Synopsis: Commander Riker is accused of murdering a scientist in an explosion on a space station.
In “A Matter of Perspective” viewers are given several examples of how individuals project their shadow onto others. Projection in depth psychological terms is when one sees in another something that is coming up from one’s own unconscious and needs to be reckoned with. When it is one’s inner anima or animus, the imaginary ideal other opposite, or soul mate, it is how one falls in love at first sight. But when one is projecting one’s shadow onto another, it creates exactly the opposite. We reject in the other our own shadow that we have projected onto someone else. This is made possible in this episode by the holodeck, which takes the testimony from those involved and then creates an imagined recreation of a recalled event.
In the remembrance of Maura Apgar, the wife of the deceased Dr. Nel Apgar, Commander William Riker fairly forced himself upon her, after deep long looks at their meeting, projecting her attraction to him onto Riker. Dr. Apgar walks in on them, and a fight breaks out over her, Riker is the victor and threatens to have the project shut down. For his part though, Riker recalls Mrs. Apgar seducing him, projecting his desires onto her, so likely there was a mutual attraction of some sort. Riker then recalls Apgar threatening to kill him, again projecting his own negative feelings onto Apgar.
Tayna, the assistant to Dr. Apgar, is allowed to present what Dr. Apgar told her, that Riker was questioning his lack of progress, need for additional materials, and acted hostilely toward Apgar. As it turned out Dr. Apgar was in fact antagonistic towards Riker, as he was defrauding the Federation by using its resources and trying to weaponize the Krieger waves which he had already succeeded in creating, and he did not want that to be revealed. Tayna was reflecting Dr. Apgar’s projected hostilities onto Riker. She also was projecting her own need for Dr. Apgar to be infallible.
As it turns out, the reason for the explosion was that Dr. Apgar had tried to kill Riker with a Krieger wave while he was caught in the transporter beam back to the Enterprise, and the wave reflected off of the transporter field and projected onto itself causing the explosion. All in all, an explosive examination of the negative aspects of our projecting our inner shadow onto others.
Original post created 7 August 2021
mydailysoultrek 