Booby Trap
When the Enterprise is ensnared by a thousand-year-old Promellian booby trap that drains power into lethal radiation, Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge must reinvent the ship's engines while Captain Picard risks everything to outwit the trap and save the crew.
A playful, wounded Geordi La Forge opens the story nursing a failed holodeck date, his romantic awkwardness echoing the loneliness he hides behind engineering brilliance. The Enterprise answers an ancient distress call and finds a Promellian battle cruiser frozen in the debris of Orelious Nine. The away team beams aboard, discovers skeletal remains and a decayed captain's log—Captain Galek Sar preaching courage even as he confesses, "I have failed." That confession reverberates when the Enterprise itself begins to lose power: a subtle, growing bleed of energy accompanied by rising radiation. Sensors cannot pierce the field. The ship cannot form a warp bubble. The stakes crystalize fast: shields will collapse in hours and fatal radiation exposure will kill the crew within minutes.
The investigation reveals the trap's mechanism: Aceton assimilators hidden among the rubble harvest the Enterprise's power and convert it into lethal radiation. Picard orders away teams to salvage the Promellian coils; Data recovers fragments of the dead captain's logs but only intermittent clues remain. Tactical strikes fail — directional phasers merely feed the trap and increase radiation. The ship's survival falls to two minds: Picard, who must make impossible moral and tactical choices, and Geordi, who must conjure an engineering solution out of dwindling reserves.
Geordi dives into the ship's history and into holodeck recreation, pulling up the work of Dr. Leah Brahms, the theoretical propulsion engineer whose designs underpin the Galaxy-class engines. He consults audio logs, blueprints, and finally runs a prototype of the dilithium crystal chamber on Holodeck Three. Alone with an interactive facsimile of Brahms — first a clinical voice, then an increasingly vibrant holographic presence — Geordi assembles a daring program: a reorientation and parallel-injector strategy that can extend shield endurance and eke out power. The Brahms facsimile presses technical discipline into Geordi's exuberance; their collaboration crackles with technical banter and growing attraction, and the program yields real gains. Geordi's personal arc moves from self-doubt to focused competence; his tender, awkward human longing for connection finds a strange mirror in the holographic Leah.
Simulations prove brittle. The trap reacts faster than human hands can adjust; Data calculates that thousands of micro-adjustments per second would be necessary to counter the field's reflexive drain. The logical alternative — handing over the ship to the computer — tempts Riker but chills Picard. Geordi proposes another gamble: a single, violent impulse burst to break the trap's inertia, followed by shutting down everything except life support and minimal thrusters so the trap cannot register continued power flows. The plan hinges on human intuition and split-second judgment rather than raw computational speed.
Picard accepts responsibility. He refuses to simply cede command to a machine and instead executes a captain's maneuver that fuses courage with calculation. The Enterprise fires a microsecond impulse; systems go dark. With only two lateral thrusters and Picard at the helm, the crew becomes a human-guided gyroscope in a field of hungry rubble. Picard resists the urge to over-control, times thruster bursts against the gravitational tugs of asteroids, and uses a planetary-style slingshot around a massive rock to amplify momentum and fling the ship free. The bridge breathes as the vessel clears the field.
They finish the job with force: photon torpedoes obliterate the ancient cruiser and its swarming assimilators, removing the lingering hazard. In Engineering, Geordi restarts systems and stands calmer, wiser. His goodbye with the Brahms hologram is poignantly human: he kisses the simulation — a soft, grateful seal on an intimacy born of stress and joint creation — and saves the program as a private memorial to the design and to the partnership that helped save thousands.
Thematic currents run clear. Technology sustains and endangers; engineering expertise and human judgment must cohabit. Geordi's journey reframes his initial romantic rejection into technical courage and personal growth: he learns that the best machines answer human intuition when humans know how and when to turn them off. Picard's choice to trust human instinct over pure computational authority asserts leadership as moral action, not mere algorithmic optimization. Data's and Riker's presences ground the drama with logic and urgency; Dr. Crusher's clinical countdown amplifies the stakes; the dead Galek Sar's final, regretful log haunts every decision.
The episode closes on a tone equal parts triumph and tenderness: the Enterprise sails on, systems humming, crew relieved but wiser; Geordi deposits his saved program and walks away from the holodeck a little less lonely, a little more sure. The booby trap is neutralized, but its lesson endures — sometimes one must shut the machines off, trust human judgment, and steer by intuition through the void.
Events in This Episode
The narrative beats that drive the story
The narrative opens with Geordi La Forge's personal failure, a holodeck date gone awry, highlighting his deep-seated loneliness and awkwardness in romantic pursuits. This emotional vulnerability contrasts sharply with the immediate professional call to action when the Enterprise responds to an ancient distress signal near Orelious Nine, a planet devastated by an ancient battle. Captain Picard, brimming with boyish enthusiasm for historical relics, leads an away team to investigate a Promellian battle cruiser, frozen in time. They discover skeletal remains and a preserved captain's log from Galek Sar, whose final, haunting words confess, "I have failed." This ominous discovery quickly becomes a chilling prophecy for the Enterprise itself. Back on the ship, subtle power fluctuations escalate into a full-blown crisis: the ship loses energy, cannot move, and is bombarded by lethal radiation. Red Alert blares, and Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge is called to the bridge. Picard, recognizing the pattern, grimly deduces they have stumbled into a thousand-year-old "booby trap," ensnaring them in the same fate that befell the Promellian crew. The initial excitement transforms into an urgent struggle for survival, setting the stage for the desperate engineering and tactical challenges ahead. Geordi's personal struggle with connection subtly mirrors the ship's sudden isolation and vulnerability, trapped by an unseen enemy. The act establishes the primary conflict, the high stakes, and introduces the dual challenge: understanding the ancient trap and finding an unprecedented way out.
Wesley and Data stand at Ten-Forward's panoramic windows, calmly cataloguing the vast, ancient debris field and Data's clinical observations frame the battle's scale. Their forensic quiet is humanized when Wesley …
Geordi enters Ten-Forward drained and wordless after an aborted holodeck date, collapsing into the bar where Guinan moves in with quiet care. Wesley reads the posture and translates the scene …
The bridge intercepts an ancient distress transmission that turns a routine curiosity into a menacing mystery. Data identifies the signal as archaic interplanetary code; Riker briefly imagines survivors while Picard, …
On the Enterprise bridge, routine sensor work becomes a revelatory turning point: Data decodes an anomalous transmission as an ancient interplanetary code; Riker briefly clings to the hope of survivors …
Captain Picard records an eager captain's log as the Enterprise arrives at Orelious Nine and the crew discovers a centuries-old Promellian battle cruiser. Walking to the transporter, Picard's childlike enthusiasm …
Picard, charged with historical curiosity and a childlike thrill, brushes past Riker's tactical caution as they walk to the transporter. Riker urges a full security sweep and Worf-led precautions; Picard …
The away team assembles in the Transporter Room where Picard’s historical curiosity becomes a private joy — he likens the intact Promellian cruiser to a ship-in-a-bottle and lights up with …
In the Transporter Room Picard's boyish wonder collides with Riker's professional caution: Data confirms the Promellian ship's atmosphere, Picard fondly imagines ships-in-bottles, and O'Brien insists his nostalgia is genuine. As …
With the Enterprise ensnared, the gravity of the situation intensifies in the Observation Lounge. Geordi grimly reports that shields will collapse in less than three hours, leading to fatal radiation exposure for the crew within thirty minutes. The source of the radiation remains elusive, shrouded by the field itself. Commander Riker and Data lead an away team back to the Promellian cruiser, hoping to glean clues from the dead ship. They discover the radiation is directional, targeting only the Enterprise, suggesting a sophisticated, malicious design. Meanwhile, in Engineering, Geordi delves into the ship's propulsion history, seeking a solution. He uncovers the extensive work of Dr. Leah Brahms, a theoretical propulsion engineer whose designs are fundamental to the Galaxy-class engines. Intrigued, Geordi accesses her voice logs, beginning a solitary, technical dialogue with a recorded past. Back on the bridge, the medical countdown begins, as Dr. Crusher confirms the lethal exposure timeline. Riker and Data retrieve more fragmented Promellian logs, hoping for a definitive answer. Geordi, desperate for deeper insight, uses Holodeck Three to recreate a prototype of the dilithium crystal chamber. As he works, a holographic image of Leah Brahms materializes, offering a direct, albeit simulated, collaboration, marking a critical turning point in Geordi's approach to the crisis.
The away team secures the Promellian communications room, Worf confirming the space safe and a bleached skeleton at a dead console underlining the ship's age and loss. Data rigs a …
Data powers a brittle Promellian playback unit and, through a warped image and distorted audio, the long-dead captain Galek Sar delivers a chilling confession: he alone claims responsibility for his …
The away team returns with a millennia-old Promellian captain's final message — an unexpectedly admiring recording that momentarily softens Picard and exposes a rare, almost sentimental side of him. Troi …
Picard's rare moment of historical awe is abruptly extinguished when he orders the ship back on course and the Enterprise begins to bleed power. Small, unexplained energy dips quickly escalate …
The collaboration between Geordi and the holographic Leah Brahms ignites with immediate technical breakthroughs. Initially, Geordi is startled by her materialization, but quickly embraces the interactive simulation. Together, they develop a strategy of multiple injector streams to reorient the dilithium crystal, successfully extending the ship's matter/anti-matter energy supplies and stabilizing the shields. This temporary victory offers a sliver of hope. Concurrently, Data painstakingly recovers more fragments from the Promellian logs, finally revealing the trap's true nature: "Aceton assimilators" concealed in the debris, designed to drain power and convert it into lethal radiation. Picard realizes with dread that the Enterprise has been unwittingly feeding the very mechanism designed to kill them. The stakes escalate dramatically as Geordi and Leah, now with a developing, feisty rapport, work furiously to find an escape. Their technical banter reveals a growing personal connection, even as the clock ticks. Despite Geordi's warnings about further power expenditure, Picard, desperate for a tactical solution, orders a directional phaser strike at a perceived weak point in the radiation field. The gamble fails spectacularly; the phasers merely feed the assimilators, causing radiation levels to surge and energy reserves to plummet. In a cruel twist, the Holodeck program, including Leah, is abruptly terminated due to critical energy depletion, leaving Geordi alone and defeated, the ship's fate hanging by a thread.
Power drains inexplicably across the Enterprise as radiation climbs and warning klaxons scream. On the bridge Picard immediately shifts to life-or-death command, suspecting they’ve fallen into the same thousand-year Promellian …
As the ship's power collapses, Geordi bursts into Engineering and instantly assumes command, fingers flying across consoles as he rebalances the matter/antimatter reaction and reroutes plasma transfer to the warp …
In the Observation Lounge the senior officers confront a tactical blind spot and a lethal countdown: Geordi reports the ship will exhaust reserves in under three hours and shields are …
In the Observation Lounge the crew confronts the impossible: the Enterprise is draining toward catastrophic shield failure. Riker presses Data for historical precedent and gets an intriguing but irrelevant Menthar …
In Engineering, Geordi's methodical diagnostics finally name the problem: the ancient Promellian trap produces a proportional counter-reaction that scales with Enterprise power output, preventing formation of a subspace field. This …
As Geordi pushes past routine diagnostics he uncovers a buried author in the Galaxy-class design logs: Dr. Leah Brahms. After the computer confirms an opposing force has scaled with Enterprise …
The Enterprise plunges into deeper peril as the observation lounge becomes a chamber of grim pronouncements. Geordi reports the crystal lattice is breaking down, and Worf confirms shields will fall in under two hours, with fatal radiation exposure now a terrifying twenty-six minutes away. Riker articulates the stark reality: "If we resist, we die. If we don't resist, we die." Recognizing the critical importance of Geordi's work, Picard overrides protocols and reinstates the Holodeck Three program, granting Geordi precious time with Leah. Back in the drafting room, the holographic Leah's presence is a renewed source of focus and, subtly, comfort for Geordi. They grapple with the impossible problem: how to generate enough energy to escape a trap that thrives on energy. Their intense collaboration leads to a startling realization: the only way to make the thousands of micro-adjustments per second needed to counter the trap's reflexive drain is to turn control over to the ship's computer. This proposition deeply troubles Picard, who expresses his profound aversion to ceding human command to a machine, lamenting the loss of human intuition in favor of algorithmic efficiency. Simulations of this computer-controlled escape yield inconsistent, often fatal, results, highlighting the inherent risk. The act culminates in a terrifying crescendo as the deflector shields finally fail, and the ship is engulfed by lethal radiation, with a mere twenty-six minutes until fatal exposure, pushing the crew to the brink of despair.
On the bridge Dr. Beverly Crusher delivers a cold, clinical verdict: after the shields fail the radiation will be fatal in thirty minutes. Her evacuation and triage directives force Picard …
A clinical, desperate protocol gives way to a single spark of hope when Riker's voice breaks the bridge's mounting despair. After Dr. Crusher issues a chilling thirty-minute fatal-exposure deadline and …
Cornered by the Promellian trap's lethal power drain, Geordi moves from hypothesis to action: he consults the holodeck projection of Dr. Leah Brahms and the ship's computer, confirms that reorienting …
With time collapsing and the dilithium lattice decision urgent, Geordi escalates from theory to hands-on trial: he orders the ship to pull a restricted prototype schematic and recreate it in …
In the holodeck drafting room Geordi studies an intricate cross-section of the Enterprise engines and pleads for inside information about the dilithium chamber. When he tries to pull Leah Brahms' …
Geordi obsessively studies the engine schematic in the holodeck, pressing the simulated Leah for off‑record details about the dilithium chamber. When the ship's computer blocks access to her personal logs, …
In the holodeck drafting room Geordi summons a holographic facsimile of Dr. Leah Brahms to model a risky engineering fix. The simulation provides the concrete technical lead — which dilithium …
In the holodeck drafting room Geordi converts technical desperation into a brittle breakthrough: by reconfiguring injector streams and speeding the parallel subspace field processor, the ship can eke out roughly …
In the holodeck/drafting room the crew finally recovers a fragment of Promellian captain Galek Sar's log: the wreck is surrounded by hidden Aceton assimilators that siphon ship power and convert …
With the Enterprise hurtling towards certain doom, the computer's calm voice announces the dwindling minutes to fatal radiation exposure, amplifying the unbearable tension. Geordi, facing the apparent impossibility of a computer-controlled escape, experiences a sudden, profound breakthrough: the solution isn't to overpower the trap, but to *deny it power altogether*. He bursts onto the bridge, proposing a radical, counter-intuitive plan: a single, microsecond impulse burst to break inertia, followed by a complete shutdown of all systems except minimal life support and two thrusters. No computer control, only human intuition. Picard, deeply moved by Geordi's faith in the "human factor," embraces the audacious gamble. He takes the helm himself, relieving Wesley Crusher, embodying leadership as a moral act of trust in human judgment over algorithmic optimization. The Enterprise fires its brief impulse, then plunges into silence and darkness, a human-guided vessel adrift in a field of hungry rubble. Picard, with surgical precision and an almost preternatural calm, manually navigates the ship, timing thruster bursts against gravitational pulls. In a breathtaking display of intuition and skill, he uses the gravity of a massive asteroid as a slingshot, flinging the Enterprise free of the deadly field. The bridge erupts in relief and awe. With the ship safe, Picard orders the complete destruction of the Promellian battle cruiser and its assimilators, eradicating the ancient threat. In a poignant final scene, Geordi shares a tender goodbye with the holographic Leah Brahms, kissing her simulation as a silent acknowledgment of their profound connection and collaboration. He saves the program, a private memorial to their shared triumph and his own growth, walking away from the holodeck a little less lonely, carrying the profound lesson that sometimes, the best machines answer human intuition when humans know how and when to turn them off.
On the bridge the crew pinpoints a microscopic dip in the lethal radiation field — a tactical sliver of hope revealed by Worf and quantified by Data. Geordi warns that …
Picard authorizes a desperate, tactical phaser strike against the tiny dip in the radiation field despite La Forge's warning that it will drain critical reserves and risk circuitry. The phaser …
The observation lounge becomes a war room as technical data turns into an existential countdown. Geordi reports the Enterprise's crystal lattice is breaking down; Worf confirms shields under two hours …
With shields failing and lethal radiation countdowns shrinking to minutes, the bridge confronts an impossible choice. Geordi reveals he has returned to the ship's earliest construction records inside Holodeck Three …
Trapped in the Holodeck drafting room, Geordi and the Leah Brahms simulation race to out-think a Promellian energy trap. Exhausted, chemically and emotionally frayed, Geordi flirts with the human closeness …
Trapped and desperate, Geordi and the holodeck simulation of Dr. Leah Brahms race to find any mechanical workaround for the Promellian energy trap. The scene pivots from technical banter and …
In the Captain's Ready Room Picard and Riker confront the moral heart of the crisis: La Forge has a desperate proposal that may save the ship but hinges on who—or …
In the Captain's ready room Picard and Riker quietly parse Geordi's radical proposal to cede control of the Enterprise to the computer to buy time. Picard's idle, nostalgic monologue about …
In the holodeck drafting room Geordi runs iterative escape simulations with a holographic Leah Brahms to find a safe vector through the Promellian asteroid trap. An initial adjustment yields a …
In the holodeck drafting room Geordi and a holographic Leah Brahms run simulated escape trials through the Promellian booby-trapped asteroid field. Initial tweaks produce a successful run, but repeating the …
As lethal radiation ticks down, Geordi proposes a radical 'turn everything off' gambit: one microsecond impulse, then manual thruster bursts with only minimal life support. Picard overruns automated control, relieves …
After Picard's daring manual slingshot frees the Enterprise and the ancient Promellian cruiser is destroyed, Geordi withdraws to the holodeck for a private, quiet coda. He acknowledges that technology has …