Captain’s log: date unknown

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga come up with the story that was turned into a teleplay by Mike Sussman and Phyllis Strong. It first debuted on 27 February, 2002.

The Enterprise comes into contact with an usual group of Vulcans. It seems they embrace their emotions, a fact that bothers T’Pol (Jolene Blalock).They eventually convince her to perform a mind meld, and bring that into the continuity fold of the series and let us see that Vulcan tradition in a new way.

And while Archer (Scott Bakula) and the rest are quite happy to interact with these Vulcans, T’Pol, if she showed her emotions would be rather upset and nervous by their appearance, especially her interactions with Tolaris (Enrique Murciano), which becomes very troubling when he uses a mind meld on her as a form of rape.

With their arrival, the Vulcan Directorate reaches out to Archer to smooth things out between a father and son. So there are a lot of things going on in this episode, and not all of them good, and there is definitely some trouble around the edges of the mind meld.

Robert Pine plays the Vulcan captain, Tavin, and he and his crew are unlike any Vulcans the crew, and those from Earth have ever encountered, or will again I’d wager seeing as how they are developing even as the series continues on.

There are some continuity things going on in this episode,the introduction of the mind meld, mention of Pon Farr, and a mention of a brother for Trip (Connor Trinneer) though he is never mentioned again, though a sister is.

It’s an interesting episode that lets the Vulcans we though we knew, are layered out more by this episode.

Captain’s log: date unknown

Berman, Braga and Chris Black broke the story for Rogue Planet, which Black then turned into a teleplay and aired on 20 March, 2002.

Archer finds himself haunted by visions of a woman he seems to know on a planet that because it is a rogue, is enshrouded in eternal night. Yet there may still be life there.

An away team discovers a species known as the Eska are there hunting something called a drayjin,and it doesn’t take a Starfleet engineer to realise that the drayjin and Archer’s visions are connected.

Consequently, this feels like a run of the mill episode, it doesn’t add a lot to the ongoing continuity, although has a nice guest appearance by Keith Szarabajka. The alien design, and the planet itself are cool, but you can also tell that all the alien lifeforms the hunting parties are after are computer-generated, which pulls you out of the reality of the episode a bit.

The Human Adventure continues next week as I explore more of Star Trek: Enterprise – The Complete Series on blu-ray from Paramount Pictures.

Boldly go…