Hello!
Well, having had enough rest for the time being, I thought I'd press on with my task.
EPISODE 05 – ‘IMPULSE’
‘Impulse’ – the first (and as it turns out, only) episode by Johnathan Fernandez, was in many ways a goldmine of story opportunities. Through the interesting idea of using a Vulcan ship to represent the Vulcan psyche, the episode had endless potential to explore T’Pol’s current situation; her mental and more significantly, emotional health.
So it with a heavy heart that I confess if Fernandez had brought the script for ‘Impulse’ into my office if I was Showrunner, he’d have received a few early ‘hmm, that’s an interesting idea’ nods of approval... before then having to flee back to his desk, dodging viciously hurled projectiles!
Because it quite simply will not do – you can't put an audience through the torment of squandering great ideas and expect to get away with it. With all the interesting directions this episode could have gone, the final product is so... basic, it’s just offensive.
A large part of the problem lies in the character’s interactions and behaviour in this episode. It often feels like Fernandez has simply taken the S1 templates for the characters and copied them exactly onto the page. Conversations tend to feel mechanical and lacking in nuance – you’d hardly believe these characters had been together for 2+ seasons, just going by this episode.
It’s also sad that he doesn’t make more effort with the interactions between characters who usually have little contact (Travis and Trip, Reed and T’Pol etc). Even if it’s only small things that you put in, at least you’re trying, developing how these characters relate to each other (think Travis and his ‘we’re getting home, alright?’ comment to Hoshi in ‘Damage’).
Here though sadly, there is just basic, charisma free dialogue between such characters (when they have any at all - Reed and T’Pol barely speak to each other at all on the away mission.
But of much greater concern is the poor quality of intimate dialogue between Archer and T’Pol (as frends, trusted colleagues etc). This episode called for a considerable degree of intimacy in terms of dealing with T’Pol’s affliction by the Trellium and in her expressing how she feels about various issues in her heightened emotional state etc.
And it’s here that the sheer ordinariness of the dialogue can be best seen. There is just no sense at all of them having any history, of the body of trust they have built up which has led to her resigning her commission to be here with Enterprise in their hour of need. Instead it’s back to Archer’s grudge over his father and fear over becoming violent, because Vulcans were savage in the past, you know...
Yes, we know! But this isn’t a Season 1 episode – it’s a Season 3 episode! It’s unacceptable in such tense situations, to be dealing with T’Pol in such broad strokes that her dialogue could have been delivered by any Vulcan who knew of Archer. Fernandez needed to focus much more rigorously on T’Pol herself, following her through the episode as the main character, so we could really get a sense of where she’s at.
But instead he saves that for pretty much the very last minute of the episode...?!
However, though I have many problems with this episode, I do think it had great potential as I’ve said. Indeed, the core idea and intent of the episode, I have absolutely no problem with. ‘Impulse’ sets out to show that whilst it may appear to everyone that T’Pol (and all Vulcans) are fearless and have eternally ’got it together’, she is suffering a great deal of mental turmoil – that Vulcans in general suffer far more than non-Vulcans ever really suspect.
Because if it was anyone but a Vulcan, people would surely already be worried about someone in T’Pol’s position. She has resigned her commission and faces an uncertain future with her people for what she has done. She is also of course, the only Vulcan aboard Enterprise, living amongst a race who have had their problems with her people.
Because as laudable as T’Pol’s decision to stay is, she is still not human. The implication is that the crew perhaps feel that because T'Pol isn't capable of feeling (or so they think), that she doesn’t care as much about the possibility of Earth’s destruction – at least not in the same way that they do.
This comes out most strongly in the MACO soldier’s questions to her, showing that humans still do not properly grasp the Vulcan mind and ability to feel emotion. The MACOs were outsiders, but have been accepted because it’s ‘all humans together’, whereas she is still to a certain degree separated from them.
You may have strong feelings on that point and I'd ask you to keep a few things in mind. Firstly, the only really important point to this episode is that part of T'Pol believes they feel this way. It informs her decision later to experiment with Trellium - to try to get closer to them etc. Secondly, 'Twlight' will later point out that relations between her and the crew could be better (but we'll talk of that when it comes round).
This episode meanwhile, aims to point out that whilst humans have often been shown to feel that Vulcans ‘just don’t understand’ with regard to how they feel (it’s always been a sore point with Archer that they don’t properly comprehend what they put his father through), humans likewise know nothing of what being Vulcan is really like. That they have clawed their way to sanity and intellectual eminence in the galaxy through constant struggle and sacrifice.
The crew however (including Archer et al), all believe she cannot get scared, stressed etc and so miss the signs that she is starting to feel the strain of being alone with an uncertain future. You may be unhappy with that rather simplistic and ignorant attitude and I think Fernandez does push it a bit at times in how ignorant they are. But that’s the conceit and you’ve just got to go with it, I guess...
The early scenes are therefore designed to show the crew’s unwitting ignorance of how their bonding is leaving T’Pol feeling a little ‘out in the cold’. Let me be perfectly clear that Fernandez is NOT saying the crew are consciously excluding her, but rather that T’Pol’s ‘true’ Vulcan mindset (i.e paranoid, suspicious, angry etc), could easily read these innocent acts as deliberate snubs and conspiracies against her.
For example, the episode starts with Archer and Trip working away in the command centre. It’s a nice little scene really, because it shows to our great relief, that Archer is no longer spending his nights in here on his own. Indeed the whole point is that they are agreeing that everyone needs to relax a bit more and enjoy themselves if they are going to get through this (significant because the episode will insist that this is the one thing T’Pol must never allow herself to do).
To us, it’s a hugely encouraging sign. They are progressing with important work on the Sphere data, keeping their friendship alive in difficult times and choosing a sensible course for the crew’s general health (by restoring movie night etc).
To T’Pol however, this is an unsettling sight at first, because she feels excluded. There is the obvious fact that Trip is here instead of having neuro-pressure. But mostly, it focuses on the idea of her being curious as to why one of her jobs (and an important one at that) is being done by Trip. This is set against Reed’s willing and complaint free co-operation with the MACO soldier later, showing that the humans have now bonded, whereas she still feels somewhat left out.
They don’t see anything wrong, because it was entirely innocent and they are not of a paranoid nature. Archer explains it was just that she was asleep and Trip needed something to do. It’s simple and it’s true, but to the untamed natural Vulcan psyche which is always burning away in a quiet part of T’Pol’s mind, she’s had her authority usurped etc etc.
This is built on in the following scene when upon seeing that a potentially dangerous away mission is called for, Archer orders that Reed be woken up, as he needs his best men for the job. Now, this is again all done with no malice towards T’Pol even dreamed of – but her suppressed paranoid nature will have studied and noted this apparent double standard.
Fernandez contends that they are simply too used to thinking of T’Pol as being unfazed by anything, that it wouldn’t occur to them that this could upset her. When they are approaching the Solaya, T’Pol considers that something awful may have happened to the crew, given the video footage they had seen. If it was anyone else, someone would surely ask if she was apprehensive, frightened; they would ask if she felt ready for this etc.
But because she’s Vulcan and thus immune to fear etc as far as they really understand it; they don’t. They just assume she’s alright with this, when I would say she seems decidedly unsettled (and can you blame her after seeing those nutcases in ‘The Expanse’?)
Now, you may say that T’Pol really shouldn’t be feeling any of this. Our clue to why she is feeling this way is in the Solaya and its situation. The Solaya represents the Vulcan people, strong and imposing, weathering the storm amid the chaos around it (the asteroids representing the wild natures of other races, the unpredictable turns that life throws at you etc).
Underneath that exterior however, lies an equally untamed ferocity - the Vulcan crew; representing the raging natural emotions that their race possess... Usually the crew would be on top of everything, steering the ship through such dangers and keeping a lid on their feelings – like T’Pol.
But it’s the intensity of the forces at work here that makes the difference. Trip mentions that the Solaya’s hull (i.e the Vulcan ability to suppress emotion) is taking a real pounding from the asteroids, which shows that T’Pol is under tremendous stress at the moment. And we see where this will all lead with T’Pol if she is not careful - the inmates are now running the asylum aboard the Solaya...
What makes it interesting is that it is not this external force which dooms the Vulcans – it is trying to find a way to better protect themselves that does that. By applying the Trellium-D to defend against the crippling distortion waves, they orchestrate their own destruction (to put it in very flowery language!)
This foreshadows T’Pol’s actions as she later tries inadvisably to alleviate her stress by opening up to the crew (both in the hallucination at the end, bantering and enjoying movie night and later by using the Trellium secretly by herself).
It’s a great idea (though perhaps a bit reminiscent of ‘The Descent’), and Fernandez isn’t finished yet, because he also includes a very interesting thread whereby the whole crew prove themselves vital to the team in one way or another over the course of the episode... all except T’Pol.
They work like the proverbial ‘well oiled machine’ - Trip extracts the Trellium they need, Phlox finds out what’s wrong with the Vulcans, Reed and the MACO soldier work together to fend off the Vulcans, Travis pulls a daredevil landing to get near the Trellium, Hoshi keeps them all apprised of danger in good time to escape, Archer motivates and leads from the front...
But when the time comes for T’Pol to do her part, she fails (blaming herself for Reed’s mistake in an act of irrational self-loathing, before flying to the other extreme and seeing a grand conspiracy to make her appear useless etc). This is a noteworthy scene for the simple reason that it’s one the very rare times when the writing, visuals, sound and Blalock’s acting come together and really sell what’s happening to her.
As I said earlier though, we don’t get nearly enough specific character moments like this. Instead of voicing at least some of her anxieties and desires, all we get is a brief mention of the command centre ‘snub’. There is a truly woeful lack of interaction between her and characters important to her.
For characters with so many episodes under her belt, it’s just sad that Fernandez couldn’t make her scenes with Archer more involved than the ultra-basic level they do play out at. And at the very least, she is onboard a ship full of former crewmates, but her connection to them is so feebly handled. There is only one actual ‘character’ and he only gets such unforgettable lines as ‘Woaarrghh!!! Raargghh!!!’ Spellbinding...
It’s easy to completely forget that she has any connection to these people at all. What should have been a ‘tug of war’ between the two crews over her; just devolves into a series of extremely unexciting action scenes in generic rubble strewn corridors.
It’s all just too broad, even down to Archer’s ‘I’m depending on you; you can trust me’ speeches which are of the sort normally given to jittery unnamed extras in these kinds of ‘crisis’ episodes!
A good example of how to do it better would be ‘Starship Down’ in DS9, which despite many flaws of its own had some great scenes with Kira and Sisko, where Kira opens up to the near dying Sisko how she feels about him and how she can’t ignore the fact that he is her people’s Emissary. Or ‘Empok Nor’, where O’Brien and a (similarly to this episode) psychotic Garik engage in a deadly game of cat and mouse strategy that ends up telling us things about both characters...
We never reach that level of character interaction in this episode, despite the opportunities Fernandez creates for himself. It’s not good enough.
Even at the end in sickbay, the dialogue doesn’t quite get to the places that you wish it would, where you feel they’ve really understood each other’s position. Archer’s dialogue particularly is standard ‘leave no-one behind’ - considering that I think this is the first time Archer has really seen T’Pol’s suppressed nature come to the fore, you would have hoped they’d have to more to say to each other!
As for T’Pol herself, she has somewhat better dialogue in the scene, because it shows a glimpse into how much she does passionately care about the safety of Enterprise’s crew and the success in its mission – she just can’t show it to them usually, because it’s just too dangerous. And the final hallucination is very effective in showing that as much as she might want to fit in, she never really can.
Because for a start; she just isn’t on the same wavelength as humans. Whilst Phlox has adapted easily to fit in, bantering away with Trip, she still ‘doesn’t get it’ as Trip points out to her. Most of the time, people feel she is too logical (Archer rejects her ‘needs of the many’ style argument to keep her on board), but when she wants to relax that logic in the cinema, logic is all they want (as they discuss the film’s plot etc).
It’s the same story with the MACO who is all logical ‘they’re trying to kill us, so we have to kill them!’ as she angrily insists they are on a rescue, not extermination mission. And even when she tries to join in with Trip and Phlox’s banter, the lights go out and the demons within her resurface, ready to strike whenever she relaxes her emotional guard...
This ending is rather bleak, but is not something to be all that dismayed at though, in my opinion. As something that is properly from T’Pol’s perspective at last and as an ending that suggests there will be no easy answers, it is quite effective (and a welcome relief from the usual Star Trek reset button). It can however, only do so much to disguise the fact that even though T’Pol supposedly had such a strong connection to the Solaya and her crew, that connection never really came through at all.
I don’t think you can really avoid the comparisons with the film ‘The Descent’ either, as there are clear similarities. In that film, the heroine undertakes similar action to T’Pol, there entering a physical representation of the womb, fighting off demons representing unborn children and a rival mother to find and reclaim her daughter as being truly hers.
But whereas that heroine is successful in some measure in reclaiming her daughter’s heritage, T’Pol puts up no such struggle in this episode and instead has to be stunned and rescued by Archer. She is simply ‘a woman in danger’ yet again, the Vulcan crew are not saved and the episode finishes on the bleak note that she will always be separate and struggling with who and what she is. ‘Impulse’ plays out more as a cautionary tale therefore.
The thing is, whilst Fernandez is exploring some potentially interesting areas here, I think it is hampered by the fact that T’Pol is already rarely shown to be as strong and capable a character as you imagine she should be. Therefore, you have to question how wise it is to include episodes and arcs that weaken her even further. If anything, she needed more episodes to show how valuable she was to the team!
Ultimately it is the impersonal dialogue and stunted character interaction married with this displeasingly powerless portrayal of T’Pol (she achieves precisely nothing in this whole episode), that put the final nails in ‘Impulse’s’ coffin.
I say the final nails because it really isn’t up to much as either an action or horror episode, even with the reliable David Livingston on hand for direction. Quick cuts and flashy camera sweeps fail to liven up the flat and dud action sequences, which never engender any sense of terror or menace (let alone excitement). Unlike many awful zombie flicks, It isn’t even ‘so bad, it’s good’ either...
Fernandez and Livingstone simply add their names to the long, long list of people who have failed to make zombies scary (Star Trek had been failing to make the Borg scary for years, so it’s wasn’t like we didn’t see it coming, I suppose...)
So as usual they just seem like occasionally comic ‘shamblers’ who moan and stagger along, frightening only the most terminally timid of people. It never even remotely convinces, and frankly, why go for zombies, when more of a frenzied, debauched atmosphere, like in the video clip they were shown would have been better? That kind of ‘Event Horizon’ etc style ferocity was probably considered too extreme however...
As it is though, we get little sense of them being emotionally uninhibited and it’s particularly disappointing to see that the supposedly super strong Vulcans are remarkably easy to overpower (T’Pol included) in this episode. Basically they could be any kind of zombies – Fernandez doesn’t manage to tap into the particular horror of it being a Vulcan crew that this has happened to.
So what about a score?
Well, the episode does have some wonderful CGI effects; some of the best so far, but the episode as a whole lacks edge. It just isn’t scary or exciting at all (though the final hallucination scene is very good), which is the death knell for a horror episode. This along with the general mediocrity of the story progression and dialogue makes this one of the lesser episodes of this season.
Simply put: despite a great premise, nothing really happens. T’Pol’s connection to both crews is not adequately expressed, the horror is lame; the character interaction is frequently woeful and disastrously underwritten and developed.
Many of the character’s reactions and decisions are also questionable to say the least.Trip for example, seems outrageously casual when Archer calls in for immediate assistance due to the Vulcan attack and despite being told something has affected the Vulcan crew; he doesn’t ask if T’Pol is alright?!
I suppose the episode manages to maintain a consistent level of ‘a bit rubbish really’, rather than being outright awful though, I suppose. About the best thing you can say is at least Archer’s feeling better now...
‘Impulse’ just about scrapes 2 out of 5 from me and should consider itself very lucky to get that. It should have been so much better than this...
Must rest...
but that's a given with TV. I do wish we had seen more of the consequences in Season 4--the permanent effects of the trellium damage--rather than the "mind-meld, voila! no more problem" that we got. 
)
Just ask my husband--he has his own collection of beloved junk.
Fun review.
