Hollow Pursuits: Desire, Therapy, and 'Play' on Star Trek: The Next Generation's Holodeck

Leggatt's article, published in Eludamos in 2025, argues that the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Hollow Pursuits" is an unusual and revealing treatment of the holodeck. Where the device is usually handled as a narrative convenience, the episode centers on Reginald Barclay's obsessive use of holodeck programs, which the analysis likens to contemporary virtual reality gaming and its entanglements with desire, escape, therapy, and addiction. The central claim is that the Federation's utopian self-image is exposed as limited: Barclay's freely chosen play is met with shame and social pressure rather than respect, complicating the image of a society free of such frictions.

The analysis develops this argument through close reading of the episode's social dynamics. Barclay's fantasies are read as signs of social anxiety rather than simple shyness, and the episode is shown to contain gendered double standards. Riker treats Barclay's challenge to hierarchy as the more serious offense while treating the non-consensual eroticization of Deanna Troi with amusement. Drawing on Joyrich and contemporary writing on deepfakes and addiction, the author concludes that the holodeck functions both as a therapeutic outlet and as a source of genuine risk. Barclay's resolution, in which he ends his dependence by erasing his programs, is interpreted as a moment that anticipates present-day debates about consent, digital intimacy, and the blurring of fantasy and reality.

The work situates itself within a substantial scholarly tradition on utopian fiction, virtual reality, and play theory, drawing on Janet Murray, Suits, Stoppe, and Tallon and Walls, and comparing the episode with related holodeck episodes such as "Ménage à Troi" and "11001001," as well as media including Tron. Its scope is interpretive and textual, focusing on a single television episode within the broader TNG series and its cultural and technological context.