ST:TNG Season Three, Episode Six "Booby Trap"

ST:TNG Season Three, Episode Six "Booby Trap"
Production Order: 6
Air Order: 6
Stardate: 43205.6
Original Air Date: October 30, 1989

Sorry about the lateness. Was feeling a bit under the weather around post-time.

*******

Interestingly, we don't start out with an exterior shot of the ship this week, or a Picard Log with some exposition. We start out on the holodeck, where Geordi is having a romantic date with a girl on some beach. He offers her another drink in a coconut husk with an umbrella and a stupid name ("coco-no-no"), which she declines. Then he remembers that he programed a Romani musician in to play a romantic song on the violin. He attempts to make a move, scooting closer to her, putting his arm around her.

At this point, she has grown uncomfortable enough that she has to give him The Speech.

"Geordi, you're a great guy."
"Uh-huh," he sighs.
"But I don't feel the same," she adds.
"Uh-huh," he says flatly.
The Romani musician has gotten annoying, so Geordi tells him to fuck off. (Truthfully, he could have just turned the musician off. Dude doesn't exist.)

Wes and Data are in Ten Forward, playing 3-D chess. (Side note: does Data reign it in when playing games like this with others? If not, why would you play with him? Seems like a sure way to lose in two moves.) They briefly discuss the asteroid field outside, which was caused by an ancient space battle.

The door to Ten Forward opens, and Geordi comes in.
"Uh-oh," says Wes. "He had a big date tonight. He spent forever putting together a romantic program for it. Looks like it ended early."
They stare at Geordi for a moment, who slumps onto a barstool and stares off into space.
"Uh-oh," replies Data, with a practiced inflection.
Data gets paged to the bridge.

When he arrives, Riker tells him that they're picking up a signal, and they briefly talk about the possibility of there being survivors of the battle of Orelious IX. When they finally track down the source, it's coming from a ship hanging in space.

"Promellian Battle Cruiser," says Worf in amazement.

Picard is equally amazed, fangirling over it's intact "Lang fusion engines."

When Data reports no life signs, Picard says he is not surprised.

"That signal was generated over a thousand years ago."

Mysterious music! Commercial break!

Picard's Log 43205.6: "So we've been sent to chart out the battle where the Orelions and Promellians pretty much destroyed both species, and we've found an intact Promellian ship."

Picard and Riker are making their way through the corridors, and Riker is salty because the rules say that the captain should never head away missions, but Picard is insistent here.
"What's the worst that could happen? Ghosts?" Picard pauses and says something that Riker doesn't understand. "Have you ever dreamed of climbing inside the bottle?"
"Sorry?"
"Airships in bottles. Didn't you ever do that as a kid? Bet I had a Promellian Battle Cruiser, too!"
They go into the transporter room.
Data and Worf are there, ready to beam down, and Data assures them that there is adequate life support on the battle cruiser that they won't need breathing equipment.
Picard brings up ships in bottles again. Blank looks from the away team.
"Didn't anybody play with ships in bottles when they were boys?" he asks, frustrated.
Sassy Worf: "I did not play with toys."
Sassy Data: "I was never a boy."
Possibly brown-nosing O'Brien: "I did, sir!"
"House points to you!" says Picard happily. "Okay, beam us down!"

Riker gives O'brien a smile that says, "You suck-up."
"What, I did!" protests O'Brien. "Ships in bottles is big-time fun!"
Okay, dude. Who you trying to convince?

The power goes down briefly, and O'Brien says he'll check out some stuff and get back to Riker about it.

On the bridge of the Promellian Cruiser, Picard & Co find the mummified remains of some promellians in their chairs. Worf, typically Klingon, remarks how admirable it is that they died at their posts. Picard waxes poetic about the layout of the bridge.

Back in Ten Forward, Geordi is nursing a drink at the bar.

"Got anything stronger?" he asks Guinan, who is busing tables.

"Yep," she replies.

"Will it help?" he grouches.

She answers truthfully. "Nope."

Then he launches into what comes remarkably close to being a Nice Guy speech, but thankfully does not go there. Instead his lament of "I fix ailing starships, why can't I talk to a girl?" is acceptable. (Do not fall into Nice Guy Fallacies. It's a trap.)

Geordi: (sighing): "Tell me something, Guinan. You're a woman, right?"

Sassy Guinan: "Yes, I can tell you I'm a woman."

He asks her, as a woman, what she looks for in a man. Guinan replies that she likes bald dudes. He says "seriously?" in a teasing manner, and when she replies that a bald man took care of her once when she was hurting, he says wistfully, "I'd like to do that."

Sassy Guinan Moment: "Well, I take care of myself these days." 

He complains that he just can't seem to make it work, and she advises him that he's trying too hard.

We jump briefly over to the bridge of the E, where Wes tells Riker that he's getting weird readings on the power fluctuating, just like O'Brien was in the transporter room.

On the Battle Cruiser, Data gets the lights going, and it turns on the sound of the SOS signal. Picard tells Worf to scan everything for posterity, then he and Data turn that beacon off.
"Found (the Promellian equivalent of a USB drive)," announces Data.
"Ooh, can we watch it?" asks an excited Picard.
"The parts are old, but we can try." Data puts the thing into another thing, and uses his tricorder to boost more things, and we get a staticky picture of the Promellian captain, as well as part of his log.
"I am Galek Sar," says the captain. "This is the ship Cleponji, and I want everyone to know that my crew is awesome, and that what happened to us was totally my fault, not theirs."

The away team is feeling kind of crappy about this new development. Picard pages Riker to tell him that they're ready to come back.

But when they hit the bridge of the E again, Picard is all smiles.
"That was so freaking cool!" announces Picard. "There were totes ghosts on that ship, Number One! It was the old captain, and we watched a log where he talked about how fabulous his crew was."
Riker and Troi exchange smiles.
"What?" asks Picard.
"Your fangirling is cute," says Troi. "Nice to see you in a good mood."

Picard tells Data to contact some authorities about the ship, to have it hauled off and studied.
"Let's go look at other stuff," he directs, and Wes plugs in new coordinates.
"Um, we lost some power," reports Data. "Like, two percent. I'll change up some stuff to make it work."
Alarm.
"Whoa. High-intensity radiation, coming our way," warns Worf.
We get some cuts here where Data reports ever-increasing drops in power output, and Worf states that they're bombardment by radiation is going up.
"Let's back the fuck up and leave in a hurry," Picard directs Wes.
Wes sets the ship for warp one, but they don't move. They call Geordi, who checks all of his settings.
"Dude, we should be flying out of here," says Geordi.
Is there an alien poltergeist in your anti-matter again?
Wes steps on the gas, and the engine revs, but the wheels just spin.
"Hey," pipes up Geordi. "Could we like, slow down so we don't burn out the engines? Kthx."
Wes takes his foot off the gas, and Picard stares at the Promellian ship on the viewscreen, pondering what the old captain said about his actions getting them stuck there, and wondering if the E has fallen into a thousand-year-old booby trap.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

When we return, the senior officers are in the Obs Lounge, trying to figure out what's happening. Basically, they're sitting in some kind of radiation field, but Worf says it's so strong that it interferes with sensors, so he has no idea where it's coming from. Geordi says with the power drain, they'll only have three hours worth of shields, at which point, the radiation will start killing them all. They need a way to keep the ship running without running out of juice. Riker asks Data if the there's anything in the history books that could help them. Data says the Menthars (the people from Orelious IX) had a lot of cool battle strategies, and he begins to list them, but it ends when Riker interrupts to ask if there's anything relevant to this situation.
"Noop," says Data.
They decide to send over another away team. The Promellians weren't able to figure out how to get out of this trap, but they did know the Menthars better.

Down in Engineering, Geordi is having the same problem that a lot of us have had at one time or another: why won't thing do the thing? By talking through it with the computer, he figures out that they can't form a subspace field, which is why they aren't going anywhere.
Geordi goes through the computer logs on propulsion, to see if he can get this shit working again. He encounters the name of one engineer over and over again, L.Brahms.
The computer tells him that Dr Leah Brahms was a graduate of Daystrom Institute and worked as a junior member on the propulsion team for Galaxy-class starships.
"Looks like she wrote the book on propulsion," he remarks.
He calls up the subspace entry logs for the Enterprise, and he chooses Brahms' voice entries over the visual records.

On the bridge, Dr Crusher informs Picard of the precautions she'd like to take just in case they end up with radiation poisoning. Which are good precautions to take, because you know they'll only solve this shit if they have a few minutes left on the clock. She says once the shields go down for good, they'll only have 30 minutes to live before the radiation goes fatal.

In Engineering, Geordi is hashing things out with the voice commands of the log entries of Leah Brahms. He can pull up the specs for the dilithium crystal chamber, but it seems inadequate.
"I need to crawl inside," he muses. "Computer, can I get a 3-D simulation of the inside of the engine?"
"You want the prototype?" asks Majel. "I can give you the prototype schematics and stuff from the Utopia Planitia drafting room."
"Fuck yeah!" says Geordi. "Set it up in holodeck three! And send Leah Brahms' log entries down there, too!"
He's pretty impressed by the set-up for the Utopia Planitia drafting room. Through the window, he can see the skeleton of the Enterprise in dry dock. The schematics he wants are set up on display.

"Leah, did you design this?" he asks.
"There were a lot of people involved with this design," she replies mechanically.
"Off the record?" he suggests.
"Personal logs are restricted," Majel reminds him.
Sassy Geordi that borders on creepy-thing-to-say: "Great. Another woman who won't get personal with me on the holodeck."
He moves on. "Okay, I need to power the ship and the engines. Can I (science)?"
Leah voice: "Theoretically, yes. (More science)."
"Cool. Show me how."
Horror film moment:

He turns around while tinkly, playful music plays. It's Dr Leah Brahms.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

"Hey, computer, did I ask for a simulation of Leah Brahms?" asks a confused Geordi.
"Yep," replies Majel. "You asked for her to show you (science)."
"Huh. Guess I did. Okay."
Simulation-Leah says nothing.
"Continue with what you were saying?" he prompts.
"(Science)," she replies robotically.
He talks himself through it and then tells the simulation that it can be done, and that she's beautiful, only he uses a "you're the best!" inflection.
Geordi calls Riker. "Okay, we can do shields!"
"Awesome!" says Riker. "What about propulsion?"
"Still working on that," he answers.
Picard: "Pass my congratulations on to the rest of your team."
Sassy Geordi: "Thanks, Captain. We're all smiles down here."

On the bridge, Data has put some of those old-school/new-fangled USB sticks into the computer and is trying to pull out any info he can.
"Most of these are too decayed and can't be fixed," he admits.

On the holodeck, Geordi has asked the computer make the adjustments to the dilithium crystal chamber, and asks what the output is now.
"Up fourteen percent," replies Majel.
Geordi celebrates, but Simulation-Leah just stands there like a talking mannequin. He's a little weirded out by it.
"Computer, do you have a personality on file for Dr Brahms?" he asks.
"Sure."
"Okay, and did she ever debate at the intergalactic caucuses on Chaya VII?"
"She did."
"Cool. If you take that info, could you put her personality into the simulation?"
"Yeah, but there would be about a ten percent margin of error," Majel warns.
"All good," says Geordi. "Do it."
There's a moment here, where we're meant to pick up on the fact that Simulation-Leah has gone from just an image that gives answers, to a simulation that moves, speaks, and thinks according to the responses given by the living person in the holodeck program. That moment includes Sim-Leah taking a deep breath and blinking several times, where she hadn't done either before. And I get it, it's a transition from talking dolly to simulation of an actual human. But at no time does Sim-Leah need to blink or breathe, so why is it necessary to have her do both of these in an exaggerated way, as though she's woken up from a coma?
Anyway, she turns and smiles, and immediately gets casual on him, by insisting that he call her Leah instead of Dr Brahms. The simulation has also extrapolated from the conversations he's been having with himself on the holodeck, and she takes charge right away, saying they need to hurry because they can't leave the crystals in that alignment forever or they'll burn out some stuff.
He's a little shell-shocked, and she's all, "Hello? Earth to Geordi?"
"Okay!" he replies enthusiastically.
And they start working.

In the science station on the bridge, Data has managed to coax a few seconds of usable information out of those USB drives.
Galek Sar describes the same sort of situation that the E is in (no propulsion or weapons), and says it comes from the aceton assimilators, but the recording degrades before he can say where the assimilators are hidden.
"Google, what are aceton assimilators?" asks Picard.
"They're ancient generators that can drain power from sources that are far away," answers Data. "It wouldn't be hard to convert energy into radiation."
So the thing is sucking up energy that the E is putting out by running its systems and engines, and it's spitting it back at them as radiation. Basically, don't move or you'll die. But without life support or systems, they'll die anyway. And running the life support drains the energy, which drops the shields, which floods the ship with radiation, and then they die. Again. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
"The Menthars probably hid them in the asteroid debris," says Riker.
All of this leads to an aside which I don't think is ever addressed: presumably, the crew of the Promellian Cruiser died of radiation when the energy was drained from their systems and shields. Now, the radiation would not have come into play beforehand (ie, not present on the Cruiser before the away team beamed over) because it had 1000 years to clear out, and the assimilators were not working in all that time, or there would have been more ships in that asteroid field. The draining of the E began when the away team beamed over, and continued while they were on the Cruiser. Worf did not detect the radiation until after the away team returned, but were they not getting low doses of radiation while on the Cruiser, which presumably had no shields?

Back on the holodeck, Geordi and Sim-Leah are arguing.
Sim-Leah says she did all the calculations herself, and her idea should work, but Sassy Geordi disagrees.
"I don't care if you built it with your bare hands from an old Ferengi cargo ship. It's gonna go [low whistle, explosion noise] and we're gonna go with it!"

He angrily points out that she's used to working on static models, and he's got a working ship with tens of thousands of light years on it. She admits that this is true, and he tells her that he knows his ship in and out.
And she says something that, taken out of context, is awful: "Well then, you must know me inside and out, 'cause a lot of me is in here."
Then they agree that chief engineers should be part of the process of designing ships, and that designers should get out in space more.
Riker pages Geordi to the bridge.
"Don't go away," he tells Leah.
She smiles at him in a moment of program sentience, like, "You dork, I can't leave the holodeck. Where am I going to go?"
"Oh, yeah!" he remembers. "Save program!"

There's an impromptu meeting on the bridge, and Picard asks Data how many assimilators he thinks are in the debris field.
"Several hundred thousand," guesses Data.
"But they've been here for at least a thousand years," protests Picard. "There should be some break-down, right?"
"Like, point-one percent at (coordinates)," says Worf doubtfully.
"What if we fire phasers at that spot?" asks Picard. "Could we destroy it?"
"Maybe?" shrugs Geordi.
"Or maybe we'd just be feeding the beast," supplies Data.
"Let's try it," says Picard.
He tells Geordi to go back to his work on the engines, and has Worf prep the phasers.
They fire the phasers at three spots right near the ship. And just as Data predicted, the assimilators drank in the energy, drained the ship, and increased the radiation.
Dumb move.

Geordi and Sim-Leah are looking at schematics when the computer interrupts.
"Hey, you're using too much energy. The energy level is too low in the ship. I'm gonna shut off the holodeck."
"Override," sais Geordi wearily.
"Noop," replies Majel.
"WTF?" yells Geordi.
Sim-Leah disappears, then Geordi is left in the holodeck grid.
He doesn't have clearance for that as chief engineer? What a crock of crap.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

There's a meeting in the Obs Lounge, but they're letting Geordi telecommute in from Engineering. They're also pretty much talking in the dark.
"Our crystals are breaking down," comments Geordi. "We'll need to get more at the nearest starbase."
Sassy Riker: "The optimist of the group."
A quick check-in of numbers: less than two hours of shields left, radiation up 17% and fatal exposure minutes dropped to 26.
Picard asks Geordi if all non-essential power has been shut off.
"Yeah," says Geordi. "But I really need to turn holodeck three back on. I built a model of the engines in there, and I've been using it to make progress on this problem."
Picard grants him use of the holodeck, but gives him a deadline of one hour to come up with something.

Geordi rushes back to the holodeck. For some reason, Sim-Leah seems to know that their timeline has been shortened.
"Okay, we need to figure out how to get out of this booby trap," says Geordi. "Can we shut it down? Can we outrun it?"
"Well, there's a reaction from the E, then a reaction from the assimilators," reasons Sim-Leah. "Is there any kind of reaction time between those two reactions when we could move forward just enough to escape the radiation given off by that assimilator?"
"Ooh, YAS!" says Geordi, sitting at a workstation. And because he's lost his head a little, and maybe because he's thinking ahead to a celebration program afterward, he asks, "Do you like Italian?"
"Like it?" she asks. "Wait until you try my fungilli."
Noop. Geordi, you makin' dinner plans with a hologram?

A bit later, and Geordi is getting frustrated. He's input a bunch of stuff, but things aren't going quite right for him. He yells and hits the console.
...and Sim-Leah gives him a shoulder massage, which just...
whut?
Like, which part of her thought that was appropriate? Was it the part of Real Leah's personality that the computer decided should be added? Or was it the computer simulation recognizing that Geordi was getting stressed out and thinking that this was a thing that Sim-Leah needed to do? Really, if she was his coworker, would she have actually done that? They've known each other for two hours, max. Would you give a brand-new coworker a massage after knowing them 120 minutes?
Anyway, Geordi starts to go "mmmmmm," then backs the wheeled chair away and says "Don't do that."
But instead of being like, "That's not appropriate work conduct," he's like "I don't want to feel that good right now."
I... just... fix the ship, Geordi. Stop trying to get down with the simulated image of a real-life engineer on the holodeck.

He realizes that they're essentially out of time, and complains that it is both possible and not possible to make that many micro-adjustments per second.
Sim-Leah: "...I could do it."
Geordi: " It's not humanly possible."
Sim-Leah: "I'm not human."
Geordi: "You mean the computer could do it."
Yes, Geordi. She is the computer.
Picard comes in. Geordi acts a bit flustered, like he forgot to lock a bathroom stall, and Picard has just opened the door.
"Oh, um, this is, um, Leah Brahms, a computer-simulated image of one of the E's engineers," he explains. "We've been tinkering with this stuff and we think we might have a solution. We could escape the booby trap if we turn the ship over to the computer."
Sim-Leah says nothing to Picard, making her seem all the more like just some mindless holodeck plaything that he caught Geordi with.
"You think that will work?" asks Picard, eyeing Sim-Leah.
"Not one hundred percent sure," Geordi admits. "We could program a simulation and see how it goes."

Picard is sitting in the dark in his ready room, staring out the window. Riker comes in and asks if he's heard from Geordi.
"Yeah," says Picard. "He wants to turn the ship over to the computer and let it take us out of here because it can make quicker adjustments than we can."
Riker considers that. "I've always been impressed by a machine's ability to take orders," he says. "I'm not as convinced that it can creatively give them."
Hmmm, what does that say about Riker's opinion of Data?
Picard goes on for a bit again about model ships, and ends with "now the ships are flying us."
Dude really loves his model ships.

Geordi and Sim-Leah are running simulations (sim-ception) using what basically amounts to a fancy side-scroller game, like Oregon Trail in space. In one, she does not make it out in time, and the crew is exposed to fatal radiation. The second time she makes it, but the third time, with all of the same moves made, she does not.
Red alert sounds off. The shields have failed, and they're now exposed to the radiation. Twenty-six minutes and counting.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Geordi and Sim-Leah bicker for a bit, and Picard calls Geordi.
"Two minutes," begs Geordi. "There's another way!"
"I have a different idea," he tells Sim-Leah after hanging up with Picard. And he reprograms the simulation.

On the bridge a few minutes later, he explains that part of the problem with his initial idea was that it involved overpowering the trap.
"We need to shut everything off," he explains to Picard. "We do one big thrust for a microsecond, then shut down everything but life support and two thrusters. Then we cruise on out."
"You're gonna die in twelve minutes," announces Majel.
"Did you run the simulation?" Picard asks him.
"Yeah, but it isn't any better or worse than letting the computer do it. About the same odds. Personally, I think there's a lot to be said for the human element of wanting to stay alive."

"Okay," agrees Picard. Geordi offers to take over at conn and do the steering, but Picard declines. He will do it himself.

"Head's up," Riker calls over the PA. "Gonna switch on the engine for a sec, so brace yourself."

"You're gonna die soon," comes Majel's voice again.

"Shut it!" yells Riker. "The captain is trying to concentrate." 

They do one big thrust with the impulse engines, then shut everything down. Picard carefully steers the ship using quick shots from the thrusters.

Riker calls out the headings, and lets Picard know that the large asteroid coming up is pretty close, and it may contain an assimilator, ya know? Picard uses a thruster to steer away from it, and Worf announces that they did not set off an assimilator.

Data puts in that the gravitational pull from the asteroids has slowed them down by 8 percent, and they no longer have the juice to get out of the debris field. Picard simply thanks him.

Data reports that the asteroid ahead is increasing their speed because of its gravitational pull.
"It's cool," says Picard, and he deftly steers the ol' rustbucket into a quick turn, spinning that shit away from the asteroid and out of the field.
"You used the gravitational pull as a slingshot," says an impressed Data.
Picard just hands the conn back to Wes like it ain't no thang.
"Gotta take care of this booby trap before we leave," he remarks to Riker.
Riker has Worf blow the Promellian ship up, taking a bunch of those assimilator-asteroids with it. Hopefully, they've marked it for Starfleet, so someone can come along and take down whatever assimilators are left. Otherwise, yeah, you've taken down the bait, but someone else could just stumble into the field.

Back on the holodeck, Geordi prepares to shut down his program, and is saying goodbye to Sim-Leah.
"We make a good team," she says.
I agree.
"We should do it again sometime," he replies.
That could be helpful.
Sim-Leah: "I'm with you every day, Geordi. Every time you look at this engine, you're looking at me. Every time you touch it, it's me."
Okay, I get what you're trying to say, Sim-Leah, but that could sound very wrong in just the right context, and you couldn't have phrased that differently?
And then, a Why? Moment.
They kiss.
And much like the massage, I have to wonder what's behind this. Does the computer feel that the real Dr Brahms would kiss a coworker? Or did the computer extrapolate from how it thinks Geordi is feeling, and thinks that's the most appropriate action? Because it wasn't Geordi kissing Sim-Leah. She leaned in at the same time. They kissed each other.
And I understand that with the holodeck, all bets are off, and you can kind of do whatever the fuck you want, but doesn't the holodeck really encourage you to go carte blanche like that?

Then Geordi straightens up, stares at her for a moment, and ends the program.

Happy ending music, and end credits.

Okay.
I'm gonna try to judge this episode on its own merits.
Because in season four, there's an episode called "Galaxy's Child" that's a kind of follow-up to this one, and it changes how how I feel about this episode. Like, completely. But I'm trying to approach each of these episodes as though I hadn't seen them before, and just on their own (with possible comparisons made to material that came before it). Because DS9 was the first Trek that I watched completely "live" instead of in syndication, quite a few TNG episodes I watched were out of order and several were repeated more often than others. As a result, I watched "Booby Trap" many times before finally catching "Galaxy's Child," so my opinion of this episode remained the same for years before being altered. Let's shoot for that first one.
So.
Let's start with what's working for me.
I love the booby trap aspect. They go into an area to study what's basically space ruins, and surprise! They find what pretty much amounts to an intact Yaxchilan burial tomb, and Picard practically kiddy-claps, because he's all about that shit. After checking it out, they find out that they're hooked up to some trap from a long-forgotten war, but instead getting the attention of some benevolent alien poltergeist like in "The Bonding," they get a slow version of the boulder that chases Indian Jones out of temples. I'm digging this set-up. Our Disable the Ship means that they're screwed six ways from Sunday, so they have to really think their way out of this. (Bonus points: they have the mummified remains of the last people to fail at this nearby to remind them of the consequences, which is terribly Indiana Jones.)
A think I also like: I thought Geordi's solution to not being able to visualize what he needed to figure out a way out was brilliant. Can't climb inside the engine? Recreate it on the holodeck. Get to the heart of the matter. I also approve of his accessing Dr Brahms' professional log entries. When in doubt, return to the source.
It was the computer's idea to recreate a simulation of Dr Brahms, and that was okay. Geordi was getting tired of someone speaking at him, so he asked the computer to put Dr Brahms' personality into the simulation, and that was alright as well. Recall that if the personality clashed with his, he could have shut that part off, and just gone with talking mannequin again.
Where this episode goes sideways for me is in the romance. The computer seems to have been reading something into its interactions with Geordi, because neither time Sim-Leah got cozy was completely initiated by him. The first time (with the massage) was initiated by her/the computer. And the kiss seemed to be both of them equally. We're seen this before, where Riker fell hard for Minuet, a holodeck creation. But in that case, Minuet was specifically designed to reign in Riker, and then had things added to keep Picard interested as well. But that was the intentional handiwork of the Binars. Here, the computer has created a simulation based on Starfleet records. Then, at the behest of the chief engineer, a personality was divined from other records. But unless Leah Brahms' records indicate that she's a big-time flirt, or into engineers, or looking for hook-ups with guys she just met, then none of that adds up. So it wasn't so much her personality. But if it's the computer, then how deep does this technology go? It seems to read body language, speech patterns, facial recognition, ect in order to properly determine how to have simulated people react to live ones. That's... more advanced than Data, who often gets social clues wrong. And how complicit is the computer when a simulation makes a move that the live person doesn't like? That's all computer making those decisions, but here, part of Dr Brahms' personality comes into play. If it's really 90% or so her personality, and 10% fudged, is there 5% of her that nudges that other 10% that's computer into making out with the chief engineer? Kind of an unknowable there.
And then we have a topic that isn't explored here, but comes up in "Galaxy's Child" (and other episodes): this simulation is based on an actual human. Is it a violation of privacy to create a Leah Brahms on the holodeck, then make out with her? We know from what Minuet says that one can "go all the way" with a holodeck simulation, but how ethical is it to get it on with a simulation of someone living? As technology progresses, we are being faced with these questions. We have, each of us, most likely all been an entry in someone else's spank bank at one time or another, and while that's weird or creepy to think about, does it cross a line that someone might make a physical (but unreal) copy of you, in order to do unspeakable things?
It did not appear to be Geordi's goal to get a snog from this holodeck program, nor did he appear interested in continuing any kind of relationship with someone who could not leave the holodeck. But it did happen, and in some ways, it brings up that question of The Other: if a double exists of you (not  twin, an actual double), and it does things without your consent, are you responsible for taking the punishment if the things it did were not right? Is it responsible for the things it did in your name of which you do not approve?
It is not a simple thing. The ideas and complications behind this episode might have been simpler had Geordi just been glad to have found a new friend and possible person to bounce ideas off of when he is having trouble with the engines. The idea to create a designing engineer to help him was a great one. But the romance was there from the start - Michael Piller said that the whole idea behind this episode was about a guy who got along better with his car than with girls, and here was an instance where the car was the girl. (Please also see Idris, the human form of the TARDIS, on the Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Wife.") But it confuses things when you've made the human form of a guy's car the woman who designed the engine. Or rather, a facsimile of the woman who designed the engine.
Bottom line: I like this episode. But it has some issues that could stand to be unraveled.



Fun Facts:
- This episode features all three of the major TNG uniforms thus far: extras playing crew members are wearing the season one and two spandex onesie uniforms with the piping at the shoulders. Most everyone else is wearing the season three uniforms with the Nehru collar. Picard is clad in the newest version, which features no seaming down the front, and an elastic-bottomed jacket.

- Originally, Leah Brahms was supposed to be a descendent of Dr Daystrom ("The Ultimate Computer"). But they realized after they hired a white woman to play her that they would have had to hire a black woman for the role, so the script was changed to make Dr Brahms a graduate of the Daystrom Institute. (Okay, I don't know anything about genetics, but would there not be enough generations between Brahms and Daystrom (three or four, in this case) that it would be possible to hire a white actor to play the grand- or great-granddaughter of a black man? Also, attempting to ask this question in a way that makes me sound genuinely curious about genetics - I am - and not like some racist asshole.)
- The original script called for the holodeck sets to be an actual mock-up of the engine, but time won out, so they went with "drafting room."
- There's a blooper for this episode where Picard asks the away team if any of them playing with ships in bottles as boys, and Worf (Michael Dorn) flubs his line as "I never played with boys."
- This is the first episode of Star Trek directed by a woman (Gabrielle Beaumont).
- In the series finale episode, Picard references O'Brien having played with ships in bottles, so I guess that part was canon, and not O'Brien brown-nosing.
- Guinan's remark about bald men comes into play in a later episode.
- Some of the graphics used in the Utopia Planitia drafting room were a topographical map of Mintaka III, and a graphic from Dr Manheim's lab in "We'll Always Have Paris."
- This is the second of three episodes that feature Picard at the helm.
- Susan Gibney, who played Sim-Leah, will also appear in two DS9 episodes as a Starfleet officer. Interestingly, she was almost chosen to play Janeway, but producers felt she was too young. She also auditioned for Seven of Nine and the Borg Queen.

Red deaths: 0
To date: 0

Gold deaths: 0

Blue deaths: 0
To date: 1
Unnamed color crew deaths: 0

Obnoxious Wes moments: 0

Legitimate Wes moments when he should have told someone to go fuck themselves: 0
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Sassy Geordi moments: 2
To date: 3

Sassy Wes Moments: 0
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Sassy Worf Moment: 1
To date: 2

Sassy Riker Moments: 1
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Sassy Picard Moments: 0
To date: 3

Sassy NPC Moments: 0
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Sassy Data Moments: 1
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Sassy O'Brien Moments: 0
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Sassy Crusher Moments: 0
To date: 1
Sassy Troi Moments: 0
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Sassy Guinan Moments: 2
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Sassy Guest Star Moments: 0
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Number of times that it is mentioned that Data is an android: 0
To date: 7

Number of times that Troi reacts to someone else's feelings: 0
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Number of times that Geordi "looks at something" with his VISOR: 0
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Number of times when Data gives too much info and has to be told to shut up: 1
To date: 1
Picard Maneuvers: 1
To date: 12

Luciano (front) and Jose (back)