Mediocre since it's too conventional. Mix Minority Report with that episode when O'Brien was in that mind jail and that episode when he was standing trial on Cardassia, and that episode when Cmdr. Riker was accused of murder and you get the idea: a very different juridical system, false claims, mind reading/manipulation. Tom's supposed to be a villain alpha male: kicked out of Starfleet, jailed, drinking in France and recreating this experience in the holo-deck with some submissive girls that worship him. I never really bought this character - to me, he's just a hedonistic but innocuous kid.
I think there's been an episode like this in ever ST series
And that is how stark the contrast in quality was with Voyager. We go from one of the best episodes to one of the worst.
It feels like a re-heat of that TNG episode where Riker is accused of killing that scientist - what was his name ? Dr. Ebgar ? Even the dialogue is almost 1:1 at times. Whether Tom is guilty or not is also beside the point as I would never believe he'd be left on the planet no matter what. Insteresting concept for a punishment, though. Doing this instead of lethal injection - there is a debate that I would have liked to see in detail that would be very Trek. Instead of a lame spy/lover story.
It's not even a forgetable episode as I instanly remembered in the first seconds how bad it was. A candidate to skip on a re-run.
First off, thanks to the other reviewers, I always like to read what an episode has in store for me and actually feel pretty inspired to write these myself now.
I also agree that we've seen this story too many times before. It's played out and boring.
Tuvok was fantastic in this episode. It's nice to have a Vulcan the way we're really meant to see them- dispassionate, logical, and focused. Tuvok is a model Vulcan in this and I actually manage to believe that no matter the outcome he would fight hard to see justice done. I gave a meh because 1. interesting justice system and 2. Janeway getting to stand her ground and show us how she manages to be one of the few starfleet officers that also has a family outside of the organization (to which the answer is she takes BS from no one)
I can see @LeftHandedGuitarist's points regarding the tropes used, but I have a soft spot for this episode despite that. Paris might not be a particularly believable "bad boy", and Lidell isn't terribly convincing either (it's so obvious that she's involved, this comment can't possibly qualify as a spolier). But it's all worth it for Tuvok.
Is the story predictable? Probably. I've seen the series too many times at this point to be surprised by anything, so I can't trust my own judgment on that front. But it's just so satisfying to watch Tuvok tease all the threads together. Call me sentimental, whatever. This is a Tuvok focus episode. Poor Tom's just a prop.
If it feels like we've seen this story before, it's because we have. The "crew member falsely accused of a crime by aliens" is something of a staple of sci-fi television, and it's rarely interesting (why are they always innocent of the crime? It would be far more exciting if Tom actually DID commit the murder!). In this case it's a heavy retread of the TNG episode 'A Matter of Perspective'. It also further tries to push the "bad boy Paris" character and Robert Duncan McNeill just can't pull that off, ever.
It's paint-by-numbers and dull, despite giving us our first good look at Tuvok and a nice performance from Tim Russ. The final scene with all the suspects gathered together and Tuvok revealing his evidence feels like its lifted right out of Poirot or Murder, She Wrote.
Terrible looking alien design, too. And oh my God, it all comes down to the dog?
(Also, why the hell do these aliens have Earth-like dogs?!)
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2022-11-18T00:01:45Z
[6.9/10] So funny story. When I revisited “A Matter of Perspective” from The Next Generation last year (a.k.a. the episode where Riker is accused of murdering an alien scientist and canoodling with his wife), I was surprised at how much it differed from what I had remembered. The basic outline of events was the same, but the details, the perspectives, the images, were very different. I’d chalked it up to the vagaries of memory, which is ironic given that episode’s themes.
Well, it turns out I’d just been conflating it with Voyager’s “Ex Post Facto”, another Star Trek episode where a Starfleet officer is accused of murdering an alien scientist and canoodling with his wife. Rewatching this episode, it was clear why I had my wires crossed. While it’s too much to call the situation with Tom Paris an exact duplicate of the one with Will Riker, they’re cut from the same cloth, to where a little confusion after a couple decades is understandable.
But I’ll admit, it reinforces my priors about VOY as a whole, which is that it’s largely a watered down retread of TNG. I don’t want to be too precious about that thesis. The Next Generation itself started out much more indebted to the rhythms and style of The Original Series before it founds its own voice; there’s plenty of time for Voyager to do the same. More to the point, Star Trek shows recycle many of the same story shapes all the time, from the strange anomaly of the week, the prime directive dilemma, to the good ol’ whodunnit. What matters is not necessarily pure originality, but rather the ability of the show’s creatives to do the story well and find one or two unique spins to put on the familiar.
And as I seem to say a lot about Voyager’s first season, god bless them, they try. Instead of a courtroom drama, it’s a film noir pastiche. Instead of a game of different recollections, it’s a game of falsified memories. Even the twist that part of Paris’ punishment for the murder is having to relive his victim’s final moments every fourteen hours adds a macabre twist to the proceedings, especially when the punishment seems to be killing him.
The problem is that “Ex Post Facto” isn’t particularly good at any of this stuff. The show never fully commits to the film noir homage, and given the results, I can understand why. The actress who plays Lidele, the alien scientist’s femme fatale of a wife, isn’t particularly good. Her performance is often labored and unconvincing, and unfortunately the story asks a lot of her. But some of that may simply be due to the fact that the show tries not just for the tone of classic film noir, but tries to replicate the dialogue, which sounds out of place and unnatural in a comparatively modern production. The whole setup is a little cheesy, with the sense that, unlike those classic movies, everyone here is just playacting.
That said, while the soul of the episode is a bit below par, it’s well-built. The opening scenes featuring a POV perspective of someone being stabbed by Tom is suitably attention-grabbing. Each flashback/recollection adds enough additional context to aid the audience’s understanding of the situation. And key details, like the conflict between the locals and their neighbors, are established well in advance of when the story needs them for plot purposes.
The smartest move “Ex Post Facto” makes, though, is to channel most of this through Tuvok, as the ship’s chief security officer and de facto detective in this scenario. Doing a whodunnit with a Vulcan as the gumshoe is a unique spin on things. There’s much more to say about Tuvok in the seasons to come, but suffice it to say, he and Tim Russ are a worthy successor to Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, finding a noble bearing, a wry wit, and a devotion to the truth that see both characters through tough times. Seeing him carry out the investigation and gather the evidence that exonerates Tom is the best thing in the episode.
There’s one big problem though -- Tuvok finds the exonerating evidence via a mind meld. I don’t love that choice from a continuity perspective, if only because human-Vulcan mind melds have generally been treated as a big deal that could screw the human up, so Tuvok doing one almost casually with Tom seems a bit cheap. Granted, that could have been suitably handwaved with a simple line of dialogue saying, “The risks are worth it to potentially save Mr. Paris’ life”, so I don’t want to harp on that too strongly.
The bigger problem is that Tuvok has to use what he learns to convince the local authorities that Paris was framed -- and all his best evidence is stuff he saw in another person’s mind. The show at least has the decency to raise the issue, but it strains credulity to think the planet’s prime minister would just take the word of some alien who claims to be psychic. The fact Lidele’s dog recognizes the turncoat doctor is pretty thin evidence, and everything else is circumstantial. The suspects just give up the game immediately, which scans as a bit too convenient.
Still, I might be more inclined to tolerate these weak spots if the episode itself were better on a nuts and bolts level. It takes too long to get to Tuvok’s investigation. The film noir scenes with Paris and Lidelle are stock and uninvolving. The fact the culprit was the doctor who inflicted the legal punishment on Paris, as a means to ferry secret information to the opposing camp, has some juice. But the path to get there is too clumsy and familiar for the journey to be worth it.
There’s nothing wrong with redoing something past Star Trek episodes have done. Even TNG’s “A Matter of Perspective” pulled a little from TOS’s “A Wolf in the Fold” with the murder mystery setup. But if you recapitulate something the audience has already seen, as recently as five years ago, without making the material sing or providing something truly new in your interpretation, it’s easy to get different takes on the same thing mixed up.
(SPOILERS for later in the series: It’s neat to me that The Doctor considers the name “Galen” considering what nom de guerre he adopts in a later episode.)