The crew finds a bizarre casino hotel on a barren world.
While searching near the planet Theta VIII, the Enterprise finds a piece of an early twenty-first-century NASA spacecraft. On the planet's harsh surface, Riker, Worf and Data find a building that looks like an old Earth hotel and casino, and once inside they cannot get out.
Inside they find the remains of Colonel Stephen Richey, the ship's lone survivor, and his journal. Aliens who accidentally killed his crew built the hotel for him from a cheap novel found aboard his ship, hoping to give him a world he would like. He lived there for the rest of his life as a prisoner of its tired plot.
The away team escapes by playing out the novel's ending, buying the hotel with casino winnings. Data's luck at the gambling table gives the episode some of its comic moments.