| The Next Generation | |
| 62 | |
| A Matter Of Perspective | |
| 43610.4 | |
Painting? All those of you who want to believe that the Enterprise is a battleship can stop right now. RealBattleships™ do not have their Captain engaged in the lude persuit of painting naked women! It appears however that Picard is not very good at it, and who better to tell him than Mr Talkie-Toaster himself? Yep, Data has set himself up as an art critic. After lecuturing Q on humanity, I suppose it is not really surprising...
The away team is about to beam back from a science station when boom it explodes. Riker gets back safely due in part to O'Brien's skill at handling the transporter, but almost certainly more due to Riker's amazing beard powers. Riker has the gall to claim he didn't know what was going on. My first thought of course was: "What has Wes done now?". Had he left his anti-matter lunchbox over there, or maybe he had prepared a new strain of really violent nanites. Clearly the plot was developing.
A message from the planet: "What the @#$%^&* did you do to the station?". Well not really, but I imagine that was what the writers wanted to use. Either way an investigator beams on board and wants to arrest Riker for murder. Well this is a turnup for the books. I imagine that a pretty boy like our William will make a few tight friends during his time of incarcertation. I can imagine the new series: "Star Trek: The Prison Years". Somehow I doubt that Paramount will go for it.
Picard, in an unusual act of non-wimpishness defends Riker, and suggests that the commital hearing be held on board the Enterprise. Data agrees that it is possible to reconstruct all of the events on the holodeck. Hence it appears that Riker will get his fair trial - and then hopefully, a fair hanging! On the other hand, it would be just as simple to have Worf throttle the investigator and then boldly go where no-one has gone before. This would be my option.
Rats. I was ignored and the investigation will go ahead unimpeded by sanity. Riker's testimony is gloriously presented for us, and it appears that he was not only invited to stay, but was also seduced by the chief scientist's wife! What a surprise, and for the whole time he had a really smug look on his face. He must be lying.
The investigator adds his own ending to the episode by saying that Riker phasered the station reactor as he beamed out, just to spite Apgar the scientist. Does this sound likely to you? Given Riker's previous episodes with a phaser I suppose it just might have happened. That combined with evidence that says a beam of energy directed from Riker's position destroyed the core looks damning indeed.
Mrs Apgar gets her turn to tell the events, and they are portrayed somewhat differently. In this account Riker asks to say and then attempts to rape her. When Apgar enters, Riker then beats him up and threatens to kill him. This doesn't sound like our Wil at all, but Troi says that Manua is telling the truth. Bummer.
After another deposition from Tayna, Apgar's assistant, Riker looks doomed for sure. As the investigator says, he has established motive, method and opportunity, and Picard will be forced to hand Riker over for trial. But that would require an assertive action on the part of Picard, so we know this won't happen.
During all this time Geordi and Wes have been investigating strange radiation bursts affecting the Enterprise. After they work out that the bursts are synchronised with the stations generator on the planet, they assert that they know what is going on and who killed Apgar!
The radiation is Krieger waves, the mystical things that Apgar was trying to create. It seems that he was trying to build a weapon to sell to the Romulans, like any self-respecting contractor would do. As Geordi so well describes, the converter is just a series of "mirrors and reflective coils" and the holodeck is doing the conversions. Mirrors? Give us a break! No-one has tried to use that line in ages.
The final proof that Riker didn't do it is the demonstration that Apgar actually tried to kill Riker by blasting him with Krieger waves as he beamed out. He didn't count on the transporter beam reflecting the pulse, and destroying his own reactor. That and the 0.0014 seconds time that it took for the beam to bounce off Riker and hit the core. What a genius Wes. Hmm. Lets work this out. Guess that the distance from Riker to the core was 5m. Total transit distance is 10m. V = D/T = 16,000 mph. This is quite quick, but the space shuttle could outrun it, so I don't think it would make a useful weapon.
