Enterprise 0122 – Vox Sola

Originally posted to ScoopMe! on May 1, 2002

LEAD-IN

Vox Sola : Spider to the Redshirt

IQs are in conflict after a tendrilly creature captures Enterprise crew.

SYNOPSIS

Vox Sola

Original Airdate: May 1, 2002

Director: Roxann Dawson

Writer: Story By: Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Fred Dekker; Teleplay By: Fred Dekker

After a Kreetassan delegation leaves in a huff, a transparent squid-like creature sneaks into Enterprise. Hoshi blames herself for an inadequate translation performance, and T’Pol doesn’t dissuade her of that opinion. Hoshi reports that she hears a signal in some communication noise, but it isn’t pursued.

While most of the crew prepares for an evening’s diversion watching a movie or sports, the creature starts making mischief in a cargo bay. After snagging two redshirts, it also captures Archer and Trip (and yet another redshirt). After an unsuccessful rescue attempt, Phlox discovers that the creature is melding with the captured crew. T’Pol needs to find a way to rescue them quickly.

Mayweather talks to the Kreetassan captain, apologizes for their social gaff, and gets the coordinates for the creature’s home world. Using notes about a force field that Starfleet was developing, Malcolm succeeds. Hoshi teams with T’Pol to decipher the creature’s language — which is what Hoshi previously heard in the static. Protected by the force field, Hoshi communicates with the creature who releases its captives. Enterprise returns to the creature’s home world and releases it — no harm, no foul.

FADE OUT

ANALYSIS

Vox Sola

T’Pol for captain of Enterprise.

As I was gathering my thoughts for this week’s commentary, one thing rolled over and over in my mind. T’Pol is the only one of the Enterprise crew who seems to understand what it means to be in space. It’s a dangerous place where it’s often more important to look, consider, and then decided whether or not to leap. Not that she’s ideal. She has the Vulcan disposition of minimizing losses to such a science that she’d never venture into an unknown situation without some prodding. That neither makes for a good explorer or good television.

However, T’Pol is quite capable of following a mandate. If told to explore, to seek out new life and new civilizations, take reasonable risks, even if they might cost life or ship, and so forth… she’d do it. Give her a human crew who were good at their jobs and able to advise her on what constituted reasonable risks, then Enterprise would stand a good chance of surviving its tour of duty while gathering the information necessary to start the formation of the Federation of Planets.

In short, as a second-in-command science officer, she makes a good Captain.

Archer, on the other hand, is leaving a lot to be desired as an Enterprise Captain. When he first learned that there was an intruder on board and two of his redshirts were missing, what did he do? He rushed straight into danger. Kirk would have at least sounded red alert before rushing straight into danger. It’s only common courtesy to inform the rest of the crew that there’s a potentially dangerous uninvited guest on board, Don’t you think?

If you want to live in a harsh environment, and you don’t happen to be a Klingon with redundant anatomy, then you need to think your way out of situations as much as possible. Rushing in without knowing a good portion of the risks, and doing it time after time, week after week, doesn’t speak much about intelligence. Even the precocious Captain Kirk thought his way out of more problems than he did running in so that his tunic would tear (thus saving the day).

Mayweather was more impressive this week. With no other more senior bridge officers present, he calmly and very diplomatically calmed the previous faux pas with the Kreetassans, and got very valuable information. It was disappointing that Sato wasn’t present to learn that the misunderstanding wasn’t a miscommunication of linguistics, as she feared, but of culture.

Still, Hoshi had her moments. Hoshi was certain that the frequency distortions she heard were some form of communication. When it was later discovered that the creature was the source of the distortion, she had her opportunity. She heard it knocking, but allowed T’Pol to keep her from answering the door. In a battle of wills, Hoshi will usually lose to T’Pol. Hoshi is a follower, T’Pol is a leader. Even though she felt she deserved the chance to redeem herself from her perceived shortcomings with the Kreetassans, Sato didn’t press when T’Pol said, “No.”

This also exposed one of T’Pol’s weaknesses. Once she chooses a course of action, she is unwilling to waste resources to explore other alternatives until circumstances force the exploration on her. On the plus side, she wasn’t so proud that she couldn’t backtrack and have Hoshi start her translation efforts.

And this is when we finally got something approaching a science fiction story. The team of T’Pol and Sato, with the help of Malcolm hurriedly refining his force field, thought their way out of a nasty situation. No decision by committee (T’Pol is clearly in charge), no phase pistols a’blazin’, very little in the way of technobabble. They simply used all of the tools and information at their disposal (given the time constraint for saving their crewmates) and took a chance.

T’Pol demonstrated again that she’s a good leader. Sato was redeemed. Malcolm becomes the prototype for all Enterprise technophiles. And even the creature is shown in a good light.

Like an E.T. octopus, the creature just wanted to go home. Nothing very complicated. The great thing was that this was one of the best aliens yet for a Trek show. I’d put it on a level with the Horta from the Original Series’ “Devil in the Dark”. It wasn’t the bumpy-forehead, bad skin, alien of the week. This was a creature that was alien. It looked alien. It’s communication was alien. And, like the Horta, it wasn’t quite the malevolent being that it first appeared to be. As part of a single organism (echoing the Founders from DS9) that looked a lot like a Fantastic Voyage version of a brain, it was outside of Human (and presumably Vulcan) ken.

Thumbs up for T’Pol, Sato, and Mayweather for being all that they could be — and to the creature for being more than it seemed. Thumbs down for Archer and Trip for being little more than damsels in distress tied to train tracks. Thumbs neutral for Malcolm and Phlox for being little more than what they needed to be. Thumbs off for the redshirts that were so obviously redshirts (c’mon — it really shouldn’t be that obvious).

TIDBITS, IRKS and QUIRKS

• What is it about techies on any version of the Enterprise that makes them able to create devices from a few technical reports that Starfleet can’t make with a team of scientists?
• Did you see that look Hoshi gave T’Pol when the Vulcan tried to flatter the communications officer? Meow.
• While no redshirts were killed in this episode, they were severely slimed. Time to call Ghostbusters.
• Given the number of times other species scan a Starfleet vessel’s database, why the heck doesn’t Starfleet do so as well, when possible?
• Why was Mayweather the only officer at a command station on the bridge? With the captain and chief engineer captured by an indruder, the ship should be at general quarters — at the very least the secondary/night bridge crew should be at their stations.
• The woman redshirt in the web moans. Trip scans her and tells Archer she’s alive. Didn’t the moaning imply that? Dumb.

So what did y’all think? The Message Board hailing frequencies are open.