Day 308: Enterprise, Stigma

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S2EP14, “Stigma”

 Summary: When the Enterprise stops at a planet that’s holding an annual interspecies medical conference, two things of note happen. One is that one of Phlox’s wives, Feezal (Melinda Page Hamilton) is at the conference, and comes on board to help Tucker install a fancy new medical microscope. During the installation, she seems very interested in the engineer, to Tucker’s increasing discomfort. The other, more serious thing is the revelation that the mind meld T’Pol had in “Fusion” left her with Pa’nar Syndrome, an illness that slowly attacks the brain and the immune system. Phlox has been discreetly trying to help keep the illness in check, but he was hoping to use this conference to ask Vulcan doctors for help. Unfortunately, most Vulcans see Pa’nar Syndrome—and the Vulcans who practice mind melds—as shameful, and the doctors instead want to remove T’Pol from the Enterprise. Help, however, comes from one or two very unlikely sources.

Standalone Thoughts: While this episode isn’t as good as “Detained”, it does have one big thing in common with it; it manages to feel less preachy than you’d expect. It becomes obvious almost immediately that Pa’nar Syndrome and the small group of Vulcans who participate in mind melds are stand-ins for HIV/AIDS and gay people, so this episode could very easily have turned into a message episode, complete with impassioned speech. However, while that’s certainly present, it’s toned down just enough that I wasn’t too annoyed with it. Other people might find it too much, but compared to DS9 episodes like “Past Tense” or the speech in “Far Beyond the Stars”, or even the Enterprise episode “Rogue Planet”, I thought this one was relatively mild, and thus find the episode overall decent instead of frustrating. The fact that it takes something that was a staple of earlier Trek shows and makes it taboo helps too; that’s an interesting wrinkle that’s perfect to use in a prequel show if you want to keep things fresh.

There is, however, one aspect to the plot that I find puzzling. T’Pol and the others constantly describe her mind meld from “Fusion” with words like “forced” or “violated”, and it’s absolutely true that what happened to her was an assault. However, if you go back and look at the scene, T’Pol does initially agree to the mind meld, because she’s interested, however reluctantly, in expressing her emotions. Obviously, the fact that she changed her mind midway through doesn’t make what happened her fault, but I kept waiting for that aspect of things to pop up in the episode, and it never materialized. It might have added even more conflict to the story, with T’Pol feeling guilty and blaming herself because, in her mind, she did want to perform the meld, and she’s not sure if she wants to admit to that. This is even backed up by Blalock’s performance, where she makes T’Pol seem both hesitant to go into details about what happened and also oddly invested in standing up for the Vulcans who mind meld. But that aspect of things never comes up, which might annoy some continuity hounds and feels like a missed opportunity story-wise. And if that was an aspect they were trying to convey, but subtly…I think they needed to throw in another hint or two.

As for the subplot, I enjoy it. It’s got enough light humor to keep the main plot from getting too heavy, depressing, and/or preachy, and it winds up going in an unexpected direction at the end. It is a little surprising to see that sort of thing on Star Trek, but the writers took advantage of the fact that the Denobulans are aliens, so I applaud the fact that they used it to bring up something that would raise eyebrows on most TV shows (at least in the early 2000’s; I get the sense that modern TV is a lot more open about things like this). I also can’t help but be mildly amused by the fact that once again, Tucker seems to find himself in the center of something weird involving aliens. Did the writers have something against his character, or was he just the designated whipping boy, like O’Brien was on DS9?

After a spate of episodes that were pretty blah, this episode returns more to the “pleasantly watchable” standard that I expect from Enterprise, preachy material notwithstanding. It’s probably not going to work for everybody, especially if you hate message episodes like I do, but if you’re going to do one, you could do worse than this. Thumbs-up to the writers for not going overboard, if nothing else.

How it Relates to the Whole: There will eventually be a followup to T’Pol’s condition, although it takes place in Season Four. Whether or not there’s anything from now until then, I can’t recall.

Other: *I can’t help but feel like one of the flirting scenes between Tucker and Feezal wouldn’t have happened if they’d just used (or asked Hoshi to use) the universal translator. I’ve gotten the impression that it can translate text on a screen, so that should at least have come up. In fact, Tucker suggesting they get Hoshi and Feezal talking him out of it would have made perfect sense considering the circumstances. Yet another example of just an extra line or two helping to avoid certain problems.

*Some of the exchanges between Archer and T’Pol are just charged enough that I wonder if the writers were still tentatively exploring the idea of an Archer/T’Pol romance. I don’t entirely feel the chemistry there, but I don’t think this is just me and my fandom goggles, either. Unfortunately, unless I ever get a chance to ask the writers myself someday (and even then, they might not remember or give a roundabout response), I don’t think I’ll ever get an answer to this.

Badass Malcolm Moment: The best I can come up with today is that despite his teasing, Malcolm does at least take Tucker’s situation seriously enough to offer some advice instead of dismissing it outright. Then again, maybe he doesn’t want to have to be called in if things get heated…