Did T'Pol NEED the Trellium D?

[WarpGirl]

Perhaps. But she still is a lousey liar and before that Trip seemed to know it.

[Alelou]

She is, and he does suspect it, but you should never expect men in real life or in fiction to be able to read minds.

Especially female minds. Human or otherwise.

[WarpGirl]

Who said I expected that? If anything men seem to expect us to read their minds. All I'm saying is Trip called her on bull before, for some reason he didn't then. Wouldn't that possibly give any Vulcan the impression that he was not interested in a perminent relationship. Also we don't know what happened during or right after they were done making love, but it couldn't have been something that opened Trip wide up. Because I'm sorry he was fine during her speech. I watched that scene enough to know that he wasn't completely devestated. He was more affected when she wanted to stop neuropressure.

[pdsldl]

At that point he may not have been or maybe didn't know that he was interested in a permanent relationship. And most men have sensitive egos when it comes to their sexual prowess so being rejected like that would have had an affect whether he showed it or not. Unless they're shy a man gets lots of practice at hiding his reactions to rejection every time he gets turned down for a date. Also by this point he was a believer in neuro-pressure and what it had done to help him and would have been fearful of his problems returning. And maybe he thought something with her would be better than nothing after months of such closeness and it would but him time to get even closer.

[WarpGirl]

Correct me if I am wrong but she never even hinted there was a problem with his sexual prowess, not that she would have known if there was. So he had no reason to be sensitive about it. Either way, I doubt that was what he preferred to hear, all I'm saying is, he was OK. After all this is a man who has had no-strings sex before. All I'm saying was he got his heart crushed later.

[pdsldl]

She rejected him as an experiment.

[Aquarius]

pdsldl--I'm completely with you here. Generally, if you get rejected *after* you've had sex with someone, it's human nature to assume there was something wrong with the sex, regardless of what comes out of the other person's mouth.

You can't really make assertions about what they should or shouldn't have done based on information they did not have. Both Trip and T'Pol suffered from misinformation, both from direct dishonesty from each other and from each filling in the blanks with their own incorrect assumptions. It's kind of hard to do what you "should've" done when what you think you know is wrong. That's also akin to expecting the other person to be a mind reader and decipher the truth despite all the misinformation.

[WarpGirl]

OK she never said experiment or lab rat. Where do people get those terms? I read the transcript many times it's not there. Besides what did he offer that she was rejecting? Nothing. He offered nothing. They didn't even let him get that part out. I'm sorry but people make way too big a deal about this whole perceived rejection in Harbinger. She rejected him plenty later, but Harbinger was not the end all and be all rejection people seems to think it was. Was Trip disappointed? Sure. He's a nice guy, he cares for her, he's attracted, but he was hardly putting his heart on the line. It was sex. Maybe not just sex, but it was mostly friendship, jealousy, and sex. He admits he didn't even realize he was in love until Home. I'm not trying to belittle anything, I just think it needs perspective. I think its way overblown.

[Asso]

Frankly I think the rejection scene was an inane scene that writers wrote in order to write something fun. And which didn't be fun.
My two cents worth.

[Aquarius]

It really isn't that hard. No, she didn't say "experiment," she said "exploration." People are using that term interchangeably because that's basically what she meant. Anyone who had sex with someone they really liked and thought liked them and got told later "it was just an exploration" would feel the same. Sexual exploration, sexual experimentation--same thing. Again with the semantics.

Second, though he never "offered" her anything, when he opened the discussion there were certain cues to what was on his mind. Yes, it was awkward and he felt nervous--hence his "you go first"--but he didn't look grave, angry, disappointed. Generally he seemed pretty positive. Though we never got the particulars of what he was going to say, we can reason that at the very least she would've gotten a "Last night was nice, let's see where this goes." *WE* can reason that, because most of us understand things like human body language, facial cues, tone of voice (okay, maybe people with Aspergers and sociopaths don't--but generally if you're not completely self-absorbed, you can clue in to what's going on with other people). T'Pol, on the other hand, doesn't have that advantage. Maybe she's better at it than other Vulcans, but that doesn't make her *good* at it. Also, judgment gets clouded when our own personal feelings obscure it--especially when we're not that experienced with handling our feelings. It's a big reason why adults often make better decisions than teenagers, because of that experience. Emotionally, T'Pol is a teenager here. She's got all these feelings to deal with because of the Trellium, and she doesn't know what to do with them. And because of being overwhelmed by everything, she's pretty self-absorbed here, so she isn't going to be quite as aware of Trip's cues as she ordinarily might be. Trip has no way of knowing this, though, and it's not fair to expect him to. So the conversation just spirals downward from there, due to hurt feelings and misinformation.

[WarpGirl]

Asso You're right. But it's still blown completely out of proportion. The real problems didn't start until around Azati Prime, they were fine in Hatchery. Even plotting, and using the neropressure as a cover. Things only got bad after we discover the Trell-D. Come to think of it that is facinating.

Please Trip wasn't giving that many cues at all. He accepted it, he was fine.

[pdsldl]

Thank you Aquarius. You explained it perfectly. Ask any man you know what his reaction to being told that he was an 'exploration in human sexuality' would be. Not good in any sense of the word. A major hit to his self-esteem even if he hid it, which I would think any man would do his best to do to save some semblance of his pride. T'Pol didn't know or understand human interactions and Trip was caught off guard so he retreated. He had feelings for her and my guess is they were fairly intense, but he being a human male wouldn't jump from one night of sex to a lifetime of being together or offering that. What you may want and what you can reasonably ask for are two very different things and being referred to as an exploration does not make any man or woman think happily ever after.

[Aquarius]

Please Trip wasn't giving that many cues at all. He accepted it, he was fine.

And at that point what was he supposed to say? Other than "accepting it" and "being fine"?

Again, he wasn't behaving like a man who was about to give her bad news from his end of things. Just because he wasn't gushing all over her it doesn't mean he wasn't giving any cues to his state of mind.

[Aquarius]

Thank you Aquarius. You explained it perfectly. Ask any man you know what his reaction to being told that he was an 'exploration in human sexuality' would be. Not good in any sense of the word. A major hit to his self-esteem even if he hid it, which I would think any man would do his best to do to save some semblance of his pride. T'Pol didn't know or understand human interactions and Trip was caught off guard so he retreated. He had feelings for her and my guess is they were fairly intense, but he being a human male wouldn't jump from one night of sex to a lifetime of being together or offering that. What you may want and what you can reasonably ask for are two very different things and being referred to as an exploration does not make any man or woman think happily ever after.

Exactly. And again, most of us in the audience can see that, because it's not our own emotions clouding our perception of the situation, and because we view things in terms of what "most people" would do and how "most people" would feel, versus expecting what transpired on the screen to be different because there are a handful of exceptions.

[Asso]

That's true, but in the light of what we are talking about, namely what could have been hidden in the minds of our couple, don't forget please the way Trip found in order to go ahead with Neuropressure (and I suspect not only with that, judging from the look T'Pol displayed at his words).
I repeat: that scene resounds weird, I have difficulty to think about it without this idea in my brain.