Mark Margolis continues his Parade of Criminal Portrayals in this very well written and produced Ep of Star Trek: The Next Generation. With Gina Hecht (Manua) and Craig (Kragg) Nelson.
This Ep deals with the way each of us perceives "Truth" - And the very disparate ways we all see the same events.
If two people see an event occur, and questioned about it separately, we would see that the result would be just the same as has happened in this Ep. Each person would insist that the events transpired in the way they perceived it. It takes a rare person, perhaps an Empath like Troi, to be able to put themselves truly in another person's place. Sometimes this happens in real life, but here, we are shown a set of events that change drastically depending on who is telling the tale.
After seeing this, I began to sincerely doubt if anyone can really convey a set of circumstances to another person without tainting it toward their benefit.
For instance, after watching this recently and watching "Mrs. Apgar's" testimony... I concluded that she actually believed her fantasy of the way things had occurred. In her mind, she had the perfect marriage to the perfect husband. But in reality she was probably aware of what illicit things her husband was doing. Sometimes when a person is confronted with something like that, a spouse involved in illegal dealings, they just don't want to believe it. So this was her way of coping with that. But also Riker, and we know how he is with women, probably did not really push aside her advances as thoroughly as his own testimony suggested. In this case we can believe the testimony of "Dr. Apgar" (through his assistant Tanya), that they were both equally involved in cheating on him. Because that is what he saw. Of course his own testimony was tainted by his own delusions, he believed that he punched Riker. Or at least this is what he told his assistant, perhaps this was simply a boast, and his attack on Riker was simply a swing and a miss, as Riker saw. But when you really look at Mrs. Apgar's testimony, it is totally unrealistic, and completely fabricated. But we know that sometimes a person can make themselves believe that something happened in a particular way even though it did not. I didn't want to say the word "delusion", but that pretty much describes her, and her husbands testimony. This would be the only way that Troi would be able to feel that Mrs. Apgar truly believed her own testimony: because she fabricated it.
This episode begins with the Teaser of Picard and two others painting a nude woman, to a Ron Jones score that is haunting and Beautiful, music which is played out in Variations throughout the Ep, depending on who is narrating the events which occurred on the Space Station. The Teaser has Data explaining the differences in the way Picard and the two other artists perceived and painted the Nude woman.
And so Riker paints his picture of events, as does Manua and Tanya (Juliana Donald) - And the Musical Theme changes according to each of these narrations.
The Holodeck is used as a Gimmick, not only does the Holodeck serve to bring the Depositions to "life" - It also serves another, physical purpose, which as a Spoiler I will let you the reader of my humble review mull over.
On the subject of Plot holes, I'll simply say, and if Riker had fired a phaser during Transport, the Transporter WOULD have given Colm Meany-O'Brien an opportunity to shut it off. Also, O'Brien could have been used as a Witness, to show that indeed, Riker was NOT holding a Phaser as he materialized on the Transporter Pad. As we all saw, Riker was not holding a Phaser at all. The Pacing of the scenes regarding the explosion and Riker's successful beam-out, was handled in such a way as we never gave it a second thought, it was a superb piece of (mis)direction on the part of Cliff Bole.
This was a 3rd Season Ep, planted firmly in the center of TNG's best Season and right in the middle of the series run - An Episode Co-Produced by the team of Hans Beimler and Richard Manning - Who always worked together in the early 90's and were responsible for some great Saturday AM Cartoons as well and ST:TNG - Everything they co-produced glowed with their magic touch - and this Ep is one of the best Eps produced during that season of Trek.
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