Hoshi and Trip are investigating ruins on an apparently uninhabited planet, when severe storms lead Archer to call them back up to the surface. With the storms coming too quickly, Archer is forced to retrieve them using the transporter. Trip goes through first, with no problems. But when Hoshi is beamed up, she insists that she doesn't feel right.
Her fears are initially dismissed as simple anxiety, and even she begins to think that she is imagining problems where none actually exist. Her fears are proved right, however - she vanishes, unable to be seen by any of the crew, or even detected by the ship's systems. She watches helplessly as Archer organizes a search party for her, or for any "residue" of her that may be found. Then she discovers aliens from the planet on board, plotting to blow up the ship. But with no way to warn the crew, and no way to interact with the ship, what can she do about it?
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: The captains in other Trek shows often had to deal with losing crew members. Kirk hated losing members of his crew but did so on a regular basis, and was usually up to cracking jokes about whatever situation had been faced by end of episode. Picard, Sisko, and Janeway were also quite able to deal with the loss of crew members. Archer is far less poised. You can see him shut down a little when Phlox tells him that Hoshi has almost certainly been reduced to "sub-cellular residue," almost robotic as he tells Phlox and Trip to adjust sensors to locate the "residue," then retreating to his quarters. Archer hasn't actually faced any crew deaths yet (nor does he in this episode, as it turns out). I'm finding myself very interested in how he will deal with a genuine loss, and hope such an episode does come at some point.
Trip: Spends the first half of the episode dismissing Hoshi's worries, and even using them as an excuse for jocularity. Once Hoshi does vanish, he takes it particularly hard, feeling responsible for her as the senior officer on the planet's surface. In the second half of the episode, when a bit of Hoshi's residue is found, Trip stays behind to address it. His feelings of guilt are complex, as he blames himself for not insisting that Hoshi go first and then blames her for not listening to him when he said it would be safe. A very good scene, extremely well-played.
Hoshi: It's refreshing that despite her growth in confidence since early Season One, Hoshi remains far from fearless. When she is told that she will have to come back to the ship in the transporter, she is terrified. Throughout the first Act, it seems entirely plausible that Hoshi's feeling of "wrongness" is just her own fear at work, as she obsesses over the position of a birthmark and vague feelings that could just as easily be a reaction to exhaustion.
Once it becomes clear that she has truly vanished, she skips fairly quickly from denial to resignation. Only the discovery of the aliens planting bombs spurs her to actively attempt to get the others to notice her. She does manage a few fairly clever ways of trying to attract attention, showing more resourcefulness than the character is generally allowed to demonstrate.
THOUGHTS
Vanishing Point effortlessly held my attention from the first moment. It helps that it centers around Hoshi, a character I've found appealing from the very first episode. Her lack of fearlessness has helped Hoshi seem more real than many of the other characters on the show. It also bewilders me that Jolene Blalock was sold as the "sex symbol" of the show, when Linda Park is quite evidently both more attractive and (much as I've liked Blalock far more than I expected to) a better actress.
In any case, it's an episode that moves along at a nice clip. The first half centers around Hoshi's fears. Filtered through the ending, we see that these really are some of her most deep-rooted fears: that the others don't really notice her, that they don't necessarily consider her an equal part of their group, that her linguistics skills might fail her, that the Universal Translator might replace her usefulness. It's actually pretty good character work, and entirely consistent with what we've seen before.
The second half raises the stakes, both with Hoshi's personal predicament and with the aliens preparing to destroy Enterprise. By the 30 minute mark, it's become one of the most gripping episodes of the season.
Unfortunately, it is badly let down by an ending that doesn't so much resolve the tension as dissolve it. I'll admit that the ending does fit with what we see in the first half of the episode, and does shed additional light on Hoshi as a character. But it does so at the expense of the drama, allowing a gripping episode to fall completely apart in its closing minutes. It's a badly misjudged conclusion, one that costs the episode at least a full point in my final rating.
Rating: 6/10.
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