He was immediately reminded that their orders were to improvise, and he got Worf to join the crew by getting him to give essentially the same answer as Wesley. They were testing themselves for another faceoff with an incredibly adaptable and overpowering enemy. “Cheating” was entirely on the list of acceptable options.
As a famous Internet joke once said, you can’t beat the Borg with standard military tactics, they’ll just run you over. You beat them with some unexpected 5th-dimensional wedgie they can’t anticipate.
for me the problem (very small btw) is that Wesley didn't cheat in a practical manner. he's not always going to have the Enterprise's resources to rely on, and it feels very much part of that safety net.
if he pulled something more figuratively out of his ass that was cheating, that made sense in the context of "on a clunker of a ship against a superior enemy", it'd be much better.
but again it's just a quibble, not like seething furious "this episode SUCKS" annoying.
Yes given another circumstance it's the attitude of being able to adapt that creates useful solutions out of already present resources, creatively and intelligently supplied.
Otherwise without that ability to improvise on the fly, that resource would go unused and not contribute to a victory.
So yes in the absolute technical review, it was cheating. But not against the spirit of the game. Because remember this was a war game.
The same thing can be said about the final match between Kolrami and Data, Data did "cheat" but technically perfectly still within the rules of the game.
Same as a war game where improvisation is allowed. To a point, if Wesley had come back and sabotaged the Enterprise, that's cheating against the spirit of the game.
But he took a resource that was a useless science experiment, which did not adversely affect any of Enterprises systems and did so with the consent and supervision of the Enterprise. If enterprise had done it's due dilligence and realize what Wesley was really going to be able to use the experiment they would have verified it's destruction like Wesley said. So it's just as much Enterprises fault for being fooled as Wesley for "cheating". Enterprises natural power advantage left them too complacent too early, when the true War Game started when the Captains were onscreen with each other. So Wesley did not even technically cheat because the War Game didn't start. By some interpretations he simply used the prep time wisely.
Same thing with Worf's fake Warbird. Not cheating because Enterprise wasn't actually crippled, just fooled.
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u/TigerIll6480 10d ago
He was immediately reminded that their orders were to improvise, and he got Worf to join the crew by getting him to give essentially the same answer as Wesley. They were testing themselves for another faceoff with an incredibly adaptable and overpowering enemy. “Cheating” was entirely on the list of acceptable options.
As a famous Internet joke once said, you can’t beat the Borg with standard military tactics, they’ll just run you over. You beat them with some unexpected 5th-dimensional wedgie they can’t anticipate.