I knew in the back of my head there was an episode where Geordi fell in love with a holodeck character, but I had forgotten most of the details. But as soon as he ran into the name Leah Brahms I knew this was going to be an interesting one. I vaguely recall that they eventually return to this particular fascination of his for an even worse episode, but it certainly makes for some of the worse parts of this episode. It is especially obnoxious because allegedly the basis of his relationship with this holodeck recreation of a real woman is her ability to understand and work with him to fix the engines. But that turns out to be a red herring and in the end his suggestion is to not let the computer do and and just brute force their way out with inertia. Also, this is probably the closest Trek has ever come to understanding inertia as it would work on outer space. For some reason they can't figure out that you don't need constant thrust to stay in orbit despite that being the definition of in orbit.</rant>
The episode begins with Geordi on a hot holodeck date with a woman on the crew and despite his sweet gypsy violin player on the beach holodeck moves she isn't interested in him. On the bridge the ship is busy exploring an asteroid field that is maybe supposed to be the debris from a destroyed planet or something? There is a lot of talk about this being all that is left of two races that wiped each other out, but it doesn't really explain what the mean by that. They discover an intact battle cruiser and Picard is filled with archeological joy at the prospect of exploring such a relic. Over Rikers objections he beams down with Data and Worf and they have a fun time exploring and finding the old ships logs. But back on the ship there are strange things happening with the ships power.
Back on the ship Geordi goes and talks to Guinan, but even she can't help him with his lady troubles, but she does at least give him the classic advice about trying to be himself. Back on the bridge the power drain is getting worse and when they try to fly out of there they learn they have lost power to the engines. They have fallen into the same ancient booby trap that doomed the battle cruiser. With three hours of power until they lose shields and die of space radiation Geordi is tasked with solving the energy problem so he starts studying how the engines work or something? This leads him to the audio logs of a female engineer who did most of the design work on the Enterprise reactor and engines. Through a classic Trek holodeck BS move the computer somehow decides Geordi has instructed in to make a physical simulation of the designer, Dr. Leah Brahms.
Geordi of course falls in love with her, but it is essentially just her image so he has to computer make a simulation of her based on psychological profiles and other personal data it seems like it shouldn't just let him have access to and the two of them spend hours fighting/flirting about the engines. For some reason Picard decides to try and shoot their way out, but just as Data predicted the energy eating trap just eats the phaser energy leaving them even weaker. The thing with Geordi and Brahms goes on way too long and eventually doesn't matter because the solution turns out to be just shoot the engines for a second and then turn it all off and use momentum to drift out of the trap. Picard has to maneuver with thrusters because he is a badass and they end by destroying the trap and the battle cruiser.
Review: I liked the story about the ship being trapped a lot more than the subplot about a nerd falling in love with his computer. Sure, Kirk loved the enterprise, but he didn't love the Enterprise. Geordi ends his part of the episode in a kiss with the simulation of Dr. Brahms and then, "end program."
6 out of 10
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