Booby Trap by: Ron Roman, Michael Piller, and Richard Danus from a story by: Michael Wagner and Ron Roman and directed by: Gabrielle Beaumont

 

“Booby Trap” is written by: Ron Roman, Michael Piller, and Richard Danus, from a story by: Michael Wagner and Ron Roman, and is directed by: Gabrielle Beaumont.  It was produced under production code 154, was the 6^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 54^th episode overall, and was broadcast on October 30, 1989.

 

“Booby Trap” is a conflicted episode.  Structurally, it is one that works fairly well: the three credited writers have an A-plot of the Enterprise being slowly drained by an ancient battle site that the crew has to escape and a B-plot of Geordi La Forge being unable to find a romantic relationship before slowly being lost in a holodeck program he creates of Leah Brahms, an engineer responsible for the design of warp drive.  This B-plot is quite a weird one, it’s essentially a love story between Geordi and a computer, yet the script doesn’t ever play this as a particularly weird thing to happen.  Now much of the issue here is actually in the setup, the pre-credits sequence is Geordi on a date that goes wrong, in terms of the text he is friend zoned by his romantic interest.  When he has to create the program of Dr. Brahms, he asks the computer to add personality to the reconstruction so it isn’t just a computer, and creating it in the first place is Geordi’s own attempt to work through the titular booby trap.  The episode does not do anything to really examine the fact that Dr. Brahms isn’t a real person, she’s a reconstruction of a person and is fairly explicitly limited by the power of the holodeck.  She does not get her own agency or real desires, her function in the plot is to give information and be a romantic foil for Geordi.  This is also the case for the woman Geordi is on a date with in the episode’s cold open, she gets a name but after this sequence she just disappears for the plot.  The rest of the female cast in the episode is also largely sidelined because the A-plot isn’t really a character exploration, that’s what Geordi’s B-plot is meant to accomplish.  Invoking the friend zone is clearly something of its time for the episode, this was made in 1989 after all, but it is an episode where there is absolutely no examination of personal dynamics.  There is exactly one scene where you think there is going to be an unpacking of the tropes, Guinan makes an appearance and gives Geordi some advice that is the fairly decent piece of you are overthinking a romantic relationship.

 

The trouble comes with the fact that the romantic viewpoint here is one of objectification, the consideration is completely on Geordi and not on the feelings of either potential romantic partner.  Now some of this is down to the amount of people working on this story: the script is credited to Ron Roman, Michael Piller, and Richard Danus but the idea is credited to Roman and Michael Wagner (who had left the show at this point).  The most likely scripts for production are a draft by Roman and Danus before Michael Piller reworked things to the version that eventually made it on screen.  There are clearly a lot of people attempting to steer the episode in one direction therefore losing some of the potential thematic clarity.  That isn’t to say the subplot is poorly presented, it isn’t.  LeVar Burton and Susan Gibney both have quite a bit of chemistry and share the screen well, the episode even ending on a romantic moment with the idea that sometimes its important to turn off technology in relation to the A-plot.  There is also a sense that the romantic relationship isn’t quite resolved, it’s just left on this almost unspoken note between the two characters.  Geordi is given more confidence in his romantic pursuits but that’s all the ending really does.  The final lines don’t actually say anything about the relationship which is perhaps the biggest problem because in the end it’s a neutral thing, leaning towards positive.

 

The script does surprise with the amount of humor it contains.  Both Guinan and Picard as characters get these great little comedic character moments: Whoopi Goldberg gets to have fun discussing how Guinan is into bald men while Patrick Stewart gets a bit fitting of his particular brand of Britishness as Picard adores ships in bottles.  The latter is a running gag that gives Worf and Data this hilarious one-two punch of Worf not playing with ships and Data not ever being a boy.  Its these little moments that help the audience get through the more uncomfortable nature of the B-plot.  The rest of the A-plot is also fun, Gabrielle Beaumont’s direction on the episode is quite economic, favoring longer shots to allow the actors to just perform the danger while Ron Jones providing the score adds to the tension to a lot of the more dialogue heavy scenes.  As an A-plot it isn’t particularly deep, it’s just a nice little science fiction scenario of an ancient trap being left in space that attracts the Enterprise.  It does feel like something that the original series could easily have accomplished and done, but that’s just about it, it’s an interesting idea and a perfectly fine plot.

 

Overall, “Booby Trap” is an episode that when everything is said and done is perfectly fine.  The A-plot is at the very least a fairly standard science fiction plot executed well while the B-plot becomes more of a mire to wade through its implications.  The script does feel like it is in the middle of a period of transition between production teams yet again after Michael Wagner left, but it’s well shot, well scored, and well-acted.  There is another example of Star Trek not treating its female characters well, reducing them to objects and completely sidelining the main female cast members in the episode which is sadly becoming par for the course.  As an episode, however, it’s likely one that’s just going to go in the background of generic Star Trek: The Next Generation.  5/10.