures that waved via AI? Well…not really. But it’s here nonetheless.
Users will have access to preset animations that will turn a photo into an AI-powered, GIF-like moving profile picture. Wrote Facebook in a press release:
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“You can now animate your profile picture, turning a still photo into a playful animation in seconds. Choose from preset animations — like natural, party hat, confetti, wave, and heart — to bring your profile picture to life depending on how you’re feeling. We’ll add more animation options throughout the year so you can celebrate and express yourself during seasonal moments and special events.
For the best results, we recommend using a photo that features a single person facing the camera with their face clearly visible, and not holding other objects. You can select photos to animate directly from your camera roll or choose photos you’ve already uploaded to Facebook. Once a photo is animated, you can share it to your Feed and view it on your profile.”
How the animation process looks.
Credit: Meta
Is it the coolest thing to animate your profile picture to make it look like you’re making a heart with your hands? Not really. But honestly, I can imagine a kooky aunt or uncle loving it. And kooky aunts and uncles love Facebook as much as they love AI photos and images.
Facebook also announced it had added a “restyle” feature that uses AI to touch-up or change photos in Stories. So, a normal photo with a friend, for instance, could be reimagined to look like an illustration. The restyle feature has preset options and can also reimagine a photo based on a text prompt.
Entertainment
Bumble quietly removes option for men to message first in Mexico and Australia
The dating app Bumble has been known for “women making the first move” (messaging first) in straight matches since its 2014 launch. Now the company is reversing a more recent change to let men message first — but only in a couple of areas.
Last week, Bumble announced that it’s removing the Opening Moves feature in Mexico and Australia. The feature has been removed automatically for those users.
Opening Moves was introduced in 2024 as a way for men to send the first message to women and was advertised as a way to lessen exhaustion with dating apps. The company’s former CEO Lidiane Jones led the charge after taking over from founder and first CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who shortly thereafter returned to the CEO role after Jones held the position for only a year.
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While the reputation of dating apps overall has been slipping in recent years due to burnout and bad actors, Bumble has been especially hit financially. The company laid off 30 percent of its workforce last year, and its stock price has fallen 95 percent from its IPO as of this writing.
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Bumble seems to be returning to its original ethos even amid legal challenges. The Observer reported Bumble introduced Opening Moves following lawsuits and legal threats in California, claiming that the app discriminated against men, according to sources familiar with the matter. The Observer states that the company is starting to remove Opening Moves in Australia and Mexico due to lower legal risks in those markets.
“At Bumble, we regularly test and innovate our features to foster healthy, respectful connections while staying true to our women-first mission and prioritizing member safety,” a Bumble spokesperson told Mashable. “Supporting our community as they go from match to message is a key part of that work. As with all testing, we evaluate our learnings before considering a wider rollout, ensuring any changes continue to meet our community’s needs and deliver a positive experience for our members.”
Entertainment
Erupcja trailer: Charli XCX stars in explosive sapphic romance
Charli XCX is going from pop star to movie star with a string of films, including the queer fantasy 100 Nights of Hero, the mockumentary The Moment, and the sapphic romantic drama Erupcja.
Charli XCX co-wrote the script for Erupcja with director Pete Ohs and co-star Lena Góra. Set in Warsaw, the film focuses on two women, a local florist named Nel (Góra) and a tourist named Bethany (XCX), who has repeatedly crashed her love life. But this time, Bethany’s brought her current boyfriend Rob (Will Madden), who is looking for the perfect moment to propose.
In my review out of the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is quoted in the above trailer, I cheered: “Shot with the kinetic yet poised cool of the French New Wave, this Polish production feels timeless. Its scenes play out with enough specificity for audiences to hook in, but enough ambiguity that they can feel like a dream. There’s a touch of fairy tale to that. Ohs keeps his characters curious and fluid, refusing to shove them into easy-to-define roles of hero and villain. Instead, Erupcja embraces the feral nature of love, messy and wondrous…. Erupcja is a thundering rumble of drama and romance, leaving its audience excited and rattled.”
Erupcja opens in theaters April 17.
Meta AI can now animate your Facebook profile picture
Bumble quietly removes option for men to message first in Mexico and Australia
