Posted by Dennis Bailey:
I think having T'Pol changed by her interaction with humans and particularly the relationship with Trip is a great idea. It's far more interesting and individuated than being the "alien who looks at humanity from outside".
Spock, the archetypical Vulcan character, would have been no more than a nuisance if that had been his main dramatic axis. What made him more than a mouthpiece for the heavy-handed "observations" of some TV writers in L.A. were his -- sorry, Vulcanphiles -- emotional conflicts.
To some extent, T'Pol is Spock in reverse. He resists the "weakness" of his human heritage; she rebels against the suffocation of her Vulcan indoctrination.
"Changed," maybe, but the descriptions we keep hearing sound more like "diluted," or simply "misinterpreted." If the show were anything but
Star Trek (and, of course, many of us
do believe it is anything but
Star Trek), then what you describe would be a stock alien character, one who is nothing more than a typical human character with make-up, and might be a decent one, as well. The thing that used to set
Trek apart was that it
didn't rely upon "stock alien characters." If the only way to set this
Trek apart, to make it unique from its predecessors, is to make it more like its competition, past and present, then why bother making it
Trek at all?
Besides that, it just strikes me as a really terrible message, one that this series in particular has been more guilty of than the rest and from the very beginning, that humanity is somehow the only really viable way to be. Archer has an unfortunate record of "humanity first," proselytizing its superiority to the Vulcans, the Klingons, and nearly every other race they encounter. For a mission of exploration, of the expansion of knowledge, they sure seem like missionaries, instead. And now to say that T'Pol is going to embark upon this journey of "discovering her own humanity," well, I can just imagine the wacky hijinks, not to mention the subtle affirmations that "that's the only way to be 'right.'"
Is T'Pol the Vulcan equivalent of Archer? Is the Vulcan High Command as slipshod in its methods and its machinations as Starfleet? First we questioned the wisdom of Archer's selection as captain, a man who has no command skills, little in the way of actual personality, no diplomatic skills, no common sense, only common DNA with the engines' designer, and yet he has been selected, out of all of Earth's people, to command a starship destined for unknown worlds and unknown races in search of (one would assume, but we could be wrong) peaceful contact and the exchange of knowledge. Don't they test anyone, screen anyone? Or was Archer just drawn out of a hat (possibly from under a rock), or maybe Papa Archer had something
really distasteful on the heads of Starfleet.
Now take T'Pol. The Vulcans
must be aware of the pressure inherent upon one of their own immersed in a culture rampant with unchecked emotions. Would we expect them to not thoroughly screen and vet every candidate for their diplomatic missions, to assure that they were of the strongest mental discipline, and the deepest connection to the ideals of Surak? Would a people who have now been shown to casually allow their own to die without treatment, because they had the temerity to embrace their emotions and were considered a threat to the sanctity of Vulcan ideals and society, not take every precaution to prevent the possibility that one of their own might be corrupted by this onslaught of human chaos? Or that they would not double their efforts when assigning an officer to live in constant close proximity to nearly a hundred volatile humans in close quarters, with no other Vulcan around for support? Surely they would pick the crustiest, hardest, most emotionally-bankrupt master of their disciplines, someone who would make a cucumber seem positively infernal.
The character they describe in ENT might be interesting in another context, but in
Trek, she's nothing more than another puppet for the writers.
(well, look who's WRITING it)
) this is usually the case in television, and that i think it will work on ENT (as long as they do NOT make it an ANIS repeat 
)
No more boy scout Archer.
