Administrative note: There will be no TNG Rewatch on Thursday, due to the Thanksgiving holiday. We’ll be back with “The Enemy” a week from today.
“Booby Trap”
Written by Michael Wagner & Ron Roman and Michael Piller & Richard Danus
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont
Season 3, Episode 6
Production episode 40273-154
Original air date: October 30, 1989
Stardate: 43205.6
Captain’s Log: We open on the holodeck, La Forge having taken a young woman named Christy Henshaw on a date on a beach. He even creates a violin player, but she’s just not into him (La Forge or the violin player).
We cut from a La Forge ready for a cold shower to Wes and Data playing three-dimensional chess in Ten-Forward, where they discuss the planetary wreckage they’re flying amongst. This is all that’s left of Orelious IX after the final battle between the Promellians and the Menthar. The bridge picks up a distress call from what turns out to be a thousand-year-old Promellian battle cruiser, still mostly intact. Picard insists on leading the away team over Riker’s objection.
Picard is like a kid in a candy shop—or, say, me in the American Museum of Natural History as a kid—as he checks out the thousand-year-old ship, and even finds the captain’s final log entry, praising his crew and accepting full responsibility for the ship’s destruction.
Unfortunately, since arriving at the ship, the Enterprise has been experiencing odd power drains—and after the away team beams back they start being bombarded with radiation. Another trip to the Promellian ship reveals that there are aceton assimilators that bleed energy from the ship and convert that to radiation that will eventually kill the inhabitants.
Meanwhile, La Forge finds himself re-creating one of the propulsion labs at Utopia Planitia where the Enterprise was built, and also re-creating one of the propulsion experts, Dr. Leah Brahms. They manage to find a way to slow the power drain, and then they have to come up with a way to get out of the trap. Since there is a very brief gap between the force and counterforce, they might be able to adjust for it and move. The problem is, the adjustments need to be made too fast. The only plan La Forge and the Brahms image can come up with is to turn the ship entirely over to the computer.
Then at the last second, La Forge approaches the problem from the other direction: turning everything off except for two thrusters. Picard takes the conn and skillfully flies the ship out of the debris field on minimal power, getting far enough away from the assimilators to get power back. Worf then blows up the battle cruiser, while La Forge goes on the holodeck and gets a kiss from the Brahms image before he ends the program. Not that that’s at all creepy.
Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: La Forge and Brahms toss a lot of nonsense back and forth involving magnetic fields and parallel processors and other technology that doesn’t actually exist before deciding to go down to nothing and just fly on thrusters and nothing else.
Meanwhile, La Forge and the fake Brahms bond over technobabble in a manner that the actors make look incredibly cute despite one of them not actually being a person. Not that that’s at all creepy.
The Boy!?: When it comes to the dangerous flying of the ship with only a couple of thrusters, Picard relieves Wes so he can fly the ship himself. Seriously, you don’t want the teenager flying the ship under those circumstances….
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf’s response upon boarding the Promellian cruiser is: “Admirable—they died at their posts.”
If I Only Had a Brain : Data is the one who is able to get the Enterprise to play the Promellian captain’s logs with his mad android skillz.
Syntheholics Anonymous: Guinan gives La Forge advice on how to flirt, which boils down to, “Don’t try so bloody hard.” She also mentions that she’s attracted to bald men because a bald man helped her once when she was hurting. (The likely origin of that will be shown in “Time’s Arrow Part 2.”)
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: After a failed date—which La Forge’s long-suffering attitude indicates is the latest in a series—the chief engineer finds himself falling for a holographic image. Not that that’s at all creepy.
What Happens on the Holodeck Stays on the Holodeck: According to Wes, La Forge spent “days” putting together the perfect date program for his liaison with Christy. These days of effort resulted in—a beach, two drinks, and a violin player with a scarf on his head. This was the best he could come up with in “days”? No wonder she wasn’t interested.
Then, of course, the holodeck gives La Forge the perfect date without him asking for it. And the holodeck can apparently create a personality based on profiles and debates at engineering caucuses that flirts, offers to cook, and gives backrubs. Not that that’s at all creepy.
Welcome Aboard: Susan Gibney does an excellent turn as the image of Brahms, both as the monotone computer image and then charming with the personality the computer gives her. Albert Hall has tremendous gravitas as the Promellian captain.
And then we have this week’s Robert Knepper moment: Julie Warner, of Doc Hollywood, Nip/Tuck, and Crash as La Forge’s failed date.
I Believe I Said That: “Oh, good Lord, didn’t anybody here build ships in bottles when they were boys?”
“I did not play with toys.”
“I was never a boy.”
“I did, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr. O’Brien. Proceed.”
(After beam-down and Riker giving O’Brien a dubious expression) “I did! I really did! Ships in bottles—great fun!”
Picard bemoaning kids today, Worf and Data pointing out that they don’t fit the mold, O’Brien sucking up to the captain, and Picard appreciating it.
Trivial Matters: An early draft for the script had Picard be the one to work with Brahms and be interested, but Michael Piller rightly thought that an episode that was basically about a guy in love with this ’57 Chevy would be better suited to focus on the engineer.
Brahms was originally to be named Navid Daystrom and was supposed to be a descendant of Richard Daystrom from the original series’ “The Ultimate Computer,” but nobody told the casting department that they were supposed to cast an African-American woman, so they cast Dibney and renamed the character.
La Forge will take another shot at Christy Henshaw, with somewhat more success, in “Transfigurations.”
This is the first episode of a Star Trek series directed by a woman. Beaumont will go on to become a regular director of TNG, and also helm an episode each of Deep Space Nine and Voyager.
This episode markes the first mention of the Starfleet shipyards located on Mars at Utopia Planitia.
Finally, the real Leah Brahms will appear in “Galaxy’s Child,” where we will find out just how much margin for error there is in the computer’s calculations for creating a personality.
Make it So: “One propeller, sir?” Okay, this episode? Is totally creepy.
Seriously, La Forge creates a voice interface of Dr. Leah Brahms, and just keeps adding to it and adding to it until it becomes a photonic blow-up doll that spouts technobabble (which probably counts as foreplay to La Forge).
And then he kisses her and it’s just so totally oogy.
It was one thing when Riker fell in love on the holodeck in “11001001,” because that was planned by the Bynars, and Riker was aware that it was a little weird. But this isn’t a trap set by computer experts, it’s just La Forge being really really creepy.
It’s not like he needed her—La Forge has an entire engineering staff. At one point, Picard asks La Forge to pass on congratulations to his team, which raises the question of why La Forge wasn’t working with a team.
There’s a lot of good in this episode—Picard’s archaeological geekiness, the simplicity of both the trap and the ultimate solution, the nobility of the Promellian captain, the whole ships-in-bottles bit—but ultimately it’s impossible to rate it as a good one because it’s so gosh-darned creepy!
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written many books and comics and you can get autographed copies of several of his novels and comic books directly from him. Autographed copies of the print editions of his fantastical police procedurals SCPD: The Case of the Claw and Dragon Precinct (the latter a trade reissue of the 2004 novel) are also available for preorder. Find out more about Keith at his web site, which is a portal to (among many other things) his Facebook page, his Twitter feed, his blog, and his podcasts, Dead Kitchen Radio, The Chronic Rift, and the Parsec Award-winning HG World.
Isn’t that creepy factor sort of the point? That’s a recurring theme with the Holodeck, after all; fantastic tool, dark undercurrent of implications.
I’m glad they revisited the relationship in “Galaxy’s Child”. Also, didn’t Geordie have a wife named Leah in the series finale? Just a throwaway line, but it seems like a ‘shipper’s treat.
Totally. And I think they show a good deal of how creepy it is in the episode where the real Leah Brahms shows up, and is rightly enraged and creeped-the-f**k-out by his behaviour and the holoversion of her.
Good idea, completely undermined by an execution that is overstuffed with Unfortunate Implications.
And they got mad at Barclay? Talk about management not setting a good example!
Creepy-ness aside, though, I do remember enjoying the chemistry between Burton and Dibney. I also enjoyed the “souring the milk” solution to the problem at hand.
Tesh @1: Yeah, in the finale Geordi talks about his wife Leah, who’s clearly Brahms.
And that’s not the only bit–in the finale Picard also refers to O’Brien’s “ships in bottles” hobby.
For a non-canon explanation of Guinan’s refernce to when she “was hurting,” we might also look towards Michael Jan Friedman’s “Oblivion” from the Stargazer novels.
bah – it’s not creepy. if there was really a holodeck, the worst job on the ship would be cleaning up all the semen each day after hours and hours of “recreation” on the holodeck.
Was it intentional that the violin player in Geordi’s holo-date with Christy is playing the fifth Hungarian dance by Brahms?
FSS: It is too creepy because La Forge wasn’t there for recreation, he was there to work.
RichF: Given that the character originally had a different name, hard to say if it was a deliberate homage or not. :)
@6, lol!!
I’m sure that the magical technology combination of sensors, replicators, matter reclamation, force fields and transporters makes cleanup an automatic process. There’s a reason we never see vacuums and windex on the Enterprise ;)
Poor Geordi. Bright, friendly, cool in a crisis, only to discover in this episode that he’s the most socially inept of the whole cast. I was going to ask how his engineering team must have felt during the crisis; unfortunately, I read articles all the way through before posting.
I liked the Brahms episodes, though. They aren’t the greatest, but they raise interesting issues and present interesting problems for the crew to solve. Geordi discovering a soul mate through such improbable circumstances is poignant, although the implied long-term fate of their relationship in the series finale feels like pure fanfic.
But yeah, Geordi is a creep here. Maybe as an engineer he’s really in love with the computer itself, and subconsciously uses the hologram as a way to avoid facing the even more awkward truth.
Keith, regarding this:
Brahms was originally to be named Navid Daystrom and was supposed to be a descendant of Richard Daystrom from the original series’ “The Ultimate Computer,” but nobody told the casting department that they were supposed to cast an African-American woman, so they cast Dibney and renamed the character.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that the producers (or someone) had the idea of having Georgi involved with a Daystrom decendent because they wanted to show a normal interracial relationship, but that no one remembered that Daystrom himself was not white. It was an ironic occurence in that both Star Trek series were trying to show a future in which race no longer mattered as much. As it is, that’s why Brahms ends up being from the Daystrom Institute, so they could keep the reference.
— Michael A. Burstein
Yup, the adult creepiness in this episode is ‘interesting’ if not bizzarre. What is the term used in Voyager? Holo-Novel? With all the rules and regulations in Star Fleet, I thought that there would be rules about the Holodeck. what the holograms could and couldn’t (wouldn’t) do. I have wondered if the holodeck has a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ aspect to it? Opinions?
@12 I would think Star Fleet would have a rule like that. Something that prevents characters from acting beyond a kiss. I mean isn’t TNG Enterprise cruising around with a small city. Full families are on board. That’s way too many teenagers around. Of course, there are failsafes to prevent the holodeck characters from killing. And we all know how well those work.
If an orgy did go down, then I would think the participents would do the cleanup themselves. I’d just beam all that shit into space.
It’s definitely creepy when it’s a real person – perhaps not so much with fictional characters (I mean, in the Star Trek universe, obviously, they’re *all* fictional…).
And I bet there are rules and regulations about appropriate use of holodecks (and probably built-in restrictions too, or at least age restrictions). I can’t imagine a family-filled fleet flagship having what can essentially be brothels on board (although they do seem to be pretty sexually liberal on the whole – perhaps it’s not an issue for them). Did they not have that sort of holodeck on DS9, which was civillian and slightly seedy?
I’m also glad they dealt with the implications of this episode in “Galaxy’s Child” – I don’t know if it was always intended, of if the writers realised afterwards the creepiness of it all, and the issues it raised.
As Riker said to Brenna Odell in Up the Long Ladder: “The ship cleans itself”.
@3 – This happened before Barclay’s stuff, and it is duly referenced in the latter episode. Yeah, it’s kinda creepy, although I guess it never struck me as such, because (a) she’s not really there and (b) Geordi, by episode’s end, realizes the inappropriatness (I guess) and moves on with his life.
Is this any less creepy then “The Doctor’s Wife,” where a real, live, flesh-and-blood sentient being has her personality, hopes, dreams, memories, all wiped by House and replaced with the TARDIS, and then she and the Doctor get to be all mushy for the rest of the episode?
Balance @13
If an orgy did go down, then I would think the participents would do the cleanup themselves. I’d just beam all that shit into space.
When you’re on a month-long trip through space you won’t beam anything into space unless it is absolutely necessary. Resources are very limited on a space ship, even one so advanced as the USS Enterprise, so everything is recycled if possible. In the case of Star Trek this means that anything the replicators can convert back into energy they WILL convert back into energy. This includes the leftovers of your orgy.
re: LaForge’s fling
I don’t think that having sex or falling in love with a hologram per se is creepy, after all I think everyone knows what it’s like to crush on a fictional character (e.g. from a TV series, a movie, etc.). And as for the logical extension of said crush via holodeck, for all intents and purposes the hologram cannot be discerned from a real human being. So I don’t see this as anything more than a one night stand or paying an escort for sex but without the interpersonal implications associated with either.
The creepy lies in the fact that he basically turns an actual person into an advanced sex toy without her explicit consent or even considering the moral implications. Thankfully, TNG adressed this big issue in a later episode.
Randalator:
“for all intents and purposes the hologram cannot be discerned from a real human being”
Ah, but this is Geordi – the guy who can see so much beyond the normal spectrum that he can see things that the ship’s sensors can’t (Justice?), and can always tell when humans lie (Up the Long Ladder).
There’s no way he could look at a Holodeck construct and confuse it with a living, breathing human being.
From the focus of this comment thread, you would think the holodeck was the booby trap in the title of the episode! (Double entendre intended.)
@krad: I can’t see why you think Geordi’s behavior is so creepy. He creates the hologram so he can save the ship, he’s all business until he succeeds (he refuses a massage, for example) and then at the end he indulges himself in a kiss, and then he shuts it off. We’ve seen people kiss holodeck characters on many occasions, I really don’t see what the big deal is.
@FSS (#6): I don’t know about this sex is holograms business! They’re light trapped in forcefields, I doubt they feel very realistic…
@TheCabanaMan (#12): There’s nothing about Starfleet that suggests to me they have institutional prudish rules about sexuality. Riker strongly hints he has sex on the holodeck in “The Perfect Mate,” and Janeway and Tuvok used the holodeck for sex on Voyager (though in Tuvok’s case it was more of a medical condition!). On DS9, the human characters seem to disapprove of using holosuites for sex, but it seems to have more to do with Quark getting rich off a holographic brothel.
@18 Oi, great point about Geordie’s vision. The *characters* play well off of each other, but his vision’s quirks would have made that require a lot of self-delusion from Geordie.
@19: I’ll just QFT Randalator:
The creepy lies in the fact that he basically turns an actual person
into an advanced sex toy without her explicit consent or even
considering the moral implications.
Riker and Minuet is different: Minuet never was a real woman. She’s a computer construct from the get-go. Leah Brahms is a real woman, and using a moving blow-up doll of her, and further thinking it meant anything about what she actually felt? Yeah, that’s creepy. It’s objectfication in the most literal sense.
Amir @18
There’s no way he could look at a Holodeck construct and confuse it with a living, breathing human being.
Well, in view of the fact that LaForge can use the holodeck like any regular crew member, one could argue that the computer has ways of making the illusion work for someone like him as well. If it were just forcefields and light to him, he couldn’t operate/interact with anything created holographically (say, for example, the computer consoles he created in his programme) as to him it would be nothing like the real world equivalent. So it stands to reason that the Holodeck is in fact able to make a human being work for him as well (pun intended).
Pendard @19
I don’t know about this sex is holograms business! They’re light trapped in forcefields, I doubt they feel very realistic…
The holodeck can create illusions of all kinds of objects and materials that feel absolutely realistic to the touch. Why shouldn’t it be able to do the same with living things?
We’ve seen and will see crewmembers physically interact with all kinds of characters and animals on the holodeck, which implies that they feel at least real enough to not break willing suspension of disbelief…
This episode takes place 100 years after Dr. Daystrom was on the original Enterprise, so he could very easily have caucasian or mostly caucasian descendants. They should have left her as Navid Daystrom.
@@@@@ Dils that was my first thought, so many years later why would one believe his ancestors would have to be the same color as him? She could also have been half-Vulcan, half-Betazoid or any other Alien they may have wanted. She didn’t even need to be fully human, let alone black. It was a bit shortsighted.
@various
1. If the holodeck can create bullets that kill (First Contact) and water that drips off you after leaving the holodeck (pilot episode), I would imagine it could create a realistically human lover easily
2. And what would the holodeck generated lover be, if not just an enhanced fantasy?
3. And what, at the end of the day, is wrong with a fantasy lover, albiet one that others could potentially see? I had the same problem with the Voyager girls when they found the doctor’s fantasy holodeck programs, starring them, and got all pissy. I mean, if you’re an attractive person, someone somewhere is doing something naughty and wrong, and you’re there (in his/her head). Is it wrong? Do you own your own image? Is it creepy? No, no, and n0.
FSS @25
Not that I’m disagreeing with you re: realism, but the water dripping off you after leaving the holodeck means that the holodeck actually replicates certain elements in your simulation. That would not be true for animals or people…
Regarding use of the holodeck for adult recreational activities. I recall an episode where Riker exited from a sexually tense situation and says, “If you need me, I’ll be on holodeck 3”. Seems pretty clear to me.
Modern Star Trek was increasingly self-conscious about its social relevance over the years. Even the original series got it wrong as often as not, but later Trek (with exceptions) seemed more about paying lip service to utopian diversity than using it as a fundamental force behind the show’s direction. So when a show would focus on racial or gender issues, it often felt horribly out of place or showboaty. However, I didn’t think this episode went wrong in that way. There’s no special emphasis on their race; she’s an imaginary girl who’s a good match for Geordi.
FSS, I think the creepiness stems from the amount of effort involved in acting out a fantasy in real time physical world versus mulling it over privately in one’s mind. Fantasies are fine, but as soon as they start leaving the realm of pure fantasy, other people wonder where you draw the line.
Again, my issue isn’t with using the holodeck for sex in and of itself, it’s a) using a real person as the template for your blow-up doll and b) doing it while working.
For that matter, leaving aside the flirting, I’m not sure what he gained by giving her a personality — things were going smoothly until then, and then they lost precious time arguing at each other….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Keith @29
I’m not sure what he gained by giving her a personality — things were going smoothly until then, and then they lost precious time arguing at each other…
Well, I can see where that might be beneficial. If it was just about tossing facts back and forth, he wouldn’t even have needed the personality-less hologram, true. But with a real personality challenging him, forcing him to think in new directions and allowing him to think more creatively by taking his mind of the narrow number-crunching, all arguing and bickering aside, this approach might well have been more effective.
Just remember how often you can’t remember or figure out something important and no matter how much you dwell on it, it just escapes your grasp. And then suddenly, when you’re occupied with something completely different, it just pops into your head almost effortlessly. That’s basically what happened here, the “real” Leah Brahms allowed LaForge to give free rein to his thought process, which wouldn’t have been possible if he’d just worked with the computer as some kind of glorified textbook.
@various on Leah Brahms and Dr. Daystrom.
From today’s perspective, it is easy to say what they should have done. We can see things that could have made the story (episode) better. However. Some of us seem to have forgotten – and some of us don’t know – that there were sometimes real-world reasons why the show either glossed over a story point or wimped out on potentially strong ideas. The original series was the only series that ran as a network show. Next Generation and those that followed ran in syndication. The (TV) stations around the country have a greater degree of freedom to not air an episode of a syndicated show than with network shows. But, network show episodes do get pulled too. The St. Louis CBS affiliate, KMOV, will not hesitate to replace 60 Minutes with a Christian oriented ‘Special’ if they don’t like one of the stories on 60 Minutes that week. KMOV had the syndication rights to Next Generation. While having a white woman play the part of a member of a black man’s family (in this case) might have squeaked by the powers at KMOV, I’m sure that the episode would have been pulled from air in other parts of the country had they played it that way. Other episodes – still to be discussed – surely would have been pulled from KMOV had Star Trek ‘done what they really should have done.’
And we have not improved as a people. Think of things that today can only be addressed as bad.
No-one’s complained yet about Picard ordering Worf to blow up a priceless historical artefact rather than emplacing warning beacons and sending for a team of specialists to dismantle the trap and get the bait out in one piece?
@32
Yeah, that’s always bothered me, too.
Huh-huh. You said “seedy.”
Yes, they had Quark’s holo-suites and they were more than slightly seedy. At one point an alien played by Jeffrey Combs (before both Weyoun and Brunt) was so bored with normal, run-of-the-mill holo-suite sex (involving Orion slavegirls and the like) that he was willing to pay Quark whatever it took to get it on with Major Kira. Quark spent most of that episode unsuccessfully attempting to get a holo-image of Kira, who had never used a holo-suite.
Yes, but back before the days of replicators and holodecks, orgy leftovers were recycled into the …ahem…protein resequencers.
@JohnElliot 32
Picard orders the ship destroyed to prevent other people from flying into the ancient booby trap and dying. It wouldn’t have been worth the risk to try to “dismantle” the trap, so priceless artefact be damned.
@CaptHarper 35
Nope — the logic doesn’t hold up. This ship had been there for a thousand years, and it was still stuck alone in this asteroid field until the Enterprise comes along. That leaves only two explanations:
(1) This ship was stuck in a place so out-of-the-way that no one would happen by it for a thousand years, on average, which makes it rather unlikely to be a hazard before some archaeological team could get there. Also, note that the Enterprise only found it because it still had a distress beacon on — which they turned off, so it likely won’t attract any other ships. Even if it did, the Enterprise could have left a hazard beacon, as they did in other episodes.
OR
(2) No other ships had been caught in this asteroid field because all the other ships were smart enough to either detect it ahead of time (and not go in) or they knew how to get out.
In other words — either it’s very unlikely that anyone else would ever come by this thing, or the Enterprise crew were just too stupid to know how to spot or deal with some ancient booby trap that everyone else knows about.
Either way, they could easily send out an archaeological team to check the thing out in more detail and see if there were a way to extricate it before blowing it up. It wasn’t even putting off its distress signal anymore, so why the devil would anyone come by to have a look even if they did detect it?? It was just an old piece of space debris.
I can’t believe I waited this long to comment on this episode. Must be because it was on tv yesterday and I had another chance to watch it. There are a lot of great moments and the plot is very interesting, but what really kills it for me is Levar Burton. Did the writers want the viewing public to dislike the character of Geordi Laforge? Or was it the apparent lack of acting skill and horrible delivery of lines by Burton that did it?
“This is incccreedddibbbblle.”
“It’s going to go (insert whistle), cshrrrhsshrhrh…”
“And I’m not used to dyin.'”
“Damn right!”
“The odds say it’s even money.” (I thought there wasn’t money in the 24th century. Why is he using a 20th century cliche?)
Those are just a few zingers he delivered in this episode and there are plenty more.
Also, wouldn’t the construction of the U.S.S. Galaxy be going back to “the beginning” ?
My favorite moment here is when Picard walks in, obviously stressed and anxious because his beloved ship and it’s crew of 1000+ are in danger of being microwaved in a matter of minutes, and there is his chief engineer screwing around with a holographic representation that just happens to look like a hot crewmember. The “are you F’ing kidding me?” look on his face is perfect. If Geordi lived in today’s times, his favorite date would be a fleshlight and a POV porn flick.
The plot point that bothered me (and that frankly didn’t ring true) was Picard saying, I hope we don’t do what they did, and then immediately going with ‘fire phasers’.
It seems pretty clear that a ship trapped like this would have tried firing their weapons.
I think the best part of this show was the haunting, majestic music written by Ron Jones.
“…but what really kills it for me is Levar Burton. Did the writers want the viewing public to dislike the character of Geordi Laforge? Or was it the apparent lack of acting skill and horrible delivery of lines by Burton that did it?”
My thoughts exactly, mr Electon!
I found myself thinking exactly this many times during the show (and especially during rewatches, because knowing the plot gives you a chance to focus elsewhere) about the La Forge character. Especially when it came to La Forge episodes, where one couldn’t but notice the character’s (or the actor’s?) flaws.
I don’t think the writers would intentionally want the viewers to dislike one of the show’s main characters. But on the other hand, it’s impossible to believe that writers, producers etc. of the show didn’t realize how bad Burton’s acting came off at times. So it’s a mystery to me…
“If Geordi lived in today’s times, his favorite date would be a fleshlight and a POV porn flick”
I laughed out loud when I read this. So true. La Forge is the epitome of failure when it comes to relationships. Not to mention he is super creepy, as mr Keith has often pointed out.
Just watched this episode – again – and read all the comments about Geordi’s creepiness – again – and still don’t see it. Here’s what I DID see. I saw Geordi create a holographic image of Leah Brahms – without knowing anything about her – only because she was the ultimate authority on the workings of the ship’s propulsion system, and he needed all the help he could get. His engineering team wouldn’t – couldn’t – have given him the help he needed. He needed a realistic sounding-board to bounce ideas off of, so he instructed the computer to endow her with personality based on whatever was known about her. And yes, he was attracted to her, but from where I sat, SHE took it from there. Did he program the computer to make her a wanton hussy? No. She just WAS one. SHE made ALL the moves. Not sure how the computer made that assumption, but there it was. And, from the standpoint of saving the ship, it seems to have worked. There may have been some bad acting there, but I swear I don’t see where any hint of creepiness could be found. I’m truly disappointed that I missed that blatant sex scene that ya’ll seem to have seen, maybe it was cut in the rerun to make more room for commercials. The scene with Guinan rhapsodizing on bald men was, anyway. Seriously, where and when did the holographic kiss morph into blow-up doll territory??? Not on MY tv, that’s for sure. Ya’ll need to get your collective mind out of the gutter.
(Comment deleted by its author)
Yeah. What happens in this episode isn’t creepy. Geordi recognizes that he’s starting to fall for the computer, so he shuts her off after indulging with a kiss. Before that, there’s banter, but none of it is Geordi’s doing. Geordi doesn’t try so hard, and it works–at least, with the personality the computer gave her.
Which, given what happens when Data has a holographic audience, I think it’s clear the computer saw his unconscious desires and fit her towards that. He needed someone he got along with, after all, to do his job.
The whole thing in the subsequent episode is that she makes a mistake about Geordi based on the hologram. He didn’t use her as a sex doll or even a waifu. It’s not creepy.
If it were, you wouldn’t be able to make holograms of real people. But that happens all the time.
The thought of holodeck romance is simply creepy. Minuet and Riker was creepy as heck to me. The romantic tension between La Forge and Holo-Leah was creepy as were the two women interested in Data. I find it uncomfortable watching the human characters exhibiting feelings for artificial constructs. It’s no different from the people one sees in documentaries who “marry” their sex dolls.
That being said, holosex is simply masturbation. I don’t care if the object of one’s affection is totally fake or a real person. The person is merely picturing someone that makes them horny. It doesn’t matter if it’s a “Playboy” or “Hustler” or porn video. Don’t make it bigger than it is. Geordi didn’t “violate” Leah as is argued in “Galaxy’s Child” any more than a teenage boy violates the models in a Victoria’s Secret catalog.
And let’s face it, Data is a fully functional superhuman android. Every straight or bi female or gay/bi male on the Entrrprise would be visiting Data on a nightly basis. But they wouldn’t be falling for him.
trlky and darthdoggydogg: Sorry, what La Forge did in “Galaxy’s Child” is completely awful because throughout the entire first half of the episode, he’s using information he got from his experiences in “Booby Trap” in order to flirt with her more efficiently, and not revealing where or how he got that information. Also if it’s not that big a deal what he did, why did he get nervous and apprehensive when he realized that Brahms called up the program in “Galaxy’s Child”? His response was that of a guilty person. Also, I’d say the target gets to decide whether or not she’s been violated, and what’s more La Forge knew it was a violation, or he would’ve been more up-front about it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Not disagreeing with the rest of the post, Krad, but “the target gets to decide”? So if someone masturbates thinking of another person or looking at a picture, that person gets to decide if he/she has been violated?
I love how Worf says that he doesn’t play with toys when we just saw him attempting to build a model ship in “Peak Performance.” :)
quinkygirl: to be fair, he was referring to when he was a boy……….. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@48 If it’s a photo shared without consent, it is a violation.
Have been rewatching TNG and this episode recently. As rkaraluis suggests La Forge did not go about consciously to make the Brahams hologram into a girlfriend, it just sort of happened as he kept modifying the program to be more helpful (it does make you wonder just what the Engineering crew thought about their chief holing up in the holodeck during a crisis that so deeply involved the engines and what exactly they were doing during that time), and he shut it down after the problem was solved and he realized how far down that path he had traveled (but why did he keep it?). Also, as stated above, the Brahams program does a lot flirting on her own. Perhaps the ship’s computer is a little more sentient than it is supposed to be, and realized that its chief engineer was starving for female attention and decided to provide some when he gave it the chance? It might have been something to explore that the Enterprise-D itself has a soft spot for Geordie.
@52: That would be an Ann Leckie novel.
No need to let the B-plot ruin the whole episode for you. There’s much to like here.
I’m enjoying the moral implications and discussions commenters are having on this episode, really regarding the Geordi/Leah issue because it is a good debate about professionalism and privacy/violation.
Regardless of that issue, I like and enjoy the episode in general for a lot of different things and moments, from Picard’s architectural delight and reveal about his playing with model ships in bottles as a boy, to the central dilemma of how the Enterprise will escape before the crew faces imminent death, to the score, to the look at the in-construction Enterprise, and so on.
Getting back to Geordi/Levar, I think that Levar Burton himself is a fine actor. He didn’t receive acclaim in Roots for no reason. I think in general the writers didn’t do him any justice in making him a well-rounded, non-creepy guy. I know I saw an interview he gave on one of the DVD featurettes of the TNG season sets in which he surprisingly, but justifiably complained how Geordi was the one character of the main cast who was romantically inept and it damaged the character. I think he even implied it might have had to do with the fact he was an African-American male and therefore it was to emasculate the character otherwise his sexuality would have somehow been threatening. I don’t know if I’d go that far but I definitely feel like he could have been written as a more confident person romantically/sexually and yeah, less of a creep.
Saw this episode last night, and the jarring part for me was everyone insisting, we can’t trust the computer to fly the ship. Why not? Doesn’t the computer fly the ship normally, anyway, or does Wesley actually do a million calculations when he lays in a course for X. Maybe Geordi means he can’t program the computer properly in the limited time he has (which would be reasonable) but mumbo-jumbo about the importance of the human touch really annoyed me.
Geordi didn’t get the memo – ‘no sex please, we’re Starfleet’. What a creepo.
@bookworm – not sure the Enteprise computer would have thought to use just an impulse burst, followed by thrusters and using a gravitational assist on an asteroid to get out. Picard rocks.
I’ve been enjoying this rewatch and the comments in a casual way and had no desire to comment (since this it’s been years since the first posting) until this episode.
I’d like to offer a completely different interpretation of the episode. The first scene is merely a way of showing that despite being an enthusiastic and ever-hopeful suitor, Geordi is striking out in the area of romance, because the same thing that made him so great as the ship’s engineer also made him seem overzealous to regular human women. He went to effort and discussed it with his friends and had a real date in the holodeck. There was nothing creepy there. When Geordi was faced with an engineering challenge, he embraced it with the same enthusiasm, yet in engineering he excelled. He brought up the initial image of Leah Brahms in the hopes of gaining information, and he and the computer (or rather the engineering subset of the computer) create an entity that can be interacted with in a fashion more tenable to humans. Geordi’s excitement about Leah Brahms is not attributable to her being a woman (fictional, holographic or otherwise), but as a competent partner in solving the issue. Geordie makes a couple flirtatious comments, but the only one stepping over the line is Brahms. And this is where the real point of the episode comes in. Think about who created the entity, the ostensible Leah Brahms. All the computer banks have are her books and lectures and public profile, not her DNA or personal journals or a rendering of her personal nature (why would they?). So where would the desire to stop working in the midst of a time crunch and start giving him a backrub come from? Why would she say, It’s me, Geordie, of course I wouldn’t think that.” The construct of Leah Brahms wouldn’t say that, since they didn’t know each other prior, even in a holographic sense. But there is one entity that knew Geordi better than anyone else and had good reason to love him. The Enterprise herself. Even in her final lines to him, she literally tells him that she is the ship. I think this is supported by a much later episode where the ship demonstrates it has become sentient (I don’t remember it and haven’t gotten to that one in my personal rewatch, but it didn’t have to do with Brahms).
The issue with the later episode where Brahms discovers the holographic version of herself makes sense in being an initial foil for their human-human relationship, because the personality Geordie attributes to her is actually not her but that of the Enterprise’s identity. He would obviously feel awkward about it, even though he had not, according to anything we saw onscreen, or even implied, done anything untoward regarding the ship’s creation of the Brahms construct. That is where the concern about holodeck naughtiness comes in, that one might assume liberties being taken with oneself, and that is certainly going to become a more interesting problem in this world, regardless of whether sex is involved or not.
Because we are led to believe that ultimately Geordie and the real Leah Brahms did marry, it’s a nice nod to the fact that she saw the difference in the construct from herself, and also that they had a compatible nature from which to start a relationship.
Sandy: That’s an interesting and thought-provoking interpretation of “Booby Trap.” It’s certainly a point that isn’t examined, why exactly a holodeck program would offer a backrub like that…….
I don’t think, however, it extends to “Galaxy’s Child,” because the issue there is La Forge using the holodeck program to flirt with Brahms and not telling her about it. And when she calls him on it, he goes all self-righteous on her instead of apologetic as he should be.\
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@59/Sandy Parsons: That makes perfect sense. Hmm. I always liked “Booby Trap”, but now I feel a bit uneasy about the writers’ choice to turn an actual engineer into a literal ship-as-woman metaphor. It’s a sweet story, but I can see now why it needed a followup where Geordi meets the real Leah Brahms. What a pity that “Galaxy’s Child” did it so badly.
The hate for this episode for its “creepiness” Is staggering and unwarranted. The implications of the holodeck being used for sex are disturbing no doubt, but NOTHING HAPPENED! OMG, Geordi kissed a hologram based on a real person, he’s a sexual predator!
Geordi’s speech in Galaxy’s Child says it best about being accused, tried and convicted without his side of the story being heard.
Let’s give the character the benefit of the doubt, here. He created her for a legitimate reason and despite being infatuated with her right away and being flirty, he was there to work. The danger was averted and he went back to kiss the hologram, how truely dredful of him….
I never had a problem with the Geordi/Leah business here, because he had no intention other than creating a holographic expert program, and the attraction he felt to the simulation was unexpected. The fact that “Galaxy’s Child” handles the aftermath in a problematical way shouldn’t taint “Booby Trap.”
And yeah, so he kisses a simulation based on a real person. Is that creepy? I don’t think so. Is it any different from, say, a fan of an actress or musician kissing their image on a poster? Or someone getting turned on by an actor’s or actress’s love scene in a movie? People have fantasies. Sometimes they use visual aids. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you’re not voyeurizing your subject. And this simulation was based on Brahms’s public speeches and writings.
As for Sandy Parson’s theory, I don’t think it’s likely that the Enterprise computer was sentient at this point, but it’s possible that the modifications the Bynars made to the holodeck in “11001001” to make Minuet exceptionally alluring were still present on some level of the programming, and had an influence on the Brahms simulation’s personality.
Anyway, I seem to have missed this thread until now. I liked “Booby Trap” overall. The trap they’re in is an interesting challenge, the visuals are impressive for the day, and the episode has a terrific Ron Jones score, although unfortunately the producers rejected the cue he wrote for the climax and replaced it with a stock cue from “Where Silence Has Lease” (but fortunately the original cue is on the LaLaLand Records Ron Jones Collection box set). And I found the historical tidbit of the Menthar/Promellian war interesting, since it’s nice when a fictional universe is given a history. I’ve alluded to the conflict in two of my novels, The Buried Age and Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel.
I think Geordie realized he was close to crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed with the Leah holo and sensibly backed off. Unfortunately he forgot all that by Galaxies Child
I kind of love this episode, to be honest.
The intro is horribly awkward in a way I find funny, and Wesley and Data’s “uh oh” is pretty good too. I love the interaction between Geordi and Ginan; not so sure she’s referring to Picard from “Time’s Arrow,” but not unlikely. Guinan’s “I take care of myself these days” line is great! I feel bad for Geordi in a way, but I’m glad there’s at least one character who can’t just strike up a romance. This, and even the likes of “In Theory,” I find more interesting than the overused “Riker’s girl-of-the-week” theme.
The “creepy” part of the episode doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it seems to some. It’s hard to blame Geordi: it’s the computer that generates holographic Brahms, that gives him a back-rub. Sure, Geordi fuels the fire by giving her personality, and then he does go back and kisses her, but the majority of the “creepy” comes from the computer. I mean, he didn’t program holoBrahms to say “Every time you look at this engine, you’re looking at me. Every time you touch it, it’s me.” Not sure how it would just happen that a subroutine would have holo-characters saying things like that unless it was deliberately made to. Maybe Riker “optimized” things a bit too much? It sets up the awkward confrontation in “Galaxy’s Child,” but it seems like a faux pas to have the computer apparently assume the holodeck user wants any and all characters created to get personal. Ultimately, Geordi kisses holoBrahms once and that’s the end of it – very tame stuff compared other characters actual indiscretions (well, mostly one character) – I don’t think it seriously damages what’s otherwise a good episode.
As for the rest, I love the “ship in a bottle” talk (and obviously Riker/Data/Worf’s unknowing responses). The episode builds quite nicely, from the intriguing idea of exploring a 1000-year-old ship to the realization that they’re trapped by the same weapon. It does repeat the same trope of “X minutes to lethal radiation exposure” that seems to crop up every season. Obviously it doesn’t work that way, but further, there seems to be no cumulative effect. Seriously, how cute would it have been if they’d wound the clock starting in season one and ALMOST ran out in one of the last episodes? So, in season one, it would have been “two days, sixteen hours, and forty-seven minutes to lethal radiation exposure.” Picard: “Doesn’t sound so bad…” Riker: “Yeah, but imagine if we’re out here another seven years!” Anyway, the resolution entails a fair amount of technobabble that doesn’t amount to anything, but I like the concept of getting just enough of a nudge to creep their way out (see what I did there?), and it plays out nicely. Also, very nice visuals and cinematography. If you watch it on Blu-Ray, you’ll be amazed at the detail they put into the Promellian battle cruiser.
I give this one a seven, and for me it holds up on re-watch. I think the “creepy” factor is overblown, obviously, but it’s one of those things either doesn’t bother you that much (and I don’t think it’s something that should from an ethical perspective), or it just grates on you.
By the way, @59, I very much see where you’re coming from. We’re both of the mind that it’s the computer more than Geordi that makes holoBrahms so “outgoing,” and I can’t disagree that the ship’s computer speaking to Geordi through holoBrahms fits the dialog very well. As for the computer hitting on Geordi via holoBrahms… Now THAT’S creepy!
With The Bonding, that’s twice in a row that the Enterprise crew are blindsided by leftover weapons from an ancient war. That takes “to boldly go” a bit too far.
@67/BeeGee – I think that’s more a problem with unfortunate scheduling where these episodes could have been spaced out better but honestly I never really thought of the ancient war angle so much on “The Bonding”. In that episode the leftover weapon does serve as a catalyst for the ensuing drama that is pretty focused on just a handful of characters whereas in “The Booby Trap”, the leftover weapon theme is much more prominent and a focus throughout the episode because it’s a ticking clock that threatens the lives of everyone aboard.
I like this episode, not one of the best, but certainly enjoyable. Count me among the commentators who don’t see anything creepy going on here (as opposed to Lt. Barclays’s later use of the holodeck). I also love the active role the Captain takes, from going on an away mission to personally steering the ship. One of the big improvements of the later seasons was that they abandoned the idea that Picard is the elder statesman who always stays onboard the Enterprise and lets Riker do all the action (time to admit that Riker is the character I like least at TNG). This episode also confirms Picard’s interest in history and archaeology, which would became such a lovable part of his personality (to me, at least).
I do have, however, problems with this episode. Both the Promellians and the Menthar are supposed to be technologically much less advanced than the Federation. So it’s hard to believe that the Menthar would be able to construct such an advanced device that drains all the energy from a starship. Second, the moment they figure out that the Enterprise’s energy feeds the lethal radiation, the obvious solution is to shut down the reactor to cut the power supply of the foreign device. Hard to believe that no one thinks of that until the very end – perhaps Geordi should have consulted his team instead of playing around with Leah. Third, I fail to understand why the burst of the impulse engines and the thrusters were not countered by the alien device even though it reacted in microseconds to every move they had made before. It would have made much more sense to find some way of giving the ship a momentum without relying on the engines, e.g. blowing the air out of a shuttle bay. I also don’t understand why they feel uneasy towards letting the computer fly the ship.
Despite these flaws it’s fun watching this episode, especially knowing that we will meet the real Leah Brahms later on and Geordi is up to some surprises. I’d give it a 6 or 7.
@69/ThomasE: Different cultures can develop different technologies at very different rates — for instance, the Native Americans had amazingly sophisticated agricultural and crop-breeding techniques, their longbows were actually more effective long-range weapons than the early European colonists’ crude firearms, and the Incas had amazing stonemasonry skills, but none of them had the wheel. So it’s entirely possible that the Menthar were behind the Federation in things like their computer storage devices, but had insights into a field of technology the Federation never hit upon.
There are good reasons not to make holograms of co-workers, or actual people for that matter, particularly when it’s so easy to create a ‘new’ persona from scratch. The case of Barclay clearly indicates that there are at least strong customs, and possibly regulations, against such behavior.
And the greatest argument against that isn’t necessarily that it’s a violation for the actual person. The holodeck is so appealing to people who cannot distinguish between its creations and the real world (people like Geordi or Deanna would be exceptions) that it would be a serious psychological danger to its users without strong customs making certain behaviors taboo.
(edit for typo)
@70/ChristopherLBennett: I guess you are right, it is plausible that a civilization which is fighting for survival in a war would invest all its resources and ingenuity into weapons development and come up with some pretty advanced designs. I wonder, however, why the Promellians and the Menthar had to be technologically less advanced in the first place. What makes them fascinating for Picard (and us) is the fact that they are ancient civilizations which had become extinct long ago.
@71/melendwyr: I am sure that a holodeck on a starship would have some kind of ‘ethics protocol’ which probably would prevent the re-creation of real, living persons.
@72/ThomasE: But Dr. Leah Brahms was a public figure, a recognized expert on warp engineering, and the holosimulation was based on public records of her speeches and writings. I’m not sure whether that would really constitute an invasion of privacy or an unauthorized likeness use.
@73/ChristopherLBennett: Certainly there is a grey area here. True, Geordie creates a holo-image based on available public data on the real Leah Brahms, but is it okay to interact with this image in ways the real person probably would not approve? Barclay also uses publicly available data to recreate the Enterprise’s senior officers on the holodeck, but he alters their personalities. Is this still allowed? What if I want to recreate my favourite female film star, using publicly available information, in order to have sex with her on the holodeck? Is this a violation of her personal rights? I guess in real life many of these questions would have to be answered in law suits.
@74/ThomasE: All Geordi wanted was the chance to consult with one of the ship’s designers the way he would have been able to if she were there on the Enterprise. Any more personal interaction was initiated by the holodeck’s own programming; essentially it simulated her too well and went beyond Geordi’s intended parameters for the brainstorming exercise. It’s entirely different from the Barclay situation because Barclay intentionally programmed the characters to act out his fantasies. That’s not what Geordi intended at all, and people keep misunderstanding that because of the way “Galaxy’s Child” retroactively twisted it into something it wasn’t.
“What if I want to recreate my favourite female film star, using publicly available information, in order to have sex with her on the holodeck? Is this a violation of her personal rights?”
Millions of teenagers have made out with posters of their favorite celebrities. In Japan, they sell body pillows printed with likenesses of anime characters and pop idols, so otakus can pretend to sleep with them. It’s not an invasion to fantasize about someone, as long as you keep it to yourself and don’t actually stalk them, and as long as the image is obtained and distributed legally with the subject’s consent rather than being taken clandestinely through their bedroom window or something.
@75. ChristopherLBennett: “All Geordi wanted was the chance to consult with one of the ship’s designers the way he would have been able to if she were there on the Enterprise. Any more personal interaction was initiated by the holodeck’s own programming; essentially it simulated her too well and went beyond Geordi’s intended parameters for the brainstorming exercise. It’s entirely different from the Barclay situation because Barclay intentionally programmed the characters to act out his fantasies. That’s not what Geordi intended at all, and people keep misunderstanding that because of the way “Galaxy’s Child” retroactively twisted it into something it wasn’t.”
Yeah, that’s why I didn’t find Geordi’s behaviour creepy here. But how should a computer running a holodeck know on what purpose a user wants to create replicas of living persons?
“It’s not an invasion to fantasize about someone, as long as you keep it to yourself and don’t actually stalk them, and as long as the image is obtained and distributed legally with the subject’s consent rather than being taken clandestinely through their bedroom window or something.”
If this is true, why are Troi, Riker etc. upset with Barclay when they find out that he has used their images to act out his fantasies on the holodeck?
@76/ThomasE: “But how should a computer running a holodeck know on what purpose a user wants to create replicas of living persons?”
I think that was pretty obvious from context, given that Geordi was trying to solve a life-or-death engineering problem. Remember, Geordi started out just consulting Brahms’s files; her end of the “conversation” was merely the computer selecting the sound clips from her spoken logs that best answered Geordi’s questions. He only went to the holodeck to look at a simulation of her prototype schematic, not to “meet” her in person. He didn’t even ask for the computer to give her a physical form; he just asked the voice to “show me” something and the computer decided that meant “simulate a holo-Leah that can point at things.” It was only later that he asked it to simulate her personality so he could have a more natural collaboration.
Also, in that same scene where holo-Leah first appeared, the computer denied Geordi access to Leah’s personal logs when he asked a question about the real off-the-record scoop behind her design work. So it was protecting her privacy, limiting access only to publicly available data about Dr. Brahms (well, her Starfleet personality profile probably wasn’t public, but it was on record in the Starfleet database).
“If this is true, why are Troi, Riker etc. upset with Barclay when they find out that he has used their images to act out his fantasies on the holodeck?”
Because the holodeck was a public space, and things that are harmless in private can become harmful if they’re made public. Or, to put it another way, because whoever designed the holodeck forgot to put in a lock. They should never have been put in that situation of being exposed to others’ fantasies about them in the first place, and Barclay should never have been put in the position of having others intrude on his private fantasies.
You talk about invasion of privacy, but the real invasion of privacy is the mentality that people’s fantasies should be censored and thought-policed. People should have an absolute right to go anywhere in their private fantasies, because it’s a safe space to indulge and work through feelings that would be inappropriate in any other context. We all have thoughts we’d never act on but find gratification in imagining, and that’s healthy, as long as we never lose sight of the difference between fantasy and reality, private and public.
Quoth Christopher: “That’s not what Geordi intended at all, and people keep misunderstanding that because of the way ‘Galaxy’s Child’ retroactively twisted it into something it wasn’t.”
That was not the problem with “Galaxy’s Child.” The problem with “Galaxy’s Child” was La Forge hiding holo-Leah from the real Brahms and using the information from it to try to more successfully flirt with her without telling her how he knows so much about her — or that he kissed holo-Leah. And when Brahms found the holodeck program, his response to her completely fucking legitimate anger at its existence is to self-righteously say she’s a big meanie for not responding to his clumsy-ass flirting.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@78/krad: But that’s what I’m saying. Leah was angry because she mistakenly assumed Geordi had intentionally created the program as a fantasy, and that is not what happened at all. He just wanted an expert to consult with in a crisis, and it was the holodeck computer that made her flirt with him uninvited. “Galaxy’s Child” mishandled the followup on that in every way you say, and that retroactively tainted the innocent accident of “Booby Trap.”
@79/ChristopherLBennett: “Galaxy’s Child” mishandled the followup on that in every way you say, and that retroactively tainted the innocent accident of “Booby Trap.”
Assuming that Geordi didn’t activate the program again after they escaped the booby trap to have some more backrubbing and to try Leah’s Italian cooking. One thing’s for sure: He didn’t delete the program…
I agree with both of you. Booby Trap isn’t so bad. Geordie realizes he’s crossing a line and stops. It’s only in Galaxy’s Child the whole thing becomes creepy and uncomfortable. I understand his temptation but his refusal to accept he’s done something wrong is bad.
Also, why does Geordie who is cute, smart and successful have problems with women anyway? I’d happily have a drink with him in Ten Forward and maybe move on from there.
@80/ThomasE: In “Hollow Pursuits” Geordie tells Barclay that he once fell in love on the holodeck, but he “knew when it was time to turn it off and say goodbye”. So, probably no Italian cuisine.
@81/Roxana: Geordie suddenly has problems with women in “Transfigurations” so that the alien of the week can cure him. I don’t think he had any before.
Jana, yeah a fairly unconvincing plot bunny.
Christopher: Which is why La Forge should have fucking spoken up about the program in the first place instead of using it to flirt with her. If he had no reason to feel guilty about it, why was he panicking when he found out she went to the holodeck?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@81: Didn’t the creators originally intend for Geordie to be gay, and only realized later that making him black, blind, AND gay was putting too many minority statuses on a single character? My understanding was that his romantic difficulties were an in-joke calling back to this.
@80
Well, the program did have the added value of saving the ship.
@84
Panicking because he thought she might misunderstand the program? Because she didn’t know the context?
@84 “If he had no reason to feel guilty about it, why was he panicking when he found out she went to the holodeck?”
krad- you assume guilt, but maybe he was just embarrassed. I think most of us would be mortified to have a secret crush disclosed to the crushee. That doesn’t mean the crush, or the fantasies that it might inspire, is objectionable.
JFWheeler: if he’d been up front with her about the program in the first place, she’d have known the context.
fullyfunctional: it wasn’t a “secret” crush, he spent the whole fucking episode flirting creepily with her.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@88 “fullyfunctional: it wasn’t a “secret” crush, he spent the whole fucking episode flirting creepily with her.”
Point taken. So I would amend the scenario to suggest many of us might be mortified if someone we have expressed interest in walked in on us gratifying ourselves to that person’s image. It’s awkward, but it’s not wrong. You can even say it’s creepy, but I still don’t think it’s wrong. It’s been awhile since I saw either this episode or Galaxy’s Child, and I can’t recall whether the data Geordi used to program the computer to simulate Brahms was taken from private sources. If that’s the case, I would agree a line was crossed. Otherwise, this is, at most, just fantasy fulfillment using technology that’s available….
@88
How exactly do you bring that up in conversation with someone who has been rude to you the moment they stepped off the transporter pad? “Hey, funny story, once we were in this booby trap and I conjured a holographic version of you to help us, but then the computer felt it was necessary that I needed a shoulder rub…”
Not the best icebreaker, though I would like to see the sitcom version of it.
@84/krad: That’s my whole point — the problem is with how “Galaxy’s Child” portrays Geordi’s behavior and recontextualizes the events of “Booby Trap” as something more sexual and skeevy than it was shown to be in “Booby Trap” itself. All your criticisms are based on how it was presented in “Galaxy’s Child.” I’m saying that if you ignore that episode, if you look exclusively at “Booby Trap,” it’s not nearly as bad as what “Child” twisted it into.
@89/fullyfunctional: As I said above, “Booby Trap” made it quite clear that the Leah simulation was based on Dr. Brahms’s published journals, her appearances at a public conference, and her Starfleet personality profile. The only one of those things that could be considered potentially private is the Starfleet profile, which presumably would only be accessible to authorized officers. But the computer explicitly denied Geordi access to entries from Brahms’s personal logs. I’d imagine that maybe it used the personality profile to help craft the simulation but wouldn’t have actually shown Geordi the profile itself if he’d asked.
Quoth JFWheeler: “How exactly do you bring that up in conversation with someone who has been rude to you the moment they stepped off the transporter pad?”
When you invite her to dinner and offer to make her fungili, and instead of lying to her and being “surprised” that she likes fungili, saying that he looked her up online (or whatever) during a crisis and learned stuff.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Christopher: If I just look at “Booby Trap” I see La Forge kissing a hologram, and every time I watch that, I need a shower.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@93/krad: How do you feel about Janeway’s holo-boyfriend, or Kirk kissing a plant-based replica of the love of his youth?
Jana: Ask me the first question again when we get to those episodes of Voyager. As for the second question, I had no problem with that, because that version of Ruth was specifically created to smooch Kirk. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@95/krad: But isn’t that even worse, then? Geordi created what he thought was an expert program to help him solve an engineering problem, and things went in a way he didn’t expect or intend. If the likeness of Ruth was created without her consent for the express purpose of fulfilling a man’s sexual fantasy, how is that not much more of an invasion? How do you think the real Ruth would feel about it if she found out? Why would she react any differently than Leah did?
@85 – melendwyr: There’s no way they were going to make a main character gay back then.
@89 – fullyfunctional: “gratifying ourselves”, lol.
Oh, I have huge issues with what the caretakers of the planet in “Shore Leave” did on multiple levels. But I have little issue with Kirk going along with it, especially given that he didn’t know WTF was going on.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Christopher: instead of asking the question here, you could’ve just read my rewatch of “Shore Leave”:
I quote:
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. In Ruth we have yet still another woman from the captain’s past. The ending implies that he spent his shore leave with the fantasy version of Ruth, and I have to wonder how the real Ruth would feel about it. (Probably as pissed as Leah Brahms was…)
https://www.tor.com/2015/07/07/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-shore-leave/
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ve been poring over the discussions about Shore Leave, Hollow Pursuits, Galaxy’s Child and this one.
By rights, a re-creation of an actual person should only be done with their consent. The Shore Leave planet couldn’t gain consent from Ruth or Finnegan, but those were idealized versions from Kirk’s mind. The holodeck’s ability to re-create actual people should be limited only to those who give consent, like presumably, Joe Piscopo. Also presumably, Barclay was able to override that limit to create characters with the appearance of the credited cast, pasted on top of wildly different personas.
So for the holodeck to produce a Leah Brahms image and personality package, it (again, presumably) would need to check her release form first, before accessing her files. Geordi made no request to override any such legal limit. If that’s the case, as it should be in the real world, then Brahms’s indignation in Galaxy’s Child isn’t justified at all.
(100) Bee Gee: “By rights, a re-creation of an actual person should only be done with their consent. . .” Depends on what we mean by “recreation.” Every time we think or fantasize about someone, we’re “recreating” them in our mind. A holodeck “person” is, in essence, an image of a thought given artificial corporeal presence by technology, but it’s still just an image. (That old song, “Have you ever seen a dream walking?” come to life.)
I don’t think that making out or even having sex with an image is a violation; if it were, the Catholics would have been right about masturbation after all. I’ll concur with the person above who suggested that the holodeck should have had a lock on its door that would have allowed people to live out their fantasies in private (both their own and the subject of the fantasies), but that doesn’t change the reality of the situation. To imagine someone, and then to be able to have a computer simulate an illusory physical manifestation of that person, is no more a “violation” than to simply enjoy the fantasy in one’s own mind. It’s not to “violating” anything or anyone.
@100 I respect your opinion but completely disagree. Fantasies are a personal thing, and merely because technology allows for that fantasy to progress beyond the imagination doesn’t mean there is a personal intrusion, much less a violation.
Also (sorry about the repeated posts!) — aren’t we being rather selective in our standards here? Think of Worf’s holodeck “exercise” programs — fights to the death with fully-realized images of Klingon warriors. If summoning a virtual image of someone so you can flirt, kiss, or even make love to them is a “violation,” what would you call summoning a virtual image of someone so you can KILL them?
I still think you need license or permission to have a famous character or celebrity in what’s essentially a video game.
@104 Bee Gee — We do that now, for video games, because the person involved wants to get appropriate recompense (royalties) for the use of his or her image. They can “rent” out their image, just as they might rent out any other property they own. But by the 24th Century, there will no longer be money as a currency of exchange, I’m guessing there’s no private property (at least not to be bought, sold, or rented for cash), and we can probably assume that “markets” as we now know them no longer exist. In that situation, could a person actually “own” his or her image to begin with? Would something like “obtaining a release” or a “license” even be a consideration? (If that were the case, the estates of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking could theoretically have sued Data or Star Fleet for using their images in that poker game in “Descent” – especially since money [which, for some odd reason, the Enterprise crew seem to know exactly how to handle during those poker games – but that’s a different discussion] actually changed hands.)
How does Riker’s blowing up of the Promellian ship defuse the booby trap? The problem is several hundred thousand aceton assimilators hidden in the rubble. Assuming that no one would come that way because there’s nothing to see (how about the remains of an epic battle? Wes and Data found it fascinating) is a pretty half-assed blowoff of making sure the trap never bothers anyone again.
And I have another question. It’s implied the Promellians and the Menthar blew themselves up a thousand years ago. How do these relatively recently spacefaring humans even know what a Promellian battle cruiser looks like, much less have models of when they were boys?
I think “Booby Trap” is the first episode of Star Trek I can remember watching. Or maybe just the first one I really loved. It certainly wasn’t the first one I saw, I’ve been watching TNG since I was 3 months old, but my memory of those days is pretty sparse…
Anyway, when I think of what episodes made a real impression on me as a little kid, this is the one that feels like it goes back the farthest. I still think it’s a really good one but not one of my favorites, but I believe the reason it stuck with me so much when I was 4 or 5 is because of the score. The music in this one is outstanding, creating a perfect tone in several scenes: the exploration of the Promellian ship, the scene where they try to leave and realize they’re trapped as well, and the climax as Picard steers them out of the asteroid field (which I know is a track reused from “Where Silence Has Lease,” but I heard it here first so “Booby Trap” is what I always associate that music cue from). I just thought this episode was the coolest.
Now, I know Geordi has taken a lot of flak in the years since for being a socially inept creeper, but this is honestly the weakest example of that. Geordi’s holodeck fantasy was 1) very tame, 2) accidental, and 3) harmless in and of itself. What he ended up doing because of it when he actually met Dr. Brahms is another thing, but that’s not to discredit this episode. I’m sure he’d be uncomfortable with anyone else seeing it, but I’m also sure every human being has had personal fantasy scenarios play out in their minds that they’d be embarrassed to admit; Geordi has nothing to be ashamed of here, he just happened to be in a magic room where you can interact with your own imagination. Nothing creepy about it.
I feel like Futurama covered the sex-robot debate pretty well in that one where Fry dates a Lucy Liu bot.
Counterpoint to all the “harmless kiss” comments:
Now that we live in an era where things like deepfakes are possible, it wouldn’t be a huge stretch for someone to creep your social media, snag some photos, and greenscreen you in their own personalized porn. And maybe not just you. Maybe someone you love.
To quote Leah Brahms, “How do I know how far it went? How many other programs did you create? Perhaps dozens of them, one for every day of the week, one for every mood.”
It’s a big difference between “I kissed a magazine” and “I made holograms of noted sci-fi authors Keith and Chris, and then we all made out.”
It’s too easy to say it’s harmless when it’s happening to someone else.
I’d like to imagine that in your holoprogram, you addressed the holograms as “Hello. noted sci-fi autor Keith, noted sci-fi author Chris”.
Ha! “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Misters Noted & Noted.”
@47, Krad, who wrote
“Also if it’s not that big a deal what he did, why did he get nervous and apprehensive when he realized that Brahms called up the program in “Galaxy’s Child”? “
—
Easy: because someone who shares your sensibilities wrote the script that way. It’s a TV show. Pointing to a character’s reaction in a script isn’t evidence of anything other than the writer’s own sense of morality. In other words, it does not ‘prove’ your point at all.
In any case, we’re now getting to see something of a real-life morality play for the fantasy-minded everywhere. Deepfakes are really testing our sense of right and wrong. Wait until AI, robotics, and synthetics makes it possible to order up a sex doll version of your favorite fantasy target(s). Talk about morality issues!
@111: I think people can already order up synthetic sex doll versions of people they know. There’s no AI or robotics involved with these constructs but they otherwise look and feel like real life people. So the morality issue already has come into play.
Wow, this comment thread is fascinating! In a way, isn’t this exactly what good sci-fi should do, shine a light on the issues of the day? It was interesting that thread lasted long enough for Deep Fakes to be mentioned, too.
Rather than take a side in this debate, I’m going to comment that I think PART of the reason for the divergent opinions is the “Doylist/Watsonian” perspectives are in conflict.
In-universe, there’s no way this isn’t an issue with at least social convention, if not legal codes, already formed. Heck, I’ll probably live to see some of those laws written! This should be well-trod ground for the crew of the Enterprise. By those in-universe standards, Geordi should have known better (and was creepy when he met the real Brahms).
As viewers of the show (and to the writers) though, this was literally the first run through these ramifications, and the potential for misuse this way. Geordie stumbled into the pitfalls of a new technologists writers were exploring.
You know, as I’ve written this, if there responses I expect a lot partisans from both sides to object, explaining why their view makes sense from both angles. Many will be good arguments, too, and certainly sincere. But infant help but think there’s something to this!
@113/Tim Wilson: As I mentioned before, Geordi did not decide to simulate the image of Leah Brahms. He only asked for a simulation of her voice as part of a personality model based on her writings. When he absently asked the Leah voice to show him something, the holodeck computer interpreted it as a request for a simulation of her image, to Geordi’s surprise. He just went along with it because it helped him work with the simulation and crack the engineering problem. He was too busy trying to save the ship to worry about likeness rights.
So if using likenesses without permission is an issue in the 24th century, then the people to take it up with are the programmers of the holodeck software, not Geordi. It was the holodeck that initiated the use of her likeness.
Although I don’t really think it would be seen as a problem. The main reason for likeness rights in our time is about money — people being entitled to financial compensation for the use of their image. But the 24th century has a post-scarcity, moneyless economy. Not to mention that Leah Brahms is a public figure and the hologram was modeled on her public appearances. It’s not like posting a bootleg movie on Dailymotion or something, because nobody’s getting cheated out of profits they’re entitled to.
Likeness rights are not only related to money, people have a right to not wanting their image used willy-nilly.
With current technology, a still image can be animated to appear to say whatever one likes. A photo of Abraham Lincoln has become a spokesman in a commercial for a company offering such a service. I predict that likeness rights are about to become a very big deal.
@116: I thought that likeness rights have already been a big deal? Leonard Nimoy sued Paramount in 1975 for using his likeness as Spock on billboards without compensation.
Fun fact regarding the likeness of Abraham Lincoln: as he has no heirs, anybody can use his likeness on advertising, products, media and so forth for free and without fear of lawsuit.
@@@@@117
The Heineken lager lawsuit, I’d forgotten about that.
https://collectingtrek.ca/2019/02/03/leonard-nimoy-sued-paramount-and-won/
Just like Elementary, Dear Data, this is the second time the Enterprise computer has gotten Geordi into trouble by taking something that he said much too literally. And is the Dr Brahms hologram based on Leah’s personality or psychological profile? Or are they the same?
@119/David Sim: It’s based on a mix of her psych profile and her documented public appearances and writings, all of which the computer used to construct a simulation of her personality.
120: Yes, simulation is the correct word!
So this episode is the source of the INtake! An editor named Ryan (no other information provided) has created a comedy series by stitching outtakes back into the episode and then letting the episode go on around them. It creates a more naturalistic (and much more funny) 1701-D than the one we’re used to.
https://youtu.be/l7oWXooPT80
I think the holodeck’s program simulator is more creepy than Geordi here. As CLB noted earlier, Geordi didn’t go out of his way to create the Brahms character to be cute, seductive, a personal masseuse, or an expert at sexual double entendres (“Every time you look at this engine, you’re looking at me. Every time you touch it, it’s me”) Dammmmn, girl, you fine.
I think the reason the creepy factor gets ratcheted up here is because it’s Geordi. The screenplay goes out of its way to set him up as a awkward lonely-hearts loser. I mean, that scene at the beginning with the crewmember who blew him off was hard to watch. And krad, while I agreed with your Knepper-moment designation for Julie Warner, I would have included the movie that includes the most sublime moment of her career on camera….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpyaOfSGf_U
Lastly, Picard calmly blowing off Data’s warning that the ship’s momentum wasn’t enough to get the Enterprise clear, and then wordlessly using the slingshot maneuver to impress the hell out of everyone, was a total flex.
fullyfunctional: So I’m watching that clip you linked and was wondering why the hell you thought this was worth linking to, and then we get to two minutes and ten seconds in and it all made sense. That was, indeed, sublime. Thank you for sharing.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
krad: it’s a long buildup for about a 9 second payoff, but she nails it. :)
Wasn’t the trope about the Black sidekick who never gets the girl satirized in “The Hollywood Shuffle”?