Daedalus

Daedalus

review by persianmouse

Hmmmm....I wonder if T'Pol is ever going to find out that Denile is also a river in Egypt.

As usual, I liked the 'B' story much better than the main storyline, the 'B' storyline being reserved for people interacting with one another, and having feelings and whatnot, the main storyline always, of course, being either shit blowing up, Archer playing God, monster of the week, some more shit blowing up, special guest star from another Trek series, etc.,etc.,etc.

I loved, LOVED, the scene towards the end of show, after they find out what, uhh, what the hell was his name, Dr. Strangelove over there was up to, and he and Trip are screwing with the transporter. He’s talking about his son and the arguments they used to have, and how he realizes now that they were the happiest moments in his life. This annoys OMT, for it reminds him of a certain Vulcan who used arguments as foreplay. And then it gets even better, he tells Trip he would understand if he had ever lost a son, and Trip’s head snaps back, and I know I wasn’t the only person out there screaming ‘LORIAN!!!!!’. That scene was so well written, and well-played, finally a little subtlety in the writing, the writers weren’t hitting us over the head with what they were trying to say. It acknowledged our intelligence as an audience, and I think it deserves a round ** and I think someone on the writing staff has a secret crush on Lorian, this is the second veiled reference to him this season. However, at least they’re laying groundwork for him to transfer to the Columbia, and not just pulling that out of Rick Bermans ass, which is where they get most of their story ideas from. No really, he has the most prolific colon in all of Hollywood, I read it the Reporter.

I didn’t agree with Phlox's comment on T’Pol being calmer, it's not really a true calm, she's only calm like an inactive volcano is, where's there's still an awful lot of crap under the surface, and at any moment you may find yourself on fire.

And while I didn’t like what T’Pol was doing and saying in terms of immediate TnT (though at least they're acknowledging TnT, and that's always nice), but I like it because it's consistent with T’Pol's character. She's always been passive-aggressively self-destructive, and this 'hiding behind that Bible of yours' falls in line with that. She has always been outraged at injustice towards others, but she never fights injustice when it comes her way. She'll kick and fight to help someone else, but she never gets mad when crap happens to her, she just takes it. Like in Shadows of P'jem, it was unfair for the High Command to recall her for inadvertently exposing their lie, but she didn't try to fight it. In Stigma, she didn't fight for herself, for her health and her life. In Home, she allowed herself to be sold into marriage to get her mother (whom she doesn’t even seem to like, and who doesn’t seem to like her back) her job back. She didn’t need to do that, but she did, cause it was wicked good punishment to give herself. What a perfect way to ensure she will never be happy, and to feel degraded the rest of her life. She also is constantly isolating herself. People who are constantly isolated will often want nothing more than to be with people who accept them, to no longer feel so isolated and alone. Except they’ve been trained into a pattern of behavior that will only continue to isolate them. They are comfortable in their loneliness; it’s the only thing they know. They may want people, and friendships and lovers, but they don’t know that kind of life, what that’s like, and we like to stay with what is comfortable and safe. Better the devil…..

She probably felt isolated living on Vulcan, being so emotional and well, just very odd for a Vulcan, my guess she wasn’t the most popular girl in school, at lunchtime she probably had to sit at the loser table with the girl who smelled like cat pee and the gay albino kid in the Babylon 5 t-shirt. So she goes to Earth, a planet full of people who don’t trust her and don’t like her, just because of the shape of her ears. However, there is a compound full of Vulcans that she now has something in common with (everybody here hates us), and that simply will not do. So she puts herself in a place where she is the only Vulcan around for light years, and starts poking people with verbal sticks. Cause that’ll get her liked. But wait, she doesn’t need to be liked, she’s got a whole support structure back on Vulcan, she’s got her Mom, who hates everything about her, her fiancé, who she hates everything about, and her Father, presumably dead, and not at all Soval nor Romulan spy. So yeah, why the hell would she need to be building alliances. But even though she had gotten herself good and isolated and lost in space, there was still that constant threat of being able to return to Vulcan, so she better make sure that her behavior out here, if it doesn’t get her exiled (cross your fingers, hope, hope) will at least make her a pariah. So, let’s expose a hidden listening post, destroy a monastery, ditch my lovely fiancé for these barbarians, leave the High command, yada, yada, yada. But look, while you were so busy trying to make sure no Vulcan would ever like you, this one human started liking you a little too much, don’t ask me why, maybe he got hit on the head a few too many times. Damn T’Pol, I don’t know how your gonna get out of this one, looks like your just gonna have to have a relationship with someone…….wait you did what?! You slept with him, lead him on, then married some other dude?!! Damn. That’s great, really just great, there’s no way he’s gonna like you after this….wait, he’s still hanging around? Man, he’s either really thick, really determined, or really masochistic.

It’s not like she ever goes out of her way to screw herself over, but she loves it when an opportunity comes along to do so. Even the TD addiction, perhaps her most deliberate act of self-destruction, was still weirdly passive. The initial exposer wasn't deliberate, and my understanding is that the only effect was the lowering of her emotional barrier, and that her emotions were the cause of her breakdown. See, it's not like liquor, which kills your liver, or meth, which explodes your heart, it just lowers your inhibitions, and so long as you don’t let them get the better of you, and only do it in moderat…oh no, looks like someone’s choking Trip in the shower, well guess that plan’s is out the window isn’t it?

So, it would seem in keeping with her character that she would use this latest Deus ex Machina to insure her everlasting misery. She has a perfectly charming man, who loves her and is loyal to a fault, who is willing to deal with her issues and help her cart around her massive load of baggage (a nine-piece matching leopard-print Gucci set, complete with garment bag and train case), so yeah you gotta kick that brother to the curb. And I know some people will think she just trying to get her shit together, to find out what it really means to be Vulcan, to do whatever it is that Surak wants her to do, but since the whole Vulcan Civil War (on a side note, did I miss the whole war part, it seemed more like a Vulcan Civil Minor Disturbance) fell a little flat for me, I see this as more of T’Pol’s self-destruction, another thing for her to hide behind. I don’t like this whole Surak-worship thing either, he wasn’t a god, he was just a man, like any other man, just as fallible, just as corporeal, just as able to have his views coloured by his own prejudices and misinformation, and I really don’t like the idea of T’Pol changing her whole life because of what he said in his magical pyramid box o' wisdom.

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