"Missing scenes from Season Four" discussion

[panyasan]

Good points, Asso. I always felt T'Pol was closer to her father than to her mother and that his death made them even grow further apart.

Home is a good episode from a dramatic point of view (it offers great drama), but not everything is worked out and leaves us with more questions. It's a pity we don't see more about the motives behind the actions of T'Les, Koss and his family.

As for angst - I became depressed later on in season four, because there seemed to be angst without reason. With Home I can live, because it's a situation brought upon our heroes, but the "I push you away"-angst (which puts the blame on T'Pol) in later episodes I had a hard time dealing with. Luckily, this story provides another solution for the reason why TnT acted like they did in season four.

[Kotik]

I was hoping someone would jump in and tell Kotik I don't hate men. Oh well. You supply a little dark poetic justice to just ONE Tellarite dude and your reputation is ruined forever...

And I thought you'd know a little joke when you see it
I never said that you hate men, but you tend to be a bit harsh on the male of the species at times, like Trip being a jerk later on in your missing scenes or him being an utter doormat, begging to be humiliated by T'Pol in the 'Commander Tucker...' series. I wasn't even referring to the 'dark poetic justice', because I never read that. The sort of unmistakable reviews you harvested for it on ff made sure that I never read it.

Don't take my dribble too serious. It's all just my opinion and that tends to be mucho different from the majority's

[Cogito]

You supply a little dark poetic justice to just ONE Tellarite dude and your reputation is ruined forever...

[Weeble]

I still maintain that all of us are guilty of trying to squeeze the activities of T'Les into some human equation. Vulcans are a different species and culture. Perhaps the reason she was trying to protect T'Pol was because T'Pol's life was threatened? Maybe her losing her position was to give her a warning that the High Command was serious that she had better get her wayward daughter under family control. We don't know. I think T'Les was desperate and playing every card she still had. What mom wouldn't. I know i am as well applying human mom characteristics. I do think most societies of sentient beings would share protection of offspring as an ideal.

SB future chappies are in the pipeline. Cogito is improving my writing skills (i am all the way to Neaderthal) but he still is forced to fix tons of stuff. Plus he is working his tail off in the real world, while I am retired. Which reminds me; it's time to go fishing.

Weeble
aka Steelchaser

[Silverbullet]

T'Les didn't seem to know her daughter. She seemed to look on T'Pol as still the child that had to be taken in a firm hand and led or driven.

T'Pol was an experienced former agent who had been assigned to track and possibly kill renegades. This was a grown woman who had made life and death decisions in her career.

T'Les, didn' take in to account that T'Pol might have known what she was doing with Trip. She didn't seem to care. Her object was to help Koss blackmail T'Pol in to a marriage.

I guess Home led in to the Forge Arc in someway. Because T'Pol galloped off to look for mother in the forge. Super Archer invited himself along.

I wish they had shown that kiss in the Garden between T'Pol andTrip. It might have cleared some tings up. Who knows.

I have two black marks against me: I dislike Mother and Archer.

SB

[Asso]

Good points, Asso. I always felt T'Pol was closer to her father than to her mother and that his death made them even grow further apart.

Home is a good episode from a dramatic point of view (it offers great drama), but not everything is worked out and leaves us with more questions. It's a pity we don't see more about the motives behind the actions of T'Les, Koss and his family.

As for angst - I became depressed later on in season four, because there seemed to be angst without reason. With Home I can live, because it's a situation brought upon our heroes, but the "I push you away"-angst (which puts the blame on T'Pol) in later episodes I had a hard time dealing with. Luckily, this story provides another solution for the reason why TnT acted like they did in season four.

In many respects, I agree. Indeed 'Home' has, if nothing else, some logic, but in subsequent episodes, really all logic seems to be lost, and the game is reduced to what, you all know, I call gratuitous angst.

But, please, listen to me. 'Home' has the capacity to make me coldly furious, which is very serious.
What do I mean? Well, in the later episodes I have restricted myself to shrug and say to myself: okay, I get the hint. By now what remains of Enterprise is only the story between Trip and T'Pol (not a lot of ideas from Authors, do not you think?), so they must make it interesting. So ... and go with the gratuitous angst!
What a bore! But, frankly, I could understand this: when there are no ideas...

But... oh yes... the key to everything, the crossing point, the point of no return, is - to think of it - just 'Home', and that's why, when I think of a cool head about that episode, I am taken by a cold fury.

'Home' was, with hindsight, a total wastefulness, in reality, at least in my opinion: with this episode, the authors have put themselves - knowingly and with force - on the road that they then followed with stubborn obstinacy almost until to the end, saving themselves only in grace of the pale glimmer of 'Bound', but plummeting inexorably into the darkest darkness with 'Abomination'(you know, that 'thing' that has never existed, that thing where they have almost succeeded in ruining Trip, T'Pol, the whole series of Enterprise, and even 'The Next Generation '. Not bad for an unspeakable and unbelievable 'Abomination', do not you think? )

Everything was ready, my friends, everything. The war against the Xindi had ended. Trip and T'Pol ... but come on, guys, but why should she have brought Trip to Vulcan with her, if not to sanctify, in the full light of her home planet, their clear and obvious union?

But here it emerges from the shadows of the past Koss, a guy whom T'Pol had long ago dismissed without much thought.

And everything falls into the angst.

Now, my friends, the angst in a love story can also be attractive, but ...
Please take my words with a light heart ... but it is much easier to make a story more attractive by means of angst than to do so that the story can be pretty even devoid of angst.
Easier and more “profitable”, without having to strain too your brain.

But think about what could have been 'Home' (and everything that might follow) and that haven't been.

A pair of stellar lovers, who, just in the world of the more rigid traditions, Vulcan, is revealed and fights (yes, fight, my friends, also the fight there would have been, to the delight of those who love the struggle) to get what they know and they want: to be together, as it should be.
With the blessing of mother T'Less.

And think of how many funny situations there could have been, in such a comedy, which, however, if done well, could also offer much drama, to everyone's satisfaction..

But, I repeat, it seems that angst is destined to conquer the hands of the writers and the hearts of the audience. (Me too, I am not immune, even if I have some justifications, because I attempt to fix things on the basis of an anguishing canon).

Evidently, I am a poor and deluded idealist, when I think that Shakespeare was great both when he wrote his tragedies and when he wrote comedies. And comedy can also be tragic, in the hands of a great author, as well as tragedy may have the tone of comedy.

And the happy ending must not necessarily seen as too easy and commonplace.

I would add just one last thing, if I am allowed.

I only have one major niggle with your rendition of "Home" and that's having Trip being ordered to attend the wedding. I think that diminishes the cojones he showed by staying, instead of running away to pity himself.

I can not but be in complete agreement.

A man must - MUST! - think about the good of his beloved, even in extreme situations.
Only then, he's a man.
But if he does so only because he is told, he is not a man. He is a puppet, a dummy, that a woman cannot (I am tempted to say, mustn't) love.
Maybe I'm a bit rough, I admit, however, in this respect I don't succeed in being softer.

For me, the reasons that led Trip to stay to watch the marriage (puah!) of T'Pol with Koss, were very different.
Do you want to know them? Okay, so if you have not already done so, please read here.

Honeymoon Evening, by me.

Hey, mind you! Without invading the field of Alelou!

[Silverbullet]

Why many things.

Why did T'Pol take him to Vulcan? That is a long journey, 16 light years. To meet Mother? Perhaps. but as T'Pol once said, Meeting mother was a prelude to a marriage.

In alelou's story they are lovers. (apparently in the real episode they should have been but for the deletion of that kissing scene in the garden) Mated and bonded. By that time if T'Pol was aware of being mated she could have looked it up in the Vulcan data base when they were on Vulcan. Maybe while Trip was fixing one of Mothers appliances. She would find out about the belief of bonding. She is not stupid, she would see that there was something much like that between herself and Trip.

She had rejected Koss, told Mother that she didn't want Koss or anything to do with him.

Mother did her best to make T'Pol feel guilty about P'Jem. But T'Pol knew it was Archer who was responsible for that. She knew that she ws innocent, that the High Comand knew a commander had the ultimate responsibility for such things.

Why didn't t'Pol fight harder for their love. Was it so meaningless to her. Was she so weak.

She had made the leap of abandoning her traditions and customs by becoming the lover of a human. Mated with him willingly. That far only to pull back, cave in and lose him.

T'Les was selfish, and badly used her daughter with no remorse. I have doubted for some time the srtatement she made when dying that she loved T'Pol. I think it was an attempt to make T'Pol stay married to Koss no matter what because Mother wanted it and Mother loved her.

I wish home had never been broadcast.

SB

[Alelou]

While I wish "Home" had been the three-parter and spared us the tedium of As The Augments Turn.

[Asso]

While I wish "Home" had been the three-parter and spared us the tedium of As The Augments Turn.

Well, for that matter, I can only share your boredom, Alelou.

[Silverbullet]

Alelou, at least you did spare us some of it. Never cared for Borderlands. Your version was much better. May we look forward to other, more entertaining, Augments Arc that is Trip and T'Pol,

I guess we have wrung out Home.

SB

[panyasan]

Like Cogito remarked, the response of Trip isn't what we would except of him. You can call it disappointing, you can say that T'Pol deserve better - I agree - but it's so different than what we mostly read about him in most fan fic stories - I think it's a very good idea.

What I do wonder is that it seemed that Trip is taking the marriage more serious than T'Pol. It looks like she is trying to convince everyone - including Trip - this is a marriage of convenience and not her choosing. Trip on the other hand is taking the marriage as everybody takes a marriage: serious. He even rebukes T'Pol that the way she talks about the marriage isn't nice for Koss. It seems a bit over the top, but I think most of his response is rooted in the fact that he only realized what T'Pol meant for him when it was too late. He also feels rejected because he asked T'Pol to marry him and she still married Koss. The fact that his proposal wasn't really heartfelt - it came across like he felt forced to ask her - doesn't seem to register with him.

[Cogito]

I agree with most of that; it does seem that Trip is taking her marriage a lot more seriously than T'Pol. But I didn't feel that Trip's belated proposal to T'Pol was forced by circumstances. To me it seemed clear that both of them knew that was what they wanted and he was saying: I'm the one you should be marrying. If we married now, would that get you out of the situation with T'Les? And the answer seems to be that only a marriage with Koss will do that. The needs of the many dictate that she has to marry Koss, regardless of the cost for both of them. I don't know what a marriage to Koss really means to T'Pol. I've never thought of Vulcans as condoning divorces and I would expect a marriage to be for life. But I do wonder whether T'Pol has made that life-long commitment yet just by taking part in the ceremony. I find it comforting to think that perhaps the marriage isn't complete until it has been consummated by forming a bond, by Ponn Far, or whatever. And that clearly hasn't happened yet. Koss's reaction later when he releases her from her marriage supports the idea that it's not complete yet. (Koss' father suggested the same.) Trip is the only one who doesn't seem to get that, even when T'Pol has flat-out told him.

[Silverbullet]

Trip doesn't really understand Vulcans all that well. For him a marriage should be for life. Should, not necessarily (sP) will be. He probably belives that Vulcan marriages are for life.

Trip also probably does not understand T'Les. How she can use T'Pol regardless of the consequences to T'Pol. T'les has been retired for some months when TnT arrive on Vulcan. It isn't as if she could not find outher outlets for herself.

Neither Trip or T'Pol knows about the plan for T'Les to go in to the forge. I think had they known that T'Pol would not have married Koss. Mother witheld a lot of valuable information from T'Pol

Trip may be dazed too. His world has been shattered.He arrived on Vulcan expecting somethinng different. He had a right to expect that. Instead when it came to a choice T'Pol fell back on Vulcan traditions. Even though they had done othing for her in the past.

SB

[Alelou]

Trip may have had every intention of being a supportive friend, but sitting through the wedding of the love of your life after you thought you were being taken home to meet the parents has got to have an effect on a guy, even if it's a little delayed. And we've seen him respond to pain by lashing out -- note poor Malcolm in "The Expanse."

I do not assume that T'Les knew she was going into the Forge. However, if she did, you could still argue that she was trying to protect T'Pol from those actions by marrying her off into a well-connected family. After all, the current administration is apparently quite willing to punish people for their relatives' transgressions.

[Silverbullet]

If T'les knew she was headed in to the forge (and I believe she did) then she shoulld have told TnT. told Trip to get T'Pol off Vulcan until things worked themselbes out. That T'Pol would get it from the administration in retaliation for what T'Les has done. T'Les says that not even daddy can help because he won't risk his neck or his son's. No reason for T'Pol to marry Koss, Trip gets her off Vulcan, proposes again, T'Pol says yes and they are married in a secret Human ceremony. Later a Vulcan one in the Vulcan Embassy compound.

SB