On page 174 of the NextGen Guide, Phil asked why O'Brien doesn't testify that Riker didn't fire a weapon. Well, that's because it would be a lie. Riker did it. We all saw what he did to Yuta at the end of The Vengeance Factor, and that was someone he cared for. Obviously good old Will is just a cold blooded killing machine. I suggest we investigate Riker and O'Brien's bank accounts, and see...
Hey, how did you get in here? No, put down that phaser! Aaaaaaaah...

The problem of using an example from a later program to nitpick an earlier one pops up on page 192 of the NextGen Guide. For all we know the ability to determine that someone is firing a weapon while in transport (seen in The Most Toys) may have been added after A Matter of Perspective. For all we know Riker may have suggested the function be added. (Good old Will Riker, he wouldn't want anybody to be falsely accused of a crime.;-)

So was the model a crew member who agreed to pose nude or is 'Nude Artist's Model' a genuine position on a Starship? (And how many pips does she have & where does she wear them?)

How exactly did O'Brien know that the station exploded, I don't remember seeing him watching a viewscreen?
(Secret surveillance technique? More proof that O'Brien is in Section 31?)

When I watched this show the last time, I tried to see if Riker wore a phaser, since Krag's case depends on Riker using one. It didn't seem as if Riker wore one after beaming back from the station, but the camera never showed Riker's left side. (Of course, maybe Krag thought Riker just 'threw' the phaser away during transport?) However, in all of the recreations, except Krag's, it seemed as if Riker was weapon free, but it is possible that one of those tiny, black phasers (the 'cricket', as Roddenberry called it) could have blended in with the black of Riker's uniform. Assuming that Riker did wear a phaser over to the station, the question that must be asked is Why? What possible reason would there be to wear phasers on a peaceful research station?
To fend off ugly or married women? (Riker has got to stop replicating that Hi-Karate cologne. It gets him in nothing but trouble.) I suppose it's possible that Riker could have worn a phaser in case they had to stay on the planet, but if the planet were that dangerous, then why would the Enterprise expose it's First Officer and Chief Engineer to that kind of danger? And if Riker and Geordi did not carry weapons to the station, why not testify to that? Shouldn't there be some kind of record if a phaser were taken from it's `locker?'

Was the Holodeck programmed to 'edit' the testimony? We see Riker, Dr. and Mrs. Apgar leave the main room, then we see them drinking in another room, then Krag freezes the program and asks Riker if he contends that Mrs. Apgar invited Riker and LaForge to stay on the station, then when the program is restarted the wall behind the table and chairs changes, then we see Riker and Mrs. Apgar in the guest room. Presumably if we were sitting at the table in the Holodeck watching the recreation, we would see Riker and the Apgar's walking down the hall and the pouring of the drinks, then Mrs. Apgar leading Riker to the guest room, all the boring and repetitive stuff that gets edited out of a TV show, but that Picard and the rest would have to watch to make a fully informed decision or to point out any error that the Holodeck may have made. However, when we the viewers see the wall behind Picard and the rest suddenly change, it implies that the Holodeck did not recreate Mrs. Apgar leading Riker to the room and whatever small talk they may have had. So were all the edits done by the Holodeck or just a few?

On a possibly related note, when Picard is piecing together the testimony of the different people, Picard says something like, 'Tayna, deposition 4.' Why would the computer break up the individuals' testimony into numbered sections, instead of just under their names? Picard does mention the time frame to replay, so numbering the sections seems redundant.

Most of the time they show the Enterprise orbiting the planet it looks like the same features pass below. Are those features supposed to be land or thick clouds?

The last shot of the Enterprise and planet indicates that the planet is suddenly revolving backwards. Watch the dark features on the horizon, to see it.

In the NextGen Guide II, Phil had trouble believing that the recreated equipment could turn the lambda energy into Krieger waves, because Data stated that there was an 8.7% margin of error. First of all the station and equipment was based on blueprints, not testimony. Secondly, the margin of error probably refers to the accuracy of the dialogue and personalities of the people in the recreation, not the technical specifications.

In one of the guides Phil wondered why the table and chairs did not disappear when the Holodeck shut down. Possibly since Picard figured that the simulation was focusing the waves, it was a good bet that the Holodeck might shut down, so he probably had real chairs brought in before the last test.

So was the model a crew member who agreed to pose nude or is 'Nude Artist's Model' a genuine position on a Starship?

That sounds like a fun job, "Join Starfleet and see the galaxey, if you don't have any technical skills all that is required is a lack of body shame."

But all kidding aside it was of course just a crew memeber doing it in her spair time, just like the "artists" who were painting in their spair time.

Lieutenant Helms: Ensign Godiva, what the hell are you doing naked?

Ensign Godiva: Look Lieutenant, I've told you before that I like to model for artists and holophotographers. I told you that when I was first posted on the Enterprise. There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudity, nor do I personally feel that there's anything inherently sexual with it. I like my body, and I'm proud of it. I worked hard to get into shape, and I'm honored if an artist or holophotographer wants to immortilize me in his work. If you're too insecure to deal with this, then I suggest you don't come around when I'm posing for art classes.

Lieutenant Helms: What "art class?" We're in engineering, and you're degauzing the warp core chamber!

Lt. Clinton: "Ensign Godiva would you like to go for a drink when our shift is over; Wonder if Guinen is fine with the whole nudity thing in 10 Forward?"

In Taynas testimony she states that Dr Apgar told her about beating up Riker. Why didn't they have Beverly examine Riker. She should be able to find evidence about it,if it were true (bruises, abraisons etc).

In the same manner about Maunas testimony. Beverly should find bruishes on Rikers knuckles. If she couldn't find anything, both Tayna's and Mauna's testimony could be refuted.

Mauna either have very poor memory or is such a cabable liar that she can fool even Troi. It is possible that people can disagree about bodylanguage, intonation of words etc., but how can they disagree about concrete physical actions: who closed the doors, who beat up who etc., if they are both convinced that they speak the truth?

Watched this one last night for the first time.

Pretty entertaining. It's pretty ovious Riker would be innocence, but it was fun to watch.

The teaser was very amusing. Very cute were Data starts talking about Picard's painting and then starting explaining everything 'wrong' with it.

The teaser also opens an interesting question, is the model is a real crew member? And if so (and she seemed to be, in my opinion), wouldn't the holodeck or a room with holographic equipment be a better place to work? Seems to me that a holograhpic model would be preferable since they wouldn't necessarily have to breath or move, or do anything of the things that models do and could hold miserably uncomfortable poses indefinately. Then again, maybe 24th century art is a purist activity that necessates a real model and doing things the old fashioned way. Then again it's go to know that in the 24th century I don't have to worry about being replaced my a machine.

Also the art studio bared (excuse the pun) more than a passing reslemance to the observation lounge.

Dr. Apgar should have been an obstetrician.

NANJAN: If >I< were in the art class that PIcard was in..I'd ask Troi to be my model.

Hey, waitaminute...they never figured out if that woman tried to disrobe herself in front of Riker or he tried to rape her...if Riker didn't kill the scientist (which they proved he didn't)..he still should have been on trial if he actually did rape her or not...or isn't rape considered a crime anymore?

he still should have been on trial if he actually did rape her or not...or isn't rape considered a crime anymore?

Only if she chooses to press charges. Good luck getting a case against someone if the victim doesn’t want to press charges. Also even if he did get tried for that it would only be attempted-rape since all she even says he did was kiss her and pull at her cloths (not a civilized thing to do to a woman who is unwilling but not even close to forcing her to have sex with you.) Picture trying to build a case against someone for attempted assault (“he swung at me like he was going to hit me but someone walked in the door and he didn‘t complete to punch”)

JUST FOR FUN:

Other names for the model.

Ensign Noclothes

Ensign Nudia

Ensign Streaker (or Ensign Streak)

Ensign El-Natural

Ensign Exposer

Miss Inga Wardrobe

Ensign Oliver Clothesoff ?

"It's disgustin'. Some of 'em don't even have paint on their brushes!"

Rear Admiral Donald Wheresyatroosers?

Ensign Les Seymour?

Ensign Lia Atmee?

I watched this last night and spotted something right at the end...maybe it's not a nit, maybe it's just me.

Picard says to Riker that he is to have the 'pleasure' of taking the ship away from the planet and Riker answers something like 'With pleasure'. Isn't it that Riker should have the 'honour'of taking the ship out and then his answer makes more sense (rather than being just bad writing)?

Just a thought.

_{Alice :...Isn't it that Riker should have the 'honour'of taking the ship out and then his answer makes more sense (rather than being just bad writing)?}

IIRC, my interpretation is that it's a pleasure to leave the planet, since Riker had such an unpleasant experience while he was there, he can't wait to leave. It's not an honor Picard is bestowing on to Riker it's more like a favor in that Picard is saying "I know you want to get out of here, so why don't you give the word".

I believe Alice means the conversation should have been like this :

Picard : "Commander Riker, will you have the hnor of taking us out of this system?"

Riker : "With pleasure, sir."

The way the scene is written, Riker's mention of "pleasure" is redundant.

Yeah, that's it, Rene.

Sorry not to have explained it better. I thought it might have been an acting mistake, you know, getting the words mixed up.

John A. Lang: JUST FOR FUN: Other names for the model...
Luigi Novi: Lieutenant Godiva?

Ensign Clinton?

The whole phasers 'n' Annular Confinement Beam thing is a mess. In this episode no-one is sure whether Riker fired a phaser from within the ACB or Dr. Apgar fired a phaser at Riker which then rebounded off the ACB (until the end). Several points:

(1) How can Riker fire a phaser while he is being taken apart molecule by molecule? This seems extremely unlikely.

(2) Shouldn't Geordi and Data know from over a century of studies of transporting whether a phaser beam would bounce off an ACB or not?

(3) And finally, every other time we see this sort of situation (memorably "Hope and Fear" and "Broken Bow") the energy beams pass through a transporting individual rather than bouncing off the ACB. Unless Apgar had a special sort of weapon, this must be a nit.

Actually, that would make sense, because Riker's phaser beam passed through the ACB (well, potentially could have done, or they wouldn't have considered that scenario) - albeit from the inside out. So maybe phasers pass through ACBs but Apgar's weapon bounces off them.

Gina Hecht (Mrs. Apgar) was Jean on "Mork and Mindy," but I remember her as NBC executive Dana that (sadly) pulled the plug on Jerry's sitcom on "Seinfeld."

Having seen the nit about why Riker was never investigated for attempting to rape Manua makes me think of how paper thin the testimony is from one scenario to another.

Assuming that Tayna was telling the truth, then Apgar claimed that Manua and Riker were making out when he walked in on them, which obviously contradicts the idea that a rape nearly occurred.

Based on that, I'm surprised that Manua's testimony about Riker wasn't stricken.

Where was it said that the model in the beginning was a real person? I had thought that maybe it was a hologram(Not that she couldn't have been real, but I don't think they said one way or the other.)

Current Summary - Riker is accused of murdering a scientist's wife.
No, just the scientist. The wife is one of the witnesses.

One of the differences between Riker's and Manua's testimony is that in Riker's they had made arrangements to stay on the surface, and in Manua's they had expected the science station to put them up. I would think that they could get the people they had made arrangements with to say that they had, and this inconsistency would've thrown manua's whole testimony into question.

I'm not sure about the testimony of the whole holographically recreated testimony thing. It would seem like the holodeck would need to add a lot of detail that was not present in the original testimony, and those watching would have no way of knowing what was in the original testimony and what was added in for completeness. For example, Tayna's holographic recreation of what happened had Riker saying, "You're a dead man Apgar, a dead man," while all her original testimony may have been was, "Dr. Apgar told me Riker had threatened him." After all, Tayna's testimony was based on what Apgar had told her, and he probably wasn't thinking of having to make a holographic reproduction of it when he described it.

The whole "trial" of Riker on the holodeck is an extradition hearing. Picard is deciding if there is enough evidence to warrant handing Riker over to the authorities on Tanuga IV. Therefore, until Picard grants them extradition, Riker is protected by Federation law (even though he's a citizen of Earth and undoubtedly has protections under either Earth or US law, he's on a starship and that would most likely make it a Federation matter).

Now, here's the issue: at one point, Krag attempts to present hearsay as evidence. Picard claims that this evidence is hearsay, and as such is not admissible according to Federation rules of evidence. Krag replies that it is admissible under Tanugan law. Picard lets him proceed! Why? He's not bound by Tanugan law. The extradition hearing should be conducted according to Federation law, and thus the deposition of Dr. Apgar's assistant should never have been admitted.

Jcroteau: One of the differences between Riker's and Manua's testimony is that in Riker's they had made arrangements to stay on the surface, and in Manua's they had expected the science station to put them up. I would think that they could get the people they had made arrangements with to say that they had, and this inconsistency would've thrown manua's whole testimony into question.
I thought of this, too, Joel. The thing is, I think that Manua (and Krag) would argue that Riker made his request on the spot. They would stipulate to the fact that he and Geordi had made prior arrangements but that Riker decided to make a last-minute change in order to spend more time around Mrs. Apgar.

Jcroteau: I'm not sure about the testimony of the whole holographically recreated testimony thing. It would seem like the holodeck would need to add a lot of detail that was not present in the original testimony, and those watching would have no way of knowing what was in the original testimony and what was added in for completeness.
I agree with this 100%. A perfect example occurs when Picard presents his case (btw, isn't it a little odd that the judge in the case presents evidence to the complainant?), showing how Dr. Apgar blew up his station. Riker taps his commbadge and says, "I'm ready to leave now." The simulation shows Dr. Apgar working on a panel. Picard freezes the simulation and asks Tayna to tell the court what Dr. Apgar is doing. She says that Dr. Apgar is activating the lambda field generator on the planet below, a crucial piece of evidence that leads to Krag withdrawing his request for extradition.

Wait a minute! On what basis has the simulation shown this event? The whole time that Apgar is working on his panel, Riker is facing away from him, waiting for beam-out. So it couldn't be on Riker's testimony that the holodeck shows Dr. Apgar doing this. But no one else is in the room! So how can this simulation be regarded as accurate? What's more, even if Riker did watch Dr. Apgar fiddle with his console, did Riker understand what he was doing? Did he memorize the keystrokes and repeat them back in his deposition? If not, on what basis does the computer represent Dr. Apgar as entering the sequence of keys that turns on the lambda field generator?

I thought that they were using some kind of sensor logs or recording system in the lab that they used to program the holodeck simulation.

If they had those, they wouldn't need witnesses.

I met Mark Margolis tonight.

I was recruiting at the Angelika Theater for a movie with F. Murray Abraham, and as he came down the theater’s front steps, he overheard me, and came by, and said something to the effect of “Murray is in this?”, mentioning that he worked with Abraham in Scarface (though it’s been a while since I saw that fillm, and don’t remember either one of them in it). As he read the concept card taped to the folder I was holding with the invitations in it, I asked if he was Mark Margolis, and he was surprised, saying that I was the first person who ever recognized him by name. I explained to him that I’m good with faces of celebrities, even bit part or character actors, because I’ve collected photographs of them for many years, and that I’m a Trekkie who knows him from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “A Matter of Perspective”, and that I also knew him from his other roles, like that of Clint Eastwood’s game-taping friend in Absolute Power, etc. I mentioned to him that that Trek episode was my introduction to the Rashomon story structure, and that in addition to seeing it used in Courage Under Fire and an episode of A Different World, I had rented the original because of it.

He offered the anecdote that Roddenberry was a “p***k” (his words, not mine), and that he was very cold and distant on the set. Not taking sides in such issues, I just said that yeah, there are a lot of stories about him. I was able to name his character by memory, Dr. Apgar, and he himself was able to offer the detail that he was a pioneer in Krieger Wave Theory, and I laughed that he remembered such detail. He also said that he had wishes he had kept the forehead makeup appliances that they had made for him, given what some similar trivial bits of Trek production artifacts have fetched on ebay. I mentioned that story about a glass that John DeLancie drank from while sick at a convention being auctioned off as “the Q virus”, but Margolis dismissed the notion that his appliances would fetch anywhere near the amount, given that DeLancie was a “regular” character.

"Riker taps his commbadge and says, "I'm ready to leave now." The simulation shows Dr. Apgar working on a panel. Picard freezes the simulation and asks Tayna to tell the court what Dr. Apgar is doing. She says that Dr. Apgar is activating the lambda field generator on the planet below, a crucial piece of evidence that leads to Krag withdrawing his request for extradition."

While I believe you make a good point, I believe that happened after Tayna and Apgar had their little discussion about talking to the authorities and Apgar insisting he'll handle it, not when Riker was bout to beam out.

This ep seems like one of those were having Troi creates an obvious nit. People do remember things differently but only to a point. If they were really fooling around perhaps they both remember the other one being the instigator as neither realized that how much they were subconsciously flirting with the other. But either SHE closed the door and tried to throw herself at Riker while he resisted or HE closed the door and put his hands on her while she tried to get away. That's not simply A Matter of Perspective. PUN INTENDED A married woman might feel guilty or embarrassed enough to lie about throwing herself at another man, but she would dang well know in her own head if she threw herself at him or if he tried to rape her. Same with Riker.

The only thing that I can think of is that in Riker's version Dr. Apgar hit her when he walked in on them. If he is abusive and she stays with him perhaps she's not exactly right in the head and is subject to paranoid delusions.

One nice touch I do like is that in the version Apgar's assistant gives (the one that's solely based on what Apgar told her) Apgar beats up Riker. Everyone is a legend in their own mind and everyone wins the fights when the retell the story.

They never did find out what REALLY happened in the guest quarters...did they?

I am prone to believe Apgar's Assistant when it comes to who was flirting with who. In Riker's Take it was Apgar's wife that was throwing herself at him while he was shying away and acting more like Wesley then himself. in Manua's recital it was Riker who was all but raping her... clearly out of character for Riker. But Tayna's recount shows both of them equally lusting over each other. I can believe this, while Riker is not the sort to force himself on someone he sure has never turned down the advances of a woman.

In response to your last post about Riker and Mrs. Apgar, Don, I agree that he would reciprocate if a woman would show interest in him romantically, as he did with Brianna O'Dell in "Up The Long Ladder", but as for the part about threatening Apgar's life after being knocked to the floor? Those two things happening do not seem very likely to me.

As for Apgar hitting his wife when he finds her with Riker, that might be possible, as unfortunate as it seems. After all, he is very frustrated about his Krieger wave technology working properly so he can sell it to various races as a weapons system. He has a lot on his mind to begin with, and now his wife is coming on to Riker when he arrives with Geordi. That is pretty stressful stuff to deal with, I think!

NANJAO: The image of Picard and Riker with their hands covering their faces is a popular usage of the "DOUBLE FACEPALM" image on the Internets.

It can also possibly indicate a "FAIL"!