Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we return to the "Best Of" series, which will now cover the main characters of the most recent Star Trek show, Enterprise. [FAITH OF THE HEART] We begin this week with Commander T'Pol.
https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp214
T'Pol develops feelings for Trip and eventually mates with him in the show, but it takes a long time for this romance to actually fire successfully. In one of T'Pol's best vulnerable moments in the Season 3 episode Similitude, she confesses her feelings to Sim, a mimetic symbiote which is about to die following a short two week life.
T'Pol: I just wanted to say, how much your absence will affect the crew....and how much it will affect me.
Sim: I appreciate that. All in all, I guess I've had a pretty good life.
The bond between Trip and T'Pol begins with much humor, as shown in the Season 1 episode Unexpected and this memorable moment:
Sub-Commander T'Pol: I've run a check through the Starfleet database. You might be pleased to know that this is the first recorded incident of a Human male becoming pregnant.
Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: Just how I always wanted to get into the history books.
Another great episode is the Season 2 Carbon Creek, where T'Pol recounts a story to Archer and Trip of her Vulcan grandmother, also played by Jolene Blalock, is stranded in 1950s America. It builds needed warmth between these top characters while also allowing T'Pol to show off her wit and dry sense of humor.
Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: [after the story] Do you realize you've just rewritten our history books?
Sub-Commander T'Pol: A footnote at best.
Commander Charles 'Trip' Tucker III: Footnote? This is like finding out Neil Armstrong wasn't the first man to walk on the moon!
Sub-Commander T'Pol: Perhaps he wasn't.
That same sense of humor comes out when Archer and Trip insist on having T'Pol join the crew for movie night and a scary movie marathon (in the episode Horizon). It gives us a chance as viewers to see how silly some of our thrills can be, when taken from an outsider's perspective, which is what T'Pol adds to the show.
Sub-Commander T'Pol: I don't understand why Humans would feel compelled to frighten themselves.
Captain Jonathan Archer: Gets the heart pumping.
Sub-Commander T'Pol: Cardiovascular activity would be more efficient.
Finally, the episode Stigma is another where the character of T'Pol is used in a brilliant way to explore in allegory form the issues facing Earth today. In this case, it is the unwarranted oppression and prosecution of a minority, in this case based on a disease, and T'Pol refuses to escape when she wants to make a point about how this is wrong.
Sub-Commander T'Pol: I have Pa'nar Syndrome. It doesn't make a difference how I contracted it.
Captain Jonathan Archer: It makes a lot of difference. You're not a member of this minority. He forced himself on you, you said it yourself.
Dr. Phlox: He's right, T'Pol, you should tell them.
Sub-Commander T'Pol: He is not right. If I used that as a defense as a way to keep from being taken off Enterprise, I'd be condoning their prejudice, and in the process indicting every member of the minority. I won't do that.
Much like the character of Spock, T'Pol is a crucial piece of character added to investigate outsider takes on human society as well as be a conduit for her own allegories. Jolene Blalock should definitely be commended as a bright spot in this Trek iteration. She can most recently be seen acting in the movies Killing Frisco and Sex Tape from 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment