Star Trek: The Next Generation 3.06

Booby Trap

The Enterprise locates a thousand-year-old ship drifting in the midst of an asteroid field. The ship is fully intact. Captain Picard, Data, and Worf beam aboard the ship to investigate. They discover the skeletal remains of the crew still at their stations. They don't learn terribly much but when they return to the Enterprise they discover that the Enterprise is trapped.

A network of devices are slowly draining power from the Enterprise. They just have a matter of hours until the shields will be down and the Enterprise will be bombarded with lethal radiation.

Commander La Forge is tasked with trying to find a way to first buy the Enterprise and its crew some more time and then get them out of there. Geordi digs into the ships records and discovers the logs of Dr. Leah Brahms, one of the engineers who helped to build the Enterprise's engines.

Geordi works on a holodeck with a recreation of Dr. Brahms to troubleshoot the situation that threatens to kill the crew and leave the Enterprise drifting in space like the ship that they found. Every solution they come up with seems to have flaws. The recreation of Dr. Brahms suggests that they should turn the ship over to her. Captain Picard rejects that plan.

Geordi finally comes up with another plan. They shut down most of the systems. Captain Picard takes the helm and guides the Enterprise through the asteroid field. The Enterprise blows up the ship they found and the trap before leaving the area.

Thoughts

I am pretty sure that this is the first time I have watched this episode. It was referenced in 3.21 (Hollow Pursuits) and I have also heard it referenced on the Mission Log podcast more than once when they were discussing other episodes.

The actual Dr. Brahms made an appearance in 4.21 (Galaxy's Child), which I have not seen.

On the whole I didn't think that this episode quite lived up to the hype. The way I have heard it described made it seem like it was all about Geordi falling in love with a creation of the holodeck. There is some of that in here but that's no more than half of the story at best. Geordi's relationship with the holodeck's recreation of Dr. Leah Brahms is nothing like what Lieutenant Barclay created for himself in Hollow Pursuits. Maybe I need to watch TNG 4.21 before I will understand the hype.