I tried looking for a related thread. It probably exists but I couldn't find it. This sort of thing doesn't always bother me, but why on earth was Trip so worried about being able to conceive a child with T'Pol after the baby died? It wasn't that long ago that they had met Lorian, their alternative timeline child. So they knew this was possible. How quickly they forget.... Or what am I missing?
I'm thinking that the particulars of how Phlox accomplished (there's a sterile word for ya) Lorian were lost when the other Enterprise was destroyed/lost/whatever at the end of E2. Plus Tucker was distraught - he had lost his sister, Elizabeth, and then he had lost her namesake, a very young baby who was kind of thrust on him with no preliminaries. I would think the whole thing would make him feel saddened and odd, kind of an intense relationship with the baby and then the rug is yanked.
I think Trip's line re: a human and a vulcan could conceive a healthy child is intended to connect ENT to TOS.
That's a good point, since they seemed to spend these last episodes drawing as many connections as they could. Yes, Trip was distraught. But in such times, it seems that a person would think about the child that he DID make, the child that lived. I guess I'm making too much of this.
At the time of "E2," T'Pol clearly believes that a human/Vulcan hybrid isn't possible. And Phlox seems to indicate that Lorian's conception wasn't a simple thing. This implies that the method used by E2 Phlox is not known to "our" Phlox at this point. This doesn't quite line up with what Trip says at the end of "Terra Prime." Perhaps by this time, a year later, Phlox has had time to study E2 Phlox's notes and knows more about the method used to combine T'Pol's and Trip's DNA to produce Lorian. I agree with the view that Trip is distraught in "Terra Prime" because he has been on an emotional rollercoaster - already having trouble with T'Pol because of the bond, then discovering they have a child, being threatened by Paxton, almost dying in the final confrontation, and then he and T'Pol can only stand by helplessly as their baby girl dies. And in that final scene with T'Pol, they're getting ready to go to Elizabeth's memorial service. No wonder he was a mess.
Exactly, Trip was grasping for any little shred of hope he can find, and considering the toll the last two years took on him, who can blame him. He's looking for hope and trying to be there for the one he loves.
I know we each see things in our own way, but I always took that dialog as Trip trying to comfort T'Pol in the only way he knew how. TUCKER: There's something else. I spoke with Phlox. It turns out there was a flaw in the technique that Paxton's doctors used in the cloning process. Human DNA and Vulcan DNA, Phlox says there's no medical reason why they can't combine. So if a Vulcan and a human ever decided to have a child, it'd probably be okay. And that's sort of comforting. (T'Pol takes his hand) I saw it as him reaching out to her, telling T'Pol that there was a future out there for them.
Well having the baby die, then just reveal a cure right after that struck me as yet another push of the reset button. The reset button trancends time, space, sex and babies.
It just seems to me that KNOWING that you HAD successfully made a baby would be more comforting than Phlox's current theory. Or not. Matter of perspective, I suppose.
It might have been difficult to use Lorian to cheer her up, since as far as they knew, he was another "child" they lost. And T'Pol spent most of "E2" keeping her distance from Lorian, so she might feel the loss all the more.
I always read that as Trip comforting her. And even though they all have memories of E2crew, there's all that weird 'did-they-didn't-they-exist' spacetime stuff. I wondered at end how T'Pol felt about having (and lost) two children without actually physically bearing them. Perhaps that's what Trip was comforting her with also. PS: has there ever been a Vulcan pregnancy on Trek? (too lazy to google)
I would agree. How many times in life when someone loses a child that they try to have another one as quickly as possible while others mourn the death of that child? It's a personal decision and he chose to look at it from the scientific point of view. That helped him cope.