After Geordi has a markedly unsuccessful date with Christy on the holodeck, the Enterprise detects a signal coming from the site of the final battle between the Promellians and the Menthars, a debris field. When they travel to the source to investigate, Picard finds a 1000-year- old Promellian battle cruiser. He pulls Captain's prerogative to check the ship out, and he explores it, enchanted by the history, while Guinan tells Geordi that he shouldn't try so hard.

Picard finds the ship's log, where the captain takes full responsibility for what befell them, whatever that may have been. After he beams back, they decide to leave, only to find that they cannot. Further, they start losing energy reserves, and are suddenly bombarded by high- energy radiation. Geordi starts working on making the Enterprise move, and while considering the way to exploit the small time difference between reaction and counterreaction, calls up voice logs of Leah Brahms, one of the ship's designers, then goes to the holodeck to call up prototype images of the ship, where he accidentally triggers a holographic simulation of Dr. Brahms.

She seems informative, but emotionless, and Geordi combines her psychological profile with other information to create a more "real" simulation. While the two of them get down to work, Picard examines logs brought back by Riker and his team from the cruiser. In one, the captain mentions aceton assimilators, which drain power from the Enterprise and convert it to the radiation. Picard finds one small weakness in the field and fires at it, only to have that section strengthen from the phaser energy.

With only minutes remaining until shields go down, admitting the radiation, Geordi and Leah realize that the only way to exploit the time difference is to make hundreds of adjustments per second, which would require handing control of the ship entirely over to the computer, a move with which Picard is not happy. In simulations, that might work, but is only a fifty-fifty chance, and Geordi asks for two more minutes, as shields go down (leaving 26 minutes until they all die from the radiation).

Geordi gets another idea, and suggests to Picard to go the opposite route: put in one quick blast of the impulse engines, then shut everything down except for life support and two thrusters, and essentially fly the ship out on manual. This Picard does, slingshotting around one large asteroid to gain the final momentum burst they need. They blow up the Promellian ship, taking the booby trap with it, and Geordi gives "Leah" a kiss goodbye before closing down the holodeck program.

Highlight Listing:

"Booby Trap." The Enterprise is caught in a booby trap that captures the ship and converts its energy into lethal levels of radiation.

Advertising Headline:

NO WAY OUT! The Enterprise is caught in a deadly trap!

TV log listing:

Can crew escape fatal trap on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION

Technical design, graphic design, interactive features, HTML & CGI programming by Andrew Tong. || All materials Copyright © 1987-1995 by their respective authors. || Document created: January 28, 1995 || Last Modified: November 09, 2010