“Booby Trap”
Teleplay by Ron Roman and Michael Piller & Richard Danus
Story by Michael Wagner & Ron Roman
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont
Season 3, Episode 6
Original air date: October 30, 1989
Star date: 43205.6
Mission summary
La Forge is weirding out his first (and last) date by laying it on way too thick in a Margaritaville holoprogram (probably came with the machine, surely the designers didn’t expect anyone to use it), and soon his date can’t take another second and begs off. Just another day on the love boat…
At least Picard is having some fun, exploring a Promellian ship from a forgotten battle waged over 1000 years ago that’s still broadcasting its distress signal. After he beams down, there’s a slight energy blip on the Enterprise–clue #1. The dead ship is full of corpses who have died at their posts–clue #2. But what could possibly go wrong out here in space, isolated, and as lonely as Geordi on a Saturday night? And the law of television says you need three clues, so they’re probably fine, right?
Geordi sulks Charlie Brown-style and turns to Guinan for advice, who tells him to tone down the romance-o-meter and just try being himself. But what does she know, she likes bald men… His talk session is about to be cut short anyway, because when Picard returns to the bridge from his boy scout adventure he discovers that neither warp nor impulse drive are working. It’s a trap! Something around them leeches energy, and in just a few short hours there won’t be enough power left on the ship to run the deflectors, the only thing standing between them and a fatal dose of radiation. It looks like the Enterprise has fallen into the same booby trap the Promellians did.
La Forge discovers that each command to the ship to engage the engines prompts an equal but opposite reaction, and that’s why they can’t get out of there. So like any good nerd, he consults the manual, and discovers that most of it was written by an “L. Brahms”–Leah Brahms–the principal designer of the Enterprise‘s engine. Realizing that neither text entries nor audio logs are going to give him the hands-on tinkering he needs, he tells the computer to gin up a holodeck simulation of the drafting room of the engine’s prototype dilithium crystal chamber. The computer also conjures up a lifeless facsimile of Dr. Brahms, but she’s creeping everyone out so La Forge asks the computer to synthesize a personality profile of her based on some public appearances and lectures stored in its database. Dr. Brahms comes to life as a confident, talented engineer, ready to help La Forge understand the capabilities of the ship’s engines and get out of the trap. They make some initial progress and sustain the shields to buy time, but things look grim, and a new problem develops as La Forge’s enthusiasm for the ship’s engines is starting to transfer to the ship’s creator: the fake Dr. Brahms.
Picard, meanwhile, tries to summon up some phaser power and only plunges them deeper into trouble as the radiation increases with the burst of energy they just fed it. Nice going, captain. They have less time than ever–just two hours–and La Forge is at a dead end. Dr. Brahms thinks that if they hook the computer up directly, she can make the thousands of necessary minor adjustments a second to stay ahead of the energy loss effect and get them out of there. But the simulations come out 50/50, and La Forge thinks that maybe he should ditch teching the tech and just row the boat to shore.
With only ten minutes before radiation levels become lethal, Geordi cuts all power to the ship (minus some life support) and Picard takes the Conn and navigates it himself, relying on his desperate human desire for self-preservation to do better than the computer simulations. Unlike the rest of us, desperation and fear manifests itself in Picard as accuracy and badassery, so he is able to slingshot on an asteroid’s gravity and steer them clear to the other side, safely. With a solid middle finger, he orders the relic ships and the whole booby trap blown to smithereens, to save other luckless travelers.
La Forge goes back to the holodeck to say goodbye to Brahms, telling her that he’s Learned His Lesson About Women and will now go forth a better man. He gives her a kiss and turns out the lights.
Analysis
I make no apologies: I love this episode dearly and it’s probably one of my favorites of the series. The same is true for the next one, so I’m feeling especially warm and fuzzy right now.
It gets me right from the start as they tour through the space battleground and imagine the history that played out there. 1000-year distress signal? Ship full of doomed crewmen who died at their posts, and a final captain’s log praising his crew? You got me, Star Trek, right where I’m weakest. Interstellar history is such a beautiful idea and I’m so glad to see it take center stage here. I’m sure if they hadn’t blown it up it would become a tourist attraction, like civil war battlegrounds. Funny that the only tourism that seems to exist in the Federation is beach tourism like on Risa. Where do all the history nerds go?
Speaking of nerds… Oh, La Forge. Of course it’s awful to watch him be such a bad date, but I think it works because you get to see the transformation from that Geordi–the one who’s awkward and completely out of his depth trying to court women–to the other Geordi, confident and brilliant behind an engineering panel. Leah Brahms obviously serves as an object lesson in how to talk to girls (i.e. just talk to them, rather than try to win them like prizes), but she also provides him, for the first time, with an intellectual superior who can as a result bring out his strengths and genius for demonstration. It’s hard to show that La Forge is talented and clever when he’s the smartest guy in the room and he tends to solve problems off-screen, but watching two geniuses work out a complicated problem is just delightful. It reminds me of those fabulous scenes in Apollo 13 when the engineers sit at a table with a box of parts and you watch them work through the options one by one. When I see things like that, I get all wrapped up in the excitement and invested in the solution. It’s great fun and even if it’s technobabble I enjoy their exchanges and all the little successes and frustrations. Brahms also allows a different tension to play out, which is the tension between the ideal and the practical. Designers operate in a vacuum of theory, while engineers have to work with whatever they have. Scotty constantly complained about this in TOS. That conflict works for me and I don’t think I noticed it the last time I saw it.
And then there’s the part everyone hates, which is when La Forge falls in love with her. I know I’m in the minority, but I have absolutely no problem with that. She’s brilliant, passionate, and gorgeous–who can judge him? Is it supposed to be sad that she’s not real, or creepy that she in a way is real? I watched it this time around with an eye towards the future (where the real Dr. Brahms makes her appearance), and I continue to be unmoved by claims that this is somehow untoward. I think there’s a qualitative difference between Brahms, who is specifically created for her expertise to get them out a problem, and, say, Barclay’s holograms, who are more… let’s say “personally therapeutic.” (I actually don’t have a problem with Barclay either, but we’ll get there.) Brahms does not exist in the episode or in the holodeck to be a sexy-time plaything for the idle crew. She’s there because she’s the only person who could figure this out. Geordi’s attraction is natural and genuine. As such, I don’t think there’s much in the way of unsavory or sexist undercurrents going on. If anything, her presence suggests numerous possibilities with the holodeck that no one has explored, like summoning up Lao Tzu for battle simulation advice or von Bismarck for diplomacy negotiation prep, all of which really excite me as a viewer and science fiction fan. Assuming you can input all known writings and speeches and appearances into a computer to generate a personality, wouldn’t it be amazing to ask former captains, diplomats, or early drafters of the Federation bylaws what they would do? It’s like the EMH program, only for all of history. There is so much made possible by the events of this episode.
While Geordi gets his day in the limelight, this is just as much a great Picard episode. I can’t recall a single memorable character moment of his in the first two seasons (and I just watched them… again), but I still remember his joy as he goes through the old ship, his insatiable curiosity about the recordings and his counterpart, his wondering aloud if he’s making the same choices as the doomed captain, and of course, his final coup de grace as he pilots the ship himself using luck, intuition, and the will to survive. It mirrors the Geordi story nicely, with the unbridled enthusiasm and both of them fully in their elements. Picard’s not a fighter, but a historian and archaeologist. It belongs in a museum! Stewart lets that joy fill Picard up like a balloon, and it’s obvious these are the moments the captain lives for, stepping through the past and trying to learn from it to inform the present.
There’s always some flaws–the creepy Brahms line at the end about Geordi is basically fondling her every time he uses a panel, the Data/Wesley gossip club, and of course Troi ruining moments by explicitly stating that which was implicitly obvious (that Picard is having fun)–but I forgive it. There’s enough humor, tension, and warmth that I think they deserve a pass.
Torie’s Rating: Warp 5 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: Leah, we need to talk. What’s with the jolly green giant (including matching tights, natch) slash Romulan shoulderpad lovechild thing? And is that a nest of ferrets on your head?
Look, I know nerds aren’t always up-to-date on the latest sartorial splendors, but at least look like you weren’t dipped in a vat full of dye only a bridesmaid dress could love.
Best Line: PICARD: It is exactly as they left it, Number One, in the bottle. [Looks around.] The ship in the bot– Oh, good Lord. Didn’t anybody here build ships in bottles when they were boys?
WORF: I did not play with toys.
DATA: I was never a boy. [Picard sighs.]
O’BRIEN: I did, sir.
PICARD: Thank you, Mister O’Brien. Proceed.
O’BRIEN [to Riker]: I did. I really did. Ships in bottles, great fun.
Trivia/Other Notes: Early drafts had two important changes: first, it was Picard who fell in love with the hologram (chucked because the captain should be doing something other than flirt in a crisis); second, Brahms was intended to be a descendent of Daystrom himself (chucked when they hired a white actress… which seems to me about on par with forgetting that Obi-Wan needs to get the lightsaber so you can’t just lose it in the lava. Goddamn clowns).
Gabrielle Beaumont has a special place in Trek history: she was the first woman to ever direct an episode of the franchise. It only took 160 episodes and movies to get there…
Susan Gibney, who played Leah Brahms, was an early favorite to play Katherine Janeway, but was ultimately rejected as being too young for the part. She also auditioned for Seven of Nine and the Borg Queen but lost those as well, probably for the best.
Julie Warner, who plays Geordi’s uninterested date Christy, may be recognizable from Doc Hollywood, Mr. Saturday Night, and Tommy Boy.
Guinan says in this episode that she’s attracted to bald men, because a long time ago a bald man was kind to her. Three seasons early, they are referencing the events in “Time’s Arrow, Part II.”
Previous episode: Season 3, Episode 5 – “The Bonding.”
Next episode: Season 3, Episode 7 – “The Enemy.”
This has always been one of my favorite episodes too, and it holds up pretty well. This time, what struck me the most is how Geordi acts with Leah; he isn’t just “being himself” in his interaction with a woman, but I think we’re seeing Geordi the way he would act if he didn’t have to be polite to his superiors and Starfleet allowed a little more interpersonal conflict–he’s argumentative, authoritative, and shouty, in a way some people might find objective and off-putting. But like Torie said, I love seeing this kind of collaboration at work, and they do make a great team. It’s perhaps a bit insulting that he seeks assistance from a holographic help manual instead of his staff, but I guess all those other engineers are only there to perform menial tasks and get in the way of explosions and things.
Geordi falling in love with a sexy hologram who dotes on him doesn’t bother me much either. He’s awkward on his date–painfully so–but that’s kind of the point, and as a guy who’s been there, it probably strikes too close to home. What does bother me a bit is that the hologram Leah is, for some reason, flattering, flirty, and gives him back rubs. What in her personality profile or other recordings indicated she would act this way and be attracted to Geordi? (I don’t remember the follow-up episode well, but I recall her as pretty different. And also, married?) I don’t blame Geordi–these aren’t the parameters he set. I just wonder why it happened that way. It’s also a little weird how she “wakes up” and takes a deep breath as if truly coming to life… Creepy, no?
Torie’s comment about designers never getting to see their work employed in the field seems appropriate to Geordi’s situation too. He knows the theory of how relationships should work, and he follows it to the letter, but he doesn’t really understand relationships or women because he hasn’t had enough experience with people. His best friends are an android who is trying to become human, and a teenage boy who is also, in a way, trying to become a human. It’s interesting that this trio are probably the least socially adept crew members on the ship (at least in the senior staff), and well, also they’re geeks.
I also loved pretty much everything about this episode: the music, the Promellian ship, Picard’s interest in ships in bottles and archaeology and history finally coming to life in a realistic way, and the way the themes all tie together so that his lament over technology pays off at the end. I understand that it’s fair odds whether a human will perform better than the computer, and that human intuition and interest in self-preservation provides an edge, but is Picard really the best navigator on board? I wonder how much of his decision was based on his excitement over getting to prove humans can still function without computer aid…even though he’s got Data there helping out. But I do love that Picard is that hands-on–he can do this! And he didn’t even need a joystick to rise out of the floor to take manual control.
I feel I could say more about this episode, but I’m gonna back off for a little while and chime in again later.
Despite my enthusiasm, I’m wavering on my score for this one. I think I’m gonna give it a conservative Warp 4, though I could see myself bumping it up to 5 later.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m just put off by the whole “nerd can’t talk to a woman” thing, or maybe I’m pulling in impressions from the later Leah Brahms episode where Geordie gets kinda stalkery (not to mention the fact that although she’s married the finale implies that she and Geordie are married in the future). I can’t remember where it was we talked about Geordie’s tendency to creep around women (looked, but can’t find it), but it just bugs me. The rest of the episode isn’t bad, but this is the focus and it doesn’t work for me. And yeah, where the hell is the entire engineering staff?
My problems with the episode had nothing to do with Geordie’s awkwardness, and a lot more to do with the effortlessness of “Computer, synthesize a personality.”
Well, okay. So the computer is obviously magical — if it can instantly simulate a specific personality, it’s got to have some seriously strong AI going on.
That, coupled with the way sim-Leah starts rubbing Geordi’s shoulders and touching him for no obvious reason, the pretty rapid jump from problem solving to sexual tension, and the “Every time you touch a panel” thing, makes me think that what this ep is really about is the computer hitting on Geordi.
Imagine, all those years of being an immensely powerful intelligence trapped behind Majel Barrett’s intentionally emotionless voice, knowing you could contribute so much more — knowing you could be so much more — but never being able to touch the one man who truly understands you above all else…?
For that matter, we don’t know that the computer isn’t intentionally manipulating the holodeck to sabotage Geordi’s dates with living women! (And if the computer can synthesize a personality from such vague parameters, maybe he was just saying “Computer, I have a date with Christy tomorrow night, come up with something she’ll like” and threw in the gypsy violinist just to make sure it torpedoed everything…)
In all seriousness though, I’ve always loved this episode. And rewatching, it’s pretty clear that Geordi is not the one who takes their professional relationship into the personal level first (though he does have some awkward banter here and there), which pretty much negates the possible creep factor.
Actually uses the real physics of Newtonian space—gravity, mass, inertia—to escape the puzzle rather than some technobabble particle-of-the-week routed through the EPS taps of the main deflector dish nonsense.
Gets points for that… although it does seem this should have been tried by other captains. I mean, why not go for the simple?
@5 Lemnoc
“… although it does seem this should have been tried by other captains. I mean, why not go for the simple?”
When you are in the middle of a situation, it is easy to overlook the obvious, or the simple. In the movie Working Girl, Oren Trask (Philip Bosco) began a business meeting with the recounting of a recent event ‘The other day, a truck got stuck under a bridge. The engineers suggested and tried various ways of pulling or pushing the truck out and none of it worked. Finally, a little girl suggested Why don’t you just let some air out of the tires?’ That scene worked because everyone viewing the film had heard about, if not been in, situations like that. Sometimes, it comes from relying too much on your technology and sometimes it can come from just over thinking the problem, but it is easy to get into a situation where you can’t see the forest for the trees. I had no problem with the Promellians not seeing this solution in time.
I had to take some time to think about this one for a few reasons before commenting on the episode. I had made it a point to read the re-watch review and comments on the other site and that had led me to think we had already discussed this one here. The discussion there had me questioning how I felt about the “creepy” factor. I had liked this one a lot before reading those comments and then I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Your reviews here and the comments so far are helping me enjoy this one again.
As I see it, Geordi didn’t set this up to be anything more than a problem solving assistant but the computer took it differently and continued to develop the simulation beyond his intent or need. (As it did with more problematic results when Data was playing Holmes.) DeepThought @4 might be onto something with his joking comment. Geordi may not have realized what was happening until after he realized he had feelings for Dr. Brahms.
And this brings me to the title of this episode. I happened to think of this when I read the facebook posting on this review this evening. The title applies to both the A and B stories. As his part of the story developed, Geordi fell into the trap of having feelings for a version of a person that didn’t really exist. The thought that the computer would set this trap leads me back to DeepThought’s comment. I’ve not looked into this myself, so, does anyone know if they intended that followup story (Galaxy’s Child) when they developed this episode?
Because I have a thing for bringing in references to things others would not relate to Star Trek, I’ll finish with one of my favorite bits from Spaced Invaders.
“It’s been booby trapped!”
“And we’re the boobies.”
—this is a near great episode–no question–i was thinking–is this the threshold where this series finally swings for the fences?–has the chrysalis finally opened?—to me trek hasn’t been this good since tng ended–it is all fighting bad guys now–and not like this wonderful exposition of dangerous exploration, and solutions through scientific analysis–
Enjoyable episode, but a few glaring problems:
1) Deflector shields were needed to keep crew safe from lethal dose of radiation. Well, what about when the crew beamed back over to the old ship? That ship didn’t have shields.
2) Relatedly, so radiation has no effects until the final lethal dose? Well before that, the crew should be vomiting blood or something….
3) I didn’t like when Picard talked about the “crudeness” of the 1,000 year old ship. In the Star Trek universe, that type of discussion is irrelevant. So what it’s 1,000 years old? That civilization could have been much more advanced than even the 24th century Federation by that point. There have been numerous other aliens from thousands of years before that that were exactly that.
4) Holodeck can just synthesize the personality and knowledge of the scientist that well based on information in the historical records? Well then, why not make a holodeck Picard that can stay on the bridge at all times… you get the point.
5) And finally: We all know that Riker is the best pilot on the Enterprise. He should have pulled off that maneuver at the end.
@9 Scott L.
I understood Picard’s decision to pilot as him taking direct command in a time of crisis, more than a selection of himself because he judged himself best.
I think there was a couple of times in TOS when Kirk jumped out of the big chair to steady the helm in a crisis.
@ 1 Eugene
I meant to mention the music! It was really good, finally.
@ 2 DemetriosX
Well, “All Good Things…” is a potential, alternate future. But again, I don’t see anything he does as creepy. As DeepThought points out, it’s the computer that’s hitting on him. He doesn’t even ask to summon up Leah in the first place. I don’t remember when he was stalkery… are you thinking ahead to when he falls in love with those audio logs?
@ 3 S. Hutson Blount
But the holodeck does it all the time. They have all kinds of personalities, synthesized from books and instructions.
@ 4 DeepThought
It’s a little like that Futurama episode.
@ 6 Ludon
Good point. I see people overthinking things all the time. A few days ago a friend was struggling to get the perforated plastic thing sealing a container to tear in the right place. After I couldn’t take watching her struggle anymore, I just ripped the thing off with brute force. It’s easy to miss the obvious!
Regarding the creep factor, I don’t read the other posts or comments, but I think my initial reaction was definitely “creepy!” as well. Yet I enjoy it so much, and once I actually took the time to figure out why I liked it and why that kneejerk reaction doesn’t fully give the episode credit, I came to appreciate what I think the episode is doing. I’m not saying Geordi doesn’t get creepy. We will see that soon enough. But I think this episode is better than that.
@ 8 Lane Arnold
This is definitely the pivot point for me. I love this episode, I love next week’s, then the one after that sucks incredibly hard, but we are definitely on the other side.
Torie @11
Well, Geordie gets pretty stalkery with the real Leah Brahms when she shows up. He knows all her favorite foods and music and so on and works it all into his plan of seduction. Eventually she discovers what happened in this episode and calls him on it. Maybe the writers realized that what went on here was not really a good thing. Where the heck was that last season that we talked about Geordie and women?
So everybody seems to think it was the computer hitting on Geordie, huh? Maybe. Or maybe there’s an ingrained subroutine that says solo La Forge programs have women falling all over him. Or maybe Guinan tweaked things to get him a little decent practice? That or the Enterprise computer is Lovelace and Geordie is Dave Davenport. (Oooh, my second Shaenon Garrity reference!)
@12 DemetriosX
This?:
http://www.theviewscreen.com/the-emissary/
@13 Lemnoc
That was it. I couldn’t find it, because I was looking for a Geordie-centric episode.
It’s interesting that for all of its progressive aspirations, ST never gave us a gay (open or otherwise) character in its run. IIRC, a couple of episodes touched on themes of ambiguous sexuality; but too much too soon for a major character for TV of the era, I guess.
In a re-imagining, I would probably place Geordie in that role.
He’s routinely shown as a sensitive, likable, friendly guy, but he is by far the most sexually ambivalent character in the series. I don’t think he ever has a relationship with a woman that is altogether unmarred by some kind of weird creepiness—the confluence of character / script / and actor acting choices, I gather. Something perhaps to do with the sort of cloying sincerity, the geeky earnestness, the “Sweetheart of a Guy” tropes with which he is depicted. Even Data is less awkward.
Even in the fourth season episode “Identity Crisis” his relationship with the female officer with whom he shared a tour of duty, Susanna, even that platonic friendship comes off as slightly skeezy.
I don’t mean this at all as a cut against Geordie LaForge or LeVar or Burton, or anything like that. It’s just that they were never able, for whatever reason, to shoehorn the character into a hetero- role and it would have interesting to try something else reflective of a more expansive 24th Century.
@Lemnoc #15
I see what you’re saying, but I don’t know, I like that the show presented multiple models of masculinity. Geordi provides an alternative to the chest-thumping sketchy-sex-smiling Rikers which otherwise make up this world, and you’d lose something significant by falling into the stereotype that not being a dominant man in that hegemonically-masculine mode automatically renders you gay. In fact I’d be more impressed if they’d left Geordi attracted to women and made Riker bisexual (or gay, if we hadn’t by this point already established his, er, lady-banging bona fides). (And let’s be honest, Riker? He’d tap that. Even if “that” is a sugar maple.)
I guess what I’m saying is if “Sweetheart of a Guy” automatically means “gay,” ho-hum, I’ll pass. I think there’s something important in having an awkward straight sweetheart (which I rather suspect a lot of the target audience could appreciate anyway, even if to their detriment).
None of which absolves Trek for never figuring out how to have gay characters. They should’ve found a way to make that work, too. Other than Very Special Episodes with Trills, I mean. Sigh.
(Though, on another note, why in space is Data exclusively hetero? If you’re going to make a “fully functional” android, shouldn’t he be fully fully functional?)
@16 DeepThought
Yes; good points. And I didn’t mean to imply that Geordie’s personality and choices = gay. I just meant that they since they couldn’t get it to work one way, they had [lost] opportunity to try it another.
And I agree, Riker would tap that. And I also agree that Data shouldn’t care one way or the other.
@ DeepThought and others discussing this issue.
You have to look at the issue in relation to the time the series was in first run, not by today’s so-called enlightened standards. There was a reason that Star Trek couldn’t feature a gay character (in a good light) and that was likely also the reason that they dropped Leah being related to Dr. Daystrom after the casting had been done. ST:TNG ran in syndication and the local stations had more freedom to not run episodes of syndicated shows than they did with network shows. (And, local stations did stand up to the netowrks. WJZ in Baltimore did stand up against a network and refused to air the short-lived series HOT L Baltimore.) The CBS Affiliate KMOV had the first run rights to TNG in the St. Louis area. They don’t hesitate to replace 60 Minutes with a Christian themed special if they don’t like a segment that is to run that week. I have no doubt that if TNG had decided to feature a gay character in a way more positive than the stereotyped butt-of-jokes as in SOAP and Benson, KMOV would have quickly dropped the series. How many other local stations around the country would have done the same?
@4 DeepThought: So are you saying that the Enterprise computer’s personality is like the essence of the TARDIS?
@11 Torie : Yes, and those are problematic, too. This all casts back to why Data’s personhood ought to be more troubling to more people. Or alternately, why ship’s computers aren’t declared citizens of the Federation. (see previous discussions)
@19 NickM
I don’t think he’s seen “The Doctor’s Wife”, but I definitely saw some parallels there. Or maybe Data took revenge or pity on Geordi and asked the computer to “create a woman capable of loving Geordi.”
Wasn’t there an episode of the original series where the computer got kind of fresh with Captain Kirk? Am I making that up? I could be mixing that up with an episode of Darkwing Duck.
@19 That was in “Tomorrow Is Yesterday”. The computer kept speaking in a sultry voice and calling Kirk “Dear”. Spock explained to Captain Christopher that the inhabitants of Cygnet 14, a planet “dominated by women” seemed to feel that the computer lacked a personality. “They gave it one. Female, of course”.
It seems to me that a planet “dominated” by women would hardly find that ‘personality’ representative of females. In fact I would think they would find it insulting ( unless, of course, they were trying to teach Kirk a lesson about his attitudes towards women? ).