So here's the deal with Dr. Leah Brahms. She's a brainy babe who helped design the Enterprise-D's engines once upon a time. In this sweet episode called "Booby Trap" (TNG season 3), Picard and the gang get stuck in, you guessed it, an ancient booby trap from a long-ago war. Why do I think this is cool? Anytime anyone brings up races that had space travel long before we were even walking upright, I get shivers. It's one of those "good lord, THE UNIVERSE!" things.
But anyhow, to get out of this mess, La Forge needs to get creative with the engines, and creates an interactive holodeck program to help him think the crisis through. A holographic representation of Dr. Brahms teams up with him to save the day, and obviously he pulls a Barclay and digs on her hard since he's an awkward nerd who can't interact with women in real life (what's up with the Engineering crew, anyway?). Thing is, he created this fake woman's personality, so obviously they get along! They don't show it, but I'm sure they boned off-screen, which is creepy in itself cause she was BASED ON A REAL, LIVING WOMAN who never gave any kind of consent to have her image used that way. It'd be different if it was like, some purposely created fantasy in Quark's rentable-by-the-hour holosuites.
But anyhow, the part that is really disgusting comes in during a crappy episode a year later called "Galaxy's Child". I mean, the concept of alien entities who live in the vacuum of space is really cool, but the episode is so lame. (Keep in mind that when I say that, it's with love and I'd still watch the shit in a second. But I can recognize episode quality on a spectrum. Cue "NERRRRRRD!")
The REAL Dr. Leah Brahms is on board to inspect some engine stuff and work with Geordi. It's mad awkward because in real life she's kind of formal and cold, but Geordi feels like he already knows her and creeps her the hell out by being like "Oh, I LOOOOOVE x y and z" which he had already researched and knew were HER favorite things. That could be cool or cute, but he's just so creepy about it in the most obvious way. He's determined to seduce her since she's his dream brainy babe, but she's not into it and runs out on his carefully planned romantic dinner because she feels (rightfully!) that it's inappropriate. As they keep working together, he keeps being intense and dropping hints about things he knows about her. She realizes that he's really feeling it and drops the bomb: she's married. Oops. Geordi's bummed and vents to Guinan, who is a wise breath of fresh air in this episode, and is like "Stop being a dumbass creep, you created a fantasy version of her so you can't be mad that she isn't like that." Preach it, Whoopi.
Anyways, while Brahms is there, the Enterprise is in trouble again when those fools on the bridge accidentally kill one of the aforementioned space creatures while it is pregnant, and so they perform a space C-section to get the baby out. The baby immediately latches on to the ship and starts draining its energy. Crisis! Time to call upon the holodeck to work out a solution! Unfortunately, La Forge gets called away before Brahms gets down to Engineering, and an unsuspecting ensign directs her to the holodeck alone. She finds Geordi's old program WITH HER IN IT, and he breathlessly runs in to find her staring at her holographic self saying things like "When you're touching the engines, you're touching me, Geordi" or whatever. That's like the 24th century equivalent of finding your face pasted on to a body in a porn magazine belonging to some gross dude you barely know.
Obviously, Dr. Brahms is pissed and has put all the pieces together about Geordi's creepiness now. She starts yelling at him about how gross it all is. Instead of apologizing like a normal human being and being appropriately chagrined, he starts yelling back at her for being cold to him and not into his skeevy "friendly" advances, and storms out! He's mad that she wouldn't be his friend, but like, regardless of your actual personality, would YOU automatically be friendly to some dude you've never met before who is using personal information about you to impress you and make you feel weird/unsettled and try to mold you into this fantasy person he created who he can get in bed with? You'd probably be a little cautious. But he's mad that she didn't want to be best buds forever immediately upon setting foot on the Enterprise.
The worst part comes after the crisis has been solved. DR. BRAHMS APOLOGIZES TO GEORDI! She's all like, "sorry I was a cold bitch to you" and he apologizes for lying, and they have a good laugh and clink drinks and are best buds. What? Are you serious? She has nothing to apologize for. This was 100% him being a creepdog, or at the worst, 10% her not being the most friendly open person in the universe and 90% him being a creepdog. It truly and seriously makes me feel gross that a woman could be made to feel so bad for not being into a man's strong, sketchy advances WHILE IN A WORK ENVIRONMENT that SHE ends up being the one to offer the main apology! Sorry, Maurice Hurley, but you missed the boat on the ending of this one. Geordi should have been properly chastened and should have learned a more pronounced lesson from all of this, instead of Brahms being like "God it sucks that I'm so frigid, please forgive me and let's laugh it off."
Sorry that I said creepy so many times in this, but it's seriously the creepiest. Creep. Poor dude just doesn't have much experience with women, but there are many ways to portray that without involving this type of plot ending.
