Alelou wrote:I also like that theory because I hate to think T'Pol was just a calculating bitch when she dropped that robe in front of Tucker, and if that wasn't at least partly due to affection and lust it's hard to reach any other conclusion.
About that...
She certainly put up a lot of resistance to marrying Koss, didn't she? First, it was because it threw a wrench into her career goals. There was definitely a sense of "Hey, what about me???" there.
Later, her feelings for Trip seemed to just sort close the door on that deal forever...until they used her mother to get to her.
But aside from career goals...
Though T'Pol's emotions were always closer to the surface, she still always soldiered on like a good little Vulcan. For her time in her society, though, she definitely seemed more open to new things than her contemporaries--sneaking out to go listen to jazz, experimenting with mind melds with emotional Vulcans, going to the occasional movie, etc. Now, I'm looking at her time as relatively repressive and dark compared to Spock's, and in my mind I'm likening it to even less than half a century ago when our own American society was much more repressive about sex--the whole "good girls don't" thing and all that.
So T'Pol was probably raised with the Vulcan equivalent of "good girls don't", maybe bought into the whole only 7 years thing, or just anticipated it to be awful because she wasn't that thrilled with Koss in the first place. While I think her "experiment" with Trip came out of a sense of "WTF?? There's GOT to be something more/better than what I'm going to get at home!", I think it was only her feelings for Trip that made acting on it possible. It may have been a little calculating in that she saw he was getting close with Amanda and thought "Oh crap, if I don't do something now, I'll never get another chance," but she never would've considered it if she didn't care for him. I don't think she went into it intending to use him up and throw him away. I think it was more like the next morning she panicked, maybe frightened by the intensity of her feelings for him, or maybe finally thinking about all the consequences she'd said "f--- it!" to the night before, figuring it would hurt them both less if she tried to cut him loose now rather than later.
What I found interesting was T'Pol's rebellion against her mother in "Home," when T'Les was dogging her about her relationship with Trip, and how their children would live in shame if they could even have children together, etc. No matter how old you are or what planet you're from, your parents NEVER like your boyfriend!
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