Carbon Creek
Date: April, 2151
Original Airdate: September 25, 2005
By Paul Pytlik

The Story

Captain Archer, Trip and T'Pol are all gathered in the dining room for a celebration of T'Pol's first anniversary onboard Enterprise. After pouring wine, Archer casually mentions that in her record there's an entry he's been meaning to ask her about. When stationed in Sausalito, she took a five day leave to visit a town in Pennsylvania, Carbon Creek. At first, she declines to say why she'd visited this mining town, but after Trip complains that they always tell her stories and presses her for the reason of her visit, she relents.

"You'd like me to tell you a story?"

She says she went to Carbon to see the site of first contact between humans and Vulcans. The Archer and Trip laugh, since everyone knows that first contact took place in Montana. However, T'Pol proceeds to relate the events as they actually happened.

On a survey mission of Earth, just after the launch of Sputnik, T'Pol's mother's mother's mother, T'Mir, and three other Vulcans crash land. The commander of the mission dies, leaving T'Mir in control. After a week, the three Vulcans run out of rations, forcing them five days later to find food. T'Mir and one of the males, Mestral, head out to the nearby town. Stealing clothes off a laundry line to blend in, they soon find themselves in a bar. Without money to buy any nourishment, Mestral volunteers to play a game of pool. Winning, the two Vulcans buy their food and walk back to their ship. Deciding they may have to wait a long time for rescue, they take whatever employment they can get, at first keeping their contact with humans to a minimum, but soon learning that they cannot continue in that manner. Mestral takes a job in the local mine and the three rent a house.

After an argument between Mestral and T'Mir on views about humans, the former leaves to go and fix the communicator on the ship, but secretly sneaks to a baseball game with Maggie, a bartender from the local bar. After witnessing a kiss between the two, T'Mir forbids him from seeing her again. He states that the mission is over, and she no longer has a say in his actions.

An accident in the mine causes Mestral and T'Mir to once again argue about how involved they should be in the affairs of humans. A group of men are trapped beneath the ground and Mestral wants to use technology from the ship to save them. She says they cannot interfere in human affairs, while he argues that they must have compassion. T'Mir soon agrees to help. After reaching the men, Mestral becomes a hero. Three months pass, and the distress call that the Vulcans sent before crashing is answered: they will be picked up in three days.

Before leaving, T'Mir learns that Billy, the local genius student, wasn't able to raise enough money to send him to college. Driven by compassion, T'Mir searches the ship for something to sell, and finds a piece of velcro, which she sells to a businessman. The next morning, the tip jar is overflowing, and Billy and Maggie, his mother, are overjoyed.

Later, while waiting for the Vulcan ship, Mestral tells the others that he doesn't intend on leaving Earth. Instead, he wishes to travel and learn more about them. When the ship arrives, T'Mir says that the commander and Mestral were both killed in the crash.

After completing her story, Archer and Trip are shocked, and press her for more details. This time, T'Pol will not relent. She continues to be vague in her answers, and soon the two are convinced that she was only making up a story. She leaves the dinner. Arriving back at her room, she takes out from a drawer a purse T'Mir owned, and kneels down in front of it.

The Great

Unfortunately, not a whole lot. As another staff member, Angelus, pointed out, the inventor of Velcro is credited to George de Mestral

The Okay

Lots of nice little touches and funny bits throughout. Trip's mention of Cochrane's statue in Montana, T'Mir putting on her clothes backwards, the ‘Coneheads' quality of some of the home scenes, as well as some period references.

The Sins

Trip selling out to the Twilight Zone. It was bad enough that the ad was constantly blinking at the bottom of the screen, but was that crack really necessary? As well, the scene in the truck between Mestral and Maggie was very stilted, switching gears constantly. Mestral ended up looking like he was doing his Munsters impression. As well, why would an otherwise normal Vulcan operating (presumably) within the chain of command until now act so insubordinate?

The HUH?

Archer's comment about T'Pol's trip to Carbon Creek is the whole reason this episode was brought up. He read about it in her service record. And yet, when Trip asks T'Pol her age (a perfect opening for what I'm sure a lot of fans were wondering, but I'm okay with it being kept a secret for a bit more), it's classified? Now, that doesn't mean that Archer doesn't know, but why would something as simple as her age be classified? Is her birthplace too? IS she really a Romulan?!?!

The Vulcan's inability to count. After one week on the surface, they ran out of rations. Yet, it was another five days before they started getting desperate. Could they not have done a better job at rationing the rations? Can't Vulcans go a substantial time without nourishment? I find it ironic as well that the Vulcan who was so adamant about not leaving behind starved bodies for the humans to find is the one that stayed. As well, how is it that no one saw the ship crash, nor found it in the later months? Are they ALL working in the mine? And something that's bugged me for a long while: why do ships always crash in America??!?!!

How did Mestral know how to play pool? I can understand him being exceptional at it due to geometry, but he hadn't observed anyone playing. Wouldn't it have been safer to hang around the bar and learn the game rather than jumping right in?

T'Mir was so willing to lie for Mestral to the high command, leaving behind something that, if discovered, would not only ruin her career, but the development of an entire planet? Did she not consider what would happen when he eventually went into Pon Farr?

The Wonderments...

Vulcans have been watching Earth for a while then. I wonder if they were there a few years before when those aliens from ‘The 37's' were snatching people up left and right. As well, if this really did happen (though there isn't really a question by the end, but I'll get to that), why didn't the Vulcans ever correct the human's account of the events? It wouldn't be classified, and if it were, T'Pol wouldn't have recounted it.

The Potential

Enterprise's track record of trying something new has been great... well, good, but next to the triple rope, double harness and re-enforced safety net of Voyager, it's revolutionary. And yet, something that could have been a great little point in the episode, something to set it apart and make it the thing of discussion, was thrown away in favour of ten more seconds of footage. T'Pol, get up, walk out of the room, fade to black. Don't go rummaging through your drawers to fish out a dingy old purse to sit there and look at it. I'm sure it means a lot to you, but still...

The writers chose to play it safe, lead the audience to the conclusion they'd come up with in their heads. What's wrong now a days with stories with an air of mystery around it? Did it happen? Didn't it? I loved ‘Silent Enemy' for it's open-ended-ness, the intrigue and thought you had to put in. I was silently cheering when T'Pol pushed away from the table at the end, thinking that we were going to be treated to a quasi-DS9 ending. Instead, we get the old Voyager formula. Along that vein, other than telling a small little ditty about her great-grand ma, this episode is rather thin, containing no message, no lesson. It did show that T'Mir eventually learned compassion, but how does that effect the Enterprise? With Voyager's ‘11:59', the writers successfully connected the story back to the present day ship, and had the story effect the characters onboard. It gave us a nice scene with the crew being shown as a family, and Janeway learning a hard truth. It also showed the dangers of living in the past, and not looking towards the future. This story gave us a nice shot of the inside of T'Pol's drawer.

Grade: 6.5/10

Cast:
Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer
John Billingsley as Dr. Phlox
Jolene Blalock as T'Pol
Dominic Keating as Malcolm Reed
Anthony Montgomery as Travis Mayweather
Linda Park as Hoshi Sato
Connor Trinneer as Charles "Trip" Tucker III

Guest Cast:
Ann Cusack as Maggie
J. Paul Boehmer as Mestral
Hank Harris as Jack
Michael A. Krawic as Stron
David Selburg as Vulcan Captain
Clay Wilcox as Billy
Ron Marasco as Captain Tellus
Paul Hayes as Businessman

Creative Staff:
Director: James A. Contner
Teleplay By: Chris Black
Story By: Rick Berman & Brannon Braga & Dan O'Shannon