Star Trek Voyager Reviews Written by Someone Who Actually LIKES the Show! -- Ex Post Facto

Okay, this is a spoiler-filled review of the Star Trek Voyager episode, "Ex Post Facto." If you're not the type who enjoys Voyager, or shades of Agatha Christie, or maybe if you're just sitting there wondering why they didn't call this "After the Fact," may I suggest that you'd have more fun someplace else?

For instance, you could go to the Ultimate Band List.

Not interested? Okay then...

INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
Hmm, is this an attempt to get the Sherlock Holmes motif continued in the Delta Quadrant?...That Paris sure is a cutie-pie. Don'tcha just wanna give him a little huggy-poo?...Why does everything on Benar look like Earth during a decade of really bad fashion?

PLOT
Paris' eyes look at some inner torment in fear. Grainy images show him kissing a woman and then killing her jealous husband while strange symbols scroll down at the bottom of the screen. Paris weakly protests, "This isn't the way it happened." A voice (the Benar doctor) tells him it's too late, the trial is over and everyone knows he's guilty. His punishment for killing Tolen Ren is to witness the murder through the eyes of his victim every fourteen hours until he is dead.

Now that's a good punishment!

The Doctor tests Kes on a number of medical questions and considers possible names for himself. [I'm still rooting for Fred.] Kim returns in a shuttlecraft severely dehydrated and tells the story of he and Paris' trip to the planet Benar. They were working with Tolen Ren, getting help with fixing their busted Voyager equipment, a colander or something, when Paris made major goo-goo eyes at Ren's wife, Lidell. The next thing Kim new, Paris was arrested and tried for the murder. Kim himself was interrogated, and he wasn't allowed to see Paris. Janeway sets course for Benar.

Janeway confers with Neelix about Benar, which is currently at war with the super-unfriendly Numiri. The two have been fighting for a while and the paranoia has gotten ridiculous, as has the subterfuge to which both sides have stooped in their thirst to destroy each other.

In fact, on the way to Benar, Janeway gets warned by a Numiri patrol that they'd better not do anything bad while they're near Numiri space, and Neelix wonders why the greeting was so friendly, for a Numiri.

Minister Kray explains to Janeway that Paris has been found guilty and the memory implants have been put into his brain. Janeway asks to see him and Paris is brought in, looking extremely relieved to see her. That penal colony on New Zealand, he says, doesn't look so bad anymore.

Assured of his innocence, Janeway wants all the details. Paris talks of meeting Lidell in the atrium and making the Star Trek version of sultry talk. She's such a bad girl, in fact, that she smokes! In the middle of all this, Paris starts up another of his memory cycles, and the pain is so bad when he gets to the actual killing scene (a knife in the gut), he passes out. A concerned Janeway gets permission to take him to Sickbay, though she is not allowed to leave orbit with him. The Doctor sees that the implants are not working with Paris' brain very well, being Benari implants and all. Every time Paris goes through a cycle he gets brain damage.

Janeway figures this might be cause for an appeal of the sentence, but Tuvok points out that the punishment for murder before the wonderful memory implants were invented was death.

Bummer!

Anyway, the whole thing falls into Tuvok's hands, and he turns into Jessica/Colombo/Mrs. Colombo!/Inspector Morse/whoever and investigates. First on the list, he goes to see the oh-so-sexy-in-her-short-see-through-nightie Lidell, who talks of how she and Paris kissed and how her marriage to her husband died a quiet death a long time ago. She wants Paris to know that she forgives him for killing her husband. Tuvok looks at her and suddenly goes into spontaneous Pan Farr!

No, actually, he looks fairly uncomfortable with the whole thing and somewhat unconvinced...but then, he always looks like that.

Tuvok then checks Lidell's story with Paris while the Doctor watches with some sort of lie-detector thing. Paris passes the detector, and explains that the last thing he remembers is talking in the atrium with Lidell. When he woke up, he was in prison.

Suddenly the ship is attacked by the Numiri. Chakotay tries some fancy stuff (playing possum, basically) and Voyager fends off the Numiri. Janeway wonders, however, why they suddenly attacked.

Over the strong objections of the Doctor, Tuvok mind-melds with Paris as he goes through a cycle and notices things that the lieutenant did not. In fact, he now knows Who The Killer Is.

To test his theory, Janeway tells Minister Kray that Paris and Kim will be going down to the planet in a shuttle. On the shuttle, Kim tsk-tsks Paris for getting mixed up with Lidell and Paris tsk-tsks Kim for not stopping him. The Numiri attack the shuttle and bring it aboard with the intention of abducting Paris, but Janeway beams them back and also manages to keep the shuttle by informing the Numiri that it's full of explosives.

Everyone involved (except the Numiri) gather in Lidell's house so that Tuvok can explain Who The Killer Is. From having watched Paris' mental video, he knows that the memories were altered. The real killer is shorter than Paris, and knew all about Benari anatomy. Moreover, all those strange symbols at the bottom of the screen are data from Tolen Ren's work. The whole thing, in fact, has been a Numiri ruse to kill Ren and convey his research to the Numiri, using Paris as a courier. Who could have done such a thing? With the aid of Lidell's mutant dog, the finger is pointed at the doctor who performed the operation on Paris.

A cleared and restored Paris goes to the mess hall and tells Tuvok he's made a friend. Tuvok continues to look uncomfortable and unconvinced. It takes a Vulcan to resist such a cutie-pie.