Star Trek: Voyager — 1x08 — Ex Post Facto
Synopsis
Paris is convicted of murder.
Remarkable scenes
- The Doctor discussing the choosing of his name with Kes. One of the names the Doctor was considering was Spock. :)
- Paris: "Smoking is a bad habit. My species gave it up centuries ago when we finally got it into our heads it was killing us." Lidell: "You must be a very superior species." Paris: "That's not what I meant." Lidell: "Maybe I kill myself slowly because I don't have the courage to do it quickly."
- Chakotay's "play dead" trick.
- Neelix, regarding Tuvok's proposition of mind melding with Paris: "A, a what? What, what did he say? A mind what?"
- The Doctor's objections to Tuvok's mind meld idea. The Doctor: "Believe it or not, I know more about mind melds than you do!"
- Paris regarding taking another man's woman: "Some day it will be you Harry. You'll meet her and you'll know it's wrong from the first moment you see her. And you'll know there's nothing you can do about it.'"
- Tuvok uncovering the Numiri plot.
- Tom's way of expressing his gratitude to Tuvok.
Review
This episode uses the classic "flashback" story template. Meaning, we see the effects of the story (Paris' sentence) before the cause (the story of the murder). Fortunately, it doesn't dominate the story, like certain other episodes do. So only parts of the story are wasted, which is mostly the beginning. So the episode gets off to a bad start, but eventually becomes interesting when Tuvok begins his criminal investigation. Tuvok is my favorite character on Voyager, and it's nice to see him shine here. As nice a job as Tuvok did though, the Numiri couldn't have done a worse one. Surely there would have been easier ways to transmit intelligence info than to encode military secrets in someone's mind, set this person up for a murder conviction, and then steal the prisoner? The episode has weak points, but overall comes off as pretty solid, so I don't take off too many points.