Star Trek: Ex Post Facto

Episode: "Ex Post Facto"

Series: Star Trek: Voyager

Season 1, Episode 8

Original Air Date: February 27, 1995

via Memory Alpha

Tom Paris has committed murder, or so the Banea would have us all believe.  While visiting the Banean homeworld, Paris and Kim meet a physicist, Tolen Ren, and asks him for help in repairing Voyager's collimator.  The accommodating Dr. Ren invites his new friends to his home for dinner where they meet his beautiful wife, Lidell.  Playboy Tom instantly falls for her and naturally, that's where the trouble begins.  The doctor is killed and Tom stands accused on the strength of damning evidence.  The victim's own memories of the crime are replayed at the trial.  The punishment is cruel.  Those same memories are implanted in Tom's brain where he will experience them every 14 hours for the rest of his life.

Obviously, all of this eventually gets sorted out cleverly and Tom is absolved.  Tuvok plays the Holmes/Poirot sleuth role.  The final clue is derived directly from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 short story, "The Adventure of Silver Blaze," included in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.  

"Ex Post Facto" is, in many ways, a rehash of the NextGen Season 3 episode "A Matter of Perspective," in turn inspired by Rashomon, the Kurosawa masterpiece.  However, there are important differences.  There's no attempted rape element this time which significantly reduces the ickiness.  Also, while Riker is technically acquitted, Manua, who accused him of trying to rape her, genuinely believed she was attacked.  Even Counselor Troi acknowledges that.  So his "innocence" is not 100% clear.  While Tom certainly comes off as a cad in this week's story, no one accuses him of rape.

Acting Notes

via Wikipedia

Ethan Phillips (Neelix) was born in Garden City, New York, February 8, 1955.  His father was the owner of Frankie & Johnnie's a Manhattan steakhouse, originally a speakeasy.  Phillips studied at Boston University and Cornell.

Phillips's stage resume is impressive, even by Star Trek standards.  During a revival of Eccentricities of a Nightingale, legendary playwright Tennessee Williams wrote a new monologue for Phillips.  He performed in Measure for Measure with Kevin Kline.  He was in the Broadway premier of My Favorite Year.  His stage work has continued post-Trek, appearing in the premier of David Mamut's November, Best Play Tony winner All the Way and the Broadway premier of Junk: The Golden Age of Debt.

Before Voyager, Phillips, like René Auberjonois, was in the principal cast of Benson, playing Pete Downey for five seasons.  He also made guest appearances on L.A. Law, JAG and Star Trek: The Next Generation as the Ferengi doctor Farek in "Ménage à Troi."  Films include Ragtime, Lean on Me and Green Card.