A stage in the life of Betazoid women during which their sex drive at least quadruples, which sends Lwaxana Troi in search of a husband aboard the Enterprise.
The Phase is a change that Betazoid women go through in midlife. Deanna Troi explains that the sex drive quadruples or more. A woman in the Phase commonly concentrates her attention on a single man.
It drives Manhunt in 2365. Lwaxana Troi boards the Enterprise as a delegate to a conference on Pacifica and fixes on Jean-Luc Picard as her next husband. Once Deanna tells him what is happening, the captain takes refuge in a Dixon Hill programme on the holodeck and stays there.
Lwaxana next announces that she will marry William Riker, without asking him. Tracking the officers to the holodeck, she is charmed by Rex, the bartender, until she learns he is a hologram. She leaves unmarried, after exposing two of her fellow delegates as assassins.