For those hunting good spoilers, eager for every series bellwether, here's a bombshell. Having recently written T'Pol acting every which way and loose, the powers intend to push her mental reset button with a tiresome trick: she was on dope when she did it. Our impressive science officer degenerated into inexplicable emotionalism because she's been servicing a secret addiction. Not that I have anything against people enhancing their health with non-nutritional chemistry, but she wasn't thinking right before this twist, so turning her into a trellium tramp improves nothing. It merely compounds the original error of creating a frail character, like creating the physics of the expanse as ridiculous to begin with. Remember the anatomically inverted gruesomes?

Don't take this as picking on Jolene Blalock. Not at all. No "mounting pressures on the character" are at fault either. However many ways can be found to write her as weak, many others could alternately depict her as strong, surpassing her challenges. I simply detest this discouraging material flung at her. First came the mind rape ("Fusion") followed by another mind rape, repressed by a sinister Vulcan ritual ("The Seventh"). Then came her Pa'nar Syndrome, apparently still in remission ("Stigma") then lessee, those theta insensitive microbes thrusting her into blood fever ("Bounty"). Toss in another mind rape (this time from "Rajiin") and only now has the story arc proceeded to her trellium-D problems predicted for "Damage." (Got any nails handy?)

There are holes in just the idea anyway. Just how physiologically addicted can she be? Who dosed her during the four or so days she was under Phlox's coma in "Doctor's Orders?" Having experienced the effects on her fellow Vulcans ("Impulse"), is there any logic to her decision? Why not ask Phlox, since he's already surreptitiously dosing her for other ailments? (I'll take that back if he's known all along.) There's no logic because this is all spontaneous. The trellium, the anomalies- the entire Delphic Expanse for that matter- appear only as dramatic devices.

T'Pol is arguably Trek's most victimized character ever, no thanks to anybody for scripting her that way. I understand that popular science fiction is harder to write (or watch) than fantasy, but I simply cannot imagine the same treatment for Tuvok or Spock. The weak Vulcan female treatment, someone cast as a lush to satiate the production values, is so dramatically inferior to that of a strong Vulcan female that I can only conclude lazy incompetence. The alternative would be offensive sexism. Does that sound any more likely?


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