Booby Trap

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Geordi strikes out on his date with Christi (a person) but finds smooches on the holodeck anyway. Who needs real girls? (Insert Valentine's Day joke here.)

Orelious IX (former planet, current rock garden) is the site of the final conflict between the Promellians and the Menthars. The Promellians built battle cruisers to stand the test of time, while the Menthars were known as the Fresh-Makers.

Picard used to build model airships in bottles as a boy. Riker, Worf, and Data have never heard of such a thing. O'Brien has. Or possibly he's a good suck-up. Or both.

Now Picard has a Promellian BattleCruiser of his very own. With realistic skeletons featuring 'died at their posts' action! It makes his history-loving heart go pitter-patter-clank. ('Cause it's a metal heart, you understand.)

Guinan tells hard-luck Geordi she's attracted to bald men, because a bald man was kind to her once when she was hurting. I wonder if his heart went pitter-patter-clank...?

Geordi must put aside his floundering love life and race against time to figure out how to get Enterprise free of a cunning and deadly trap. So of course, he falls in love with the voice, face, and journals of the engineering propulsion specialist who designed the ship's engines: Dr. Leah Brahms.

"I need to get inside there." Geordi muses. He means the dilithium reaction chamber. What were YOU thinking?

Possibly to make up for Christi, maybe even for Moriarty, the computer manifests the geek girl of Geordi's dreams. With a 9 percent margin of error, the hologram even simulates Brahms' personality.

Picard balks at Geordi's propulsion proposal to escape: turn control over to the computer. Picard used to imagine flying a single propellor airplane. "Now the machines are flying us."

In the end, they go the other way: less power, more Picard. The Captain coasts them to safety on a pair of thrusters and no prayer (heathens, remember).

Worf makes the ship in the bottle go ka-blooey. Waste not, want... never mind.

Hologram Leah is, to put it mildly, somewhat forward. "Every time you look at the ship, it's me. Everytime you touch it, it's me."(She may have attended the Minuet School of Accommodating Photon-Based Ladies.)

"Booby Trap" brings the fun with a good Geordi episode, good effects, and a noticeable soundtrack. It again raises the question (and not for the last time) how real is real? For my part? I'm glad I don't need a battery pack for my flesh wife.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Happy Valentines Day.