Justice for Doctor Nel Apgar

Discussion in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' started by amp, Sep 8, 2020.

  1. amp

    amp Commander Red Shirt

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    On stardate 43610.4, the research station orbiting Tanuga IV exploded, killing one of the galaxy’s finest scientists, Dr. Nel Apgar. The available evidence showed that Commander William T. Riker, the first officer of the Federation starship Enterprise, caused the explosion by firing a phaser at the station’s reactor core while transporting out. Yet the Federation used a virtual reality environment called a holodeck to cast doubt on this evidence. Instead, the Federation would have you believe that it was Dr. Apgar who attempted to kill Riker. They claimed that Dr. Apgar fired a Krieger wave at Riker hoping to kill him and make it look like a transporter accident but instead the wave rebounded off the transporter beam and hit the reactor.

    Here are the real facts:
    • Commander William Riker is a notorious Lothario who is infamous throughout Starfleet for his irresponsible and unscrupulous sexual appetite.
    • All accounts agree that the night before the explosion, the two men had a physical altercation over Riker’s behavior with the doctor’s wife, Manua Apgar.
    • Mrs. Apgar testified that Riker assaulted her. No evidence was ever brought forth that she lied in her account and there is no reason at all to doubt her claim. In fact, the counselor of the Enterprise, who is an empath, admitted that she could not sense any deception from Mrs. Apgar.
    • The holodeck simulation that recreated the crime was done aboard the Enterprise. Tanuga IV apparently does not have similar technology since they couldn’t run the simulation on the planet. Therefore, the Tanugans were unable to independently verify the recreation and had to take Starfleet’s findings at face value.
    • The crime recreation was set up by Enterprise personnel only with no participation from the Tanugans. Not only that, but the crew members who set up the simulation all reported directly to Riker in his role of first officer. Of course it was is in their interest to exonerate their superior.
    • The judge at the extradition hearing was the captain of the Enterprise and Riker’s commanding officer. This captain clearly had an interest in getting his first officer off the hook.
    • Sitting right next to the captain during the hearing was the Enterprise counselor. This counselor was the ex-girlfriend of Riker and the two continued to maintain a close and intimate relationship. In fact the two would later get back together and marry. Yet this relationship was never disclosed to the Tanugans. The Tanugans were also never told about the counselor’s empathic abilities and her exoneration of Mrs. Apgar.
    • The theory posited by the Federation makes no sense. Their simulation states that several hours prior to the explosion Dr. Apgar activated a planet-side generator which emits energy charges every five hours, twenty minutes and three seconds. The station then turns the charges into Krieger waves. So for Dr. Apgar’s alleged plan to work, he had to know that RIker would transport off the station exactly five hours, twenty minutes and three seconds after the generator was switched on. Split-second timing was required otherwise Riker’s death would not seem like a transporter accident. Riker’s own testimony shows that the two men argued at some length before Riker suddenly signaled for his beam out. The exact moment he would leave was unknowable by Dr. Apgar.
    • One last point: Dr. Apgar had devoted years to researching Krieger waves. Wouldn’t he know that they would boomerang off a transporter beam? Yet the Federation theory of the crime relies on an eminent scientist being ignorant of basic physics.
    We must not allow powerful organizations like the Federation to corrupt justice and protect their own people at the expense of the rest of us. Not only did they cover up Dr. Apgar’s murder and allow his killer to go free, they also destroyed the legacy of a great man by accusing him of attempted murder. Not to mention the Federation also used innuendo to besmirch the reputation of Dr. Apgar’s wife, a virtuous lady who’s only offense was to catch the eye of a dangerous and obsessive lech.

    I ask you only to look at the facts and judge for yourself.
     
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  2. Tosk

    Tosk Admiral Admiral

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    The generator had been firing every five hours twenty minutes and three seconds because it was left on and it fires automatically when it is fully charged. There is nothing to suggest that it cannot be fired manually at any point before that.
     
  3. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    Good to know Fox News has persisted to the 24th century.

    Anyway if Apgar wanted his revenge he'd just hit his bell and blow Riker up.
     
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  4. amp

    amp Commander Red Shirt

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    Hmm, that's not what we see during the simulation on board the Enterprise. They explicitly wait until the generator has fully recharged to recreate the explosion. If they could have run it manually before then, why wait for the full 5:20:03 interval?
     
  5. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Whut?
     
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  6. Mutai Sho-Rin

    Mutai Sho-Rin Crusty Old Bastard Moderator

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    I think the OP’s presentation is extreme but I’ll leave it here for others to comment.
     
  7. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    I imagine if Apgar's people felt they were being mislead or strongarmed during the events of the episode, they would've filed a formal complaint with the Federation Council and brought Riker back for trial.
     
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  8. Herbert

    Herbert Commodore Commodore

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    I wish I had enough free time on my hands to construct the batshit crazy speculations, reimaginings, and theories that many people here occupy their time with.
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2020
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  9. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    Their justice system allows for second hand gossip to be used as evidence, and they agreed to use the holodeck to tell their sides. You can’t say the proceedings were unfair as the prosecutor had the opportunity to challenge them.

    If we’re looking solely from the perspective of Apgar’s people, maybe they’d be left with uncertainty what happened. We, as the audience, have knowledge they don’t. If you’re going to use the wife’s lack of deception you can’t ignore Troi would have sensed Riker’s deception too.

    Also when held in the light that Apgar definitely completed the wave generator, definitely lied about it, and had a clear financial motive where Riker’s entire supposed motive doesn’t work without also killing the wife, it’s hard to use the bias argument.

    About the altercation, Riker’s was clearly lying to himself that he was not equally participating in the flirtation. I do believe the wife that she was being friendly and Riker mistook it for interest. He committed a MeToo offense. So that actually should have had consequences for him. Just, he clearly did not commit murder.
     
  10. Tosk

    Tosk Admiral Admiral

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    I assume it's a cultural thing. Both parties recall honestly that they were not the one who were actively displaying sexual attraction...and perhaps they are both correct from their own perspective. (As with O'Brien and Gilora in "Destiny")
     
  11. amp

    amp Commander Red Shirt

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    Heh. Well I am retired, and we had some shitty weather yesterday so I was stuck indoors all day.


    I agree with this. I was rewatching this episode recently, and it was interesting to me how unconvincing the hearing would be to a third party. As viewers, we have goodwill towards the crew of the Enterprise and know that Riker would never murder anyone. Without that goodwill, the fact that the whole trial was managed by Starfleet and hinged on some technobabble would make the result rather confounding.

    If I lived on Tanuga, I would be an Apgar Truther.


    Well we know that Starfleet claims the convertor was completed. Of course it was blown up in the explosion, so there's no real proof. And I am puzzled by Troi's claim that the Federation wouldn't be interested in a weapon, but then again, they are the same folks who signed away their rights to develop cloaking technology.


    Even when I originally watched this episode back in the 90s, I was struck by the writers choosing to leave the interaction between Riker and the wife ambiguous, with Troi going so far as to say that Mrs. Apgar wasn't being deceptive. They could have easily let him off the hook by making her complicit in some fashion, but they didn't do so.
     
  12. Mojochi

    Mojochi Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Deceiving other people into thinking what you want them to think & deluding yourself that what you think is true are two entirely different experiences. She could easily & honestly think what she said was 100% true, & still be wrong or misguided
     
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  13. Tosk

    Tosk Admiral Admiral

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    One of my problems with the episode is that Riker claims that Manua asked for them to stay aboard the station, whereas Manua claims otherwise.

    La Forge was right there in the room during that conversation and could testify either way, but the episode never bothers to address it.
     
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  14. Oddish

    Oddish Admiral Admiral

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    Interesting... there's certainly some truth to the post. If I were a neutral third party, I expect I'd be suspicious about the proceedings after reading it.

    So question is, what to do with Riker... here are some ideas...
    1. Force him to vaporize his girlfriend.
    2. Brainwash his girlfriend so that she doesn't love him anymore.
    3. Lock him up in an alien asylum until he nearly goes nuts.
    4. Throw him in a really gross pit of black goo.
    5. Infect him with an alien parasite.
    6. Force him to relive his worst memories over and over again.
    7. Feed him to the Sarlacc... oh crap, wrong fandom. Sorry about that.
    8. Have him get pummeled by a xenophobic alien mob, then roughly interrogated by a fanatical security head.
    9. Trap him in an alien simulation based on a really bad novel.
    10. Not promote him for many years.

    Wait a minute...
     
  15. dupersuper

    dupersuper Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    We already knew that: did you miss Picard?
     
  16. Sarcastic Vulcan Salute

    Sarcastic Vulcan Salute Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    The simulation didn't include any evidence from Geordi because they didn't want to pay Levar for the extra scenes, er reasons.

    The point wasn't material as to how Apgar was killed. Plus, to the extent it mattered, there would be objective evidence of whether they had made arrangements to stay elsewhere (or failed to do so). Geordi and Riker would have had to make a reservation with StarBNB or whatever and presumably cancel it once they accepted the Apgar's hospitality, or there would be no such evidence.

    The holodeck recreation is kind of a cool conceit, but as a lawyer, it doesn't make sense. You couldn't really translate a person's deposition into a simulation like that, because people just couldn't possibly remember all the little details as to who was standing where, what exactly was said, what movements got made in what order.
     
  17. Tosk

    Tosk Admiral Admiral

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    Always good to have as much evidence as possible when trying to establish the truth.
     
  18. amp

    amp Commander Red Shirt

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    And they emphasized that the holodeck used the station's plans to create an exact reproduction of the Krieger Wave converter. Yet, just because the converter is working on the holodeck doesn't mean that it worked on the station. The plans may have been correct, but there may have been an error during construction. Perhaps the contractor used an A211-8C bolt instead of an A211-8D. With the station destroyed and no one alive who saw the convertor working, there's no way to say.
     
  19. JesterFace

    JesterFace Fleet Captain Commodore

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    Riker and pals had one big advantage on their side. It was their holodeck, their technology. The other side didn't have that tech or knew how to use it as well as Starfleet people.