Over a dinner honoring one year that she's been aboard Enterprise, T'Pol is encouraged to tell Archer and Trip the story of Vulcan first contact with humans. No, not Zefram Cochrane's warp flight, as they might believe, but the story of a Vulcan ship that crashed in Pennsylvania in the late 1950s. Is T'Pol's tale of her ancestor's time among humans a fiction, or did it really happen?
If you've been following my reviews of Enterprise episodes, you know that it was my least favorite of the Star Trek series the first time around, and that this rewatch has so far done little to change that. "Carbon Creek" may be the episode that most crystallizes why Enterprise just isn't the Star Trek show for me. (At least, this version of the show that was the first two seasons.)
In my view, "Carbon Creek" is actually the best episode of Enterprise to this point. It's a charming tale of Vulcans learning about humanity by living in secret among them. It has stakes, emotional content, likeable characters, and believable interpersonal conflict. It has a well-executed moral message, and it's fun to watch. I'm not saying Enterprise has never achieved any of those things, but I do think it's fair to say that it's never really executed on all of them at once.
That it does so here is a telling indictment of the series itself. This being my favorite episode of Enterprise so far -- when Phlox, Travis Mayweather, Hoshi Sato, and Malcolm Reed aren't even in the episode -- reinforces some quiet truths about the series. All those "secondary" characters that the writers don't seem interested in developing? I guess they really aren't adding much after all. There isn't much Archer, Trip, or T'Pol in this episode either. (There's Jolene Blalock, but not T'Pol.) And the episode is more enjoyable in their absence.
Honestly, I feel like "Carbon Creek" makes a good case for there being a proper anthology-based Star Trek show out there in the firmament of Star Trek series. We saw the fun and varied stories that "Short Treks" was able to tell. Let's have that, but... not short. After all, with the roughly 40 minutes this episode has, it adds refreshing nuances to the Vulcans. They have to navigate this "fish out of water" situation -- eating meat (that they've killed themselves) to survive, concealing their identities without compromising too much on their values of truthfulness, living among emotional humans.
The three Vulcans -- T'Mir, Mestral, and Stron -- each deal with this in compellingly different ways, essentially forming a classic Star Trek triumvirate of their own. Stron remains coldly logical the entire time. Mestral fully assimilates, finding value in humanity and becoming borderline emotional himself. T'Mir is caught between them, duty-bound in her mission, but ultimately tempering learning to temper her logic with empathy. After a whole season of Enterprise watching humans and Vulcans dunk on each other, it's refreshing to see a Vulcan advocate so earnestly for the goodness and potential of humans.
There are many fun elements of this episode. The typical antics any time a Vulcan needs to hide their ears. Plenty of references to 50s pop culture -- including talk of I Love Lucy, a sly shout-out to Lucille Ball's critical behind-the-scenes role in making Star Trek a thing in the first place. A sweet guest star turn by Ann Cusack as a small town woman raising a child as a single mother. Contaminating an alien culture with the invention of Velcro.
For me, one discordant element throughout the episode is the matter of whether Archer and Trip believe the story T'Pol is recounting. Why don't they? What is gained by the wink at the end where T'Pol returns to her quarters to prove to only the audience that the story is true? I think this element exists in the episode only to give the regular actors a little more to do. And yet it's still barely an episode of Enterprise (as opposed to a backdoor pilot for this anthology series I'm imagining).
Other observations:
- The pool hustling sequence is cute, though Mestral is able to intuit things about the game that he should not know (such as having to sink the 8-ball last, and needing to call the pocket you'll put it in). Wagering a date with T'Mir is a bit icky, though.
- Also icky is the salacious moment T'Mir stands behind a sheet and changes into a dress. The shadows are extreme. This is an Enterprise episode, after all.
- There's effective pathos in the story of the brilliant kid unable to afford college. He at least had an alien intervene on his behalf. Plenty of real-world kids aren't so lucky. Star Trek is full of this sort of social commentary, but it's usually more metaphorical than this.
Part of me wants to give this episode a B+. Probably I should; that's how I feel about it. But as an episode of Enterprise? It feels like a B. It's unfortunate that making a solid episode means jettisoning so many of the things that make it Enterprise.
No comments:
Post a Comment