1.8 — “Ex Post Facto”
Plot: During a visit to the Banean Homeworld, Tom Paris is convicted of murder, and sentenced to relive the last moments of his victim’s life every 14 hours. Paris protests his innocence, and Janeway and Tuvok investigate.
Thoughts: My initial suspicion, with a title like “Ex Post Facto,” was that we would be treated to the fourth time travel plot in eight episodes. Instead, the plot is a retread of TNG 3.14, “A Matter of Perspective,” in which Riker is framed for murdering his host, a scientist, on an alien outpost, involving a series of incriminating falsified holodeck scenes, including depictions of Riker’s seduction of the scientist’s attractive wife. Both episodes borrow from the Original Series episodes 1.20, “Court Martial” (in which Kirk is accused of a crime using doctored video evidence), and 2.14, “Wolf in the Fold” (in which Scotty is unjustly convicted of murder during an away mission).
As before, the Original Series did it better. The noir motif, à la Dixon Hill, seems incongruous. Why would such a specific American cultural reference play out on an alien world? It’s just a gimmick, which shatters the possibility of suspension of disbelief.
Some gender issues are icky. The wife character, Lidell Ren, feels transfixed in male gaze in the role of a dissipated housewife who is expected to prepare meals and entertain her husband’s guests (and perhaps seduce them without giving up her virtue?) while he does the important work. Tom Paris sizes her up like a piece of meat which, like a predator, he decides he must taste. No one pauses to ask what social customs are like on this planet. Tuvok asks Paris “Were you having improper relations with [Ren’s] wife” without pausing to ask what the natives of this planet consider to be proper. Of course on this planet an unhappy marriage is a shackles, and men control the sexual urges of “their” women. It’s civilized, isn’t it?
Worse(?), the episode doesn’t have anything to do with Voyager’s theme of trying to get home. The ship seems to have unlimited time to hang out and risk irreplaceable resources, like shuttle crafts. It is implied that resupply is easy with so many advanced, culturally similar worlds available in the Delta Quadrant. Who cares, then, if the ship is lost? Worst case the characters don’t see their families again, but they are in no peril. Basically, it’s bad news when an episode could fit just as well on TNG, or a slow day on DS9. I want to see the kind of stories that can only be told on VOY.
It probably sounds like I hate the episode. Not quite, but I was disappointed, and thinking about it makes me more disappointed.
According to the usual Internet sources, Executive Producer Jeri Taylor hated the way Paris was depicted in “Ex Post Facto” (putting her at odds with her co-executive producer and teleplay writer Michael Piller), and put the kibosh on future stories that depict him as a womanizer. We’ll see how that plays out.
2 out of 5 scenes filmed in black and white.
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