Chris Snellgrove | Published
It’s a great episode in most respects, but many are great episodes Star Trek: Next Generation Fans have learned to dislike the episode “Booby Trap.” It’s because of the creepy subplot where Geordy Laforge begins to fall in love with a hologram of fellow engineer Ria Brahms, and when he meets a real woman in later episodes, he does something insanely strange (We Incel: The Last Frontier). But these fans need to know that it can always be bad. Originally, this hated plot would mean Picard would interact with Brahms and ultimately save the day.
Why is Star Trek likely to make booby traps worse?
The lead actor’s participation in this nagging and incredible Star Trek storyline could have made “booby traps” even worse. Luckily, I was spared from having to watch this thanks to showrunner Michael Pillar. Michael Pillar felt, “Jody is in love with the ship, so this is a story about someone in love with his ’57 Chevrolet.” Despite some fans’ thinking, Pillar didn’t consider this to be any kind of character assassination… Instead, he thought it was “played by the character of Geordy, who was always a dumb man around women, but if he could marry his own car, he would live happily.”
With the giant Star Trek being a nerd, it’s obviously difficult to imagine Captain Picard spending time with Leah Brahms in the Holodeck, especially as the crisis facing the ship (ejected by the alien booby trap) requires engineer talent. But it may not be that crazy. In the previous episode “11001001”, he competed with Riker for his hologram affection. Therefore, the subplot, in which he had his own flirty charm to the holographic Leah Brahms, may not have been so out of place.
Furthermore, the completed version of this Star Trek episode had Picard claimed to personally fly the ship from the honorable booby trap. This gives you a fun glimpse into Picard’s inner control freak. We need to kick out the experienced Helmsman so that he can prove that his pilot skills are not diminishing. For this reason, the previous story ideas that Picard consulted with Leah Brahms instead of leaving it to an experienced engineer would not seem so unbelievable.
It’s fun to imagine the Picard-centric stories we might have, but some Star Trek fans may be interested in learning that “booby trap” specifically works by Geordi because He is more comfortable around the machine than women. Geordy was creepy to the Brahms hologram in this episode, and indeed hostile to the real women of “The Galaxy Child,” and these episodes thwarted certain fans as they didn’t line up with the usual personality of the friendly engineering chief. But no less than Michael Pillar (probably the best writer ever had), he thought this was not a dramatic outlier, but a natural part of Geordy’s unlucky arc of love.
Star Trek: Next Generation Fans generally like “booby traps.” It’s not clear whether Picard has become creepy in these scenes. Perhaps the presence of the character only reduces the captain’s likeability. Although Picard’s reputation was spared thanks to changes in the script, Geordi suffered from a Warp Core violation.
