2-2. Carbon Creek.

THE PLOT

It is the first anniversary of T'Pol's time aboard Enterprise.  This has prompted Archer to host a private celebration with himself, T'Pol, and Trip (it pretty much sucks to be any of the other regulars this week). Archer lets slip his curiosity about a visit she made during her time on Earth to the town of Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania. So T'Pol tells Archer and Trip the story of humanity's "real" first contact with Vulcans, when a Vulcan ship monitoring the Earth's first manned satellite (Sputnik) crash-landed near the town. The captain was killed in the crash, leaving T'Pol's great-grandmother, T'Mir (also played by Blalock), in command.

After five days with no response to their distress call and no food, the Vulcans decided to chance walking to the town. They disguised themselves as humans and took menial jobs to blend in as best they could while awaiting a rescue that might never come. Stron (Michael Krawic) proves to be the most "Vulcan" of the group, maintaining his distance from the humans while doing menial repair jobs. Mestral (J. Paul Boehmer) more or less "goes native," experiencing a flirtation with a townswoman (Ann Cusack), developing a near-obsession with television, and pronouncing the townsfolk to be his "friends." T'Mir falls somewhere between the two.  She is initially judgmental of humanity's foibles, but ultimately willing to help Mestral prevent a mine collapse from becoming a disaster for the townspeople and even forging a bond of her own with a bright boy with college ambitions.


CHARACTERS

Capt. Archer: His clear respect for his science officer shows throughout, starting with the simple fact that he has arranged a celebration of her first anniversary aboard.  He is impressed by her accomplishment, observing that the previous record for a Vulcan officer aboard a human ship was ten days.  He even politely evades Trip's questions about T'Pol's actual age.

T'Pol: By seeing the flashback story with T'Mir, we get some sense of how it was possible for T'Pol to flourish in the kind of environment that has crushed other Vulcan officers. That she has developed a certain fondness for both Archer and Trip shows in the almost familial nature of their interactions in the framing sequences.  She even teases both of them at the end, not revealing to them whether her story was or was not true. In the flashback story, T'Mir's journey roughly mirrors T'Pol's in Season One. Initially, all she can see is the worst of humanity (nuclear testing, rampant paranoia, a fascination with violence). Gradually, she forges a few connections with them, and begins to see that while the worst does exist, there is also much more.


THOUGHTS

In some ways, this is a difficult episode to review. It's not so much part of the ongoing journey of our regulars as a sidestep, a writer perhaps musing, "What if the Vulcans had landed on Earth in the 1950's?" The only of our regulars who even appear are Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock, and Connor Trinner. Of those three, only Blalock gets substantial screen time.  Even she is playing her normal character's grandmother most of the time, in a pleasant but ultimately inconsequential flashback story that may or may not even have "really happened."

There is also very little action.  Sure, there's a third-act crisis triggered by the collapse of the local mine, but it's moderately quickly resolved and probably was unnecessary to the plot.  Finally, there is no sense at all that this story will ever affect the show's main arc. In many ways, this is barely an episode of Enterprise at all.

So why did I enjoy it so much?

Make no mistake.  I thoroughly and completely enjoyed Carbon Creek. I enjoyed seeing the three Vulcans trying to integrate themselves into a small Pennsylvania town in the mid-1950's. I enjoyed their mild fish-out-of-water reactions to this strange, alien culture. I enjoyed watching them trying their hands at 9-ball, or getting sucked into watching television. I enjoyed watching them become part of the town, to the point that even though their behavior was odd when compared to that of the townspeople, they nevertheless did indeed seem to "belong." The episode was amiable, it was pleasant, and I got more caught up in this moderately uneventful piece than I have in many of the more action-heavy installments.

I did enjoy the three Vulcan characters. Stron got the worst of it, but there was still some amusement in his reactions to a child's teasing him over his resemblance to Moe of The Three Stooges. I enjoyed watching Menstral become completely caught up in humanity, to the point where he seemed as much human as Vulcan by the end. And I enjoyed watching T'Mir never quite lose her firm Vulcan control, and yet still find a way to do her small part for one person in the town. I found myself almost sorry to leave this trio. The episode was a sidestep, but I found it a quite engaging one and, as such, it did its job well.

I'm sure there are Enterprise viewers who hated this episode precisely because it was inconsequential, action-light, and ultimately had no bearing on the main series. But I found it a remarkably pleasant diversion, leading me to award a rather high score this time.


Rating: 8/10.

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