"Carbon Creek"

Written by Chris Black, Brannon Braga, and Dan O’Shannon
Directed by James Contner


In which T’Pol tells Archer and Trip the true story behind the first contact between Vulcans and humans...or does she?

Synopsis - Analysis - Memorable Quotes - Observations


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Synopsis

As the episode begins, Captain Archer, Trip, and T’Pol sit down for a celebration of T’Pol’s one year anniversary on the Enterprise. Archer also mentions that he has been preparing her evaluation, and noticed that while she was stationed in on Earth, she once took a five-day leave to a town called Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania.

When Archer wants to know why she went there, T’Pol tries to dismiss it, but Trip refuses to let it go. So T’Pol promptly reveals that she went to Carbon Creek to visit the site where Vulcans first encountered humans. Trip and Archer, of course, think she’s way off the mark, since the first contact occurred in Boseman, Montana.

But according to T’Pol, a small group of Vulcans visited Carbon Creek in the 1950s, and her great-grandmother was among the crew. It was the year of Sputnik, and the Vulcans were monitoring its orbit. Something went wrong, and the Vulcan scout craft needed to fall in an isolated area. They sent out a distress call, but they crashed before they could get confirmation. The Vulcan captain was killed in the crash, and the ship was too damaged to repair. The others looked to T’Mir, T’Pol’s grandmother, to lead them.

Archer and Trip, of course, want to know why the Vulcans kept this a secret. T’Pol mentions that the information was freely available at the Vulcan Science Directorate...on Vulcan. Trip is skeptical that so few generations could have passed in the 200 years since the time of the crash, but Archer reminds him that Vulcans live much longer than humans.

T’Pol continues. After their rations were used up, and they had gone without food for five days, the three survivors became desperate. Not willing to resort to eating the local fauna, one of the crew (Mestral) suggested looking for food at the nearby settlement. T’Mir and Stron argued against it, but Mestral decided to go anyway. T’Mir runs off after him, leaving Stron behind to watch over the debris.

Arriving in the town of Carbon Creek, T’Mir and Mestral stole some clothes from a nearby yard, and made their way into the center of town (such as it is). T’Mir reminded Mestral that there were there only for food, and that they needed to keep contact with humans at a minimum. They noted miners coming back from a work shift, as well as some men listening to a baseball game.

They eventually made their way to a diner, and T’Mir again reminded Mestral not to speak. Inside, people were playing a pick-up game of pool, and several people were eating dinner. They found the new arrivals interesting, but eventually ignored them. They stepped up to the bar, and noted that people were using paper money. When they asked for whatever might be free, the woman behind the bar gave them peanuts and water.

When they were asked why they came to Carbon Creek, T’Mir claimed that there had been an accident outside of town. She claimed that she and Mestral were business associates. One of the locals asked if anyone wanted to play a game of pool, and a local boy named Jack was willing. He asked his mother Maggie, the woman behind the bar, but she sent him off to study.

Mestral suddenly took up the challenge, much to T’Mir’s chagrin. When it was clear that Mestral had no money, the game was almost off...until the man offered to allow Mestral to play, with a drink with T’Mir as his wager. Mestral accepted, again not pleasing T’Mir very much. But he assured her that the game was simply a matter of geometry. It was a close game, but in the end, Mestral expertly won the money. He was quite pleased with himself...for a Vulcan. T’Mir and Mestral used much of the money to buy food with which to survive.

Knowing that they couldn’t rely on gambling as a means of steady income, the Vulcans began taking jobs in Carbon Creek. T’Mir worked at the diner, Mestral worked at the mine, and Stron worked as a plumber. They lived in an apartment as humans. Mestral began to find “acting human” rather stimulating, although he was rather concerned with the ongoing nuclear tests reported on television.

He began forming a bond with Jack, and discovered that the young man wanted to go to college for engineering. Unfortunately, his mother was unable afford tuition, and the local contributions were not enough. Even as T’Mir and Stron argued over how they might contact their people for a rescue, eager to escape the primitive and violent culture, Mestral defended humanity. When T’Mir reminded him that they were only welcome because they were disguised, Mestral dismissed her concerns.

In fact, he had begun a romantic relationship of sorts with Maggie, which T’Mir soon discovered. She confronted Mestral with his deception, but Mestral countered that T’Mir was no longer in command. They needed to recognize that they might never leave, so they should learn to live among the humans.

That night, T’Mir was still troubled by her confrontation with Mestral, and tried to meditate at one of the tables. Jack walked in, and wanted to know what she was doing. When T’Mir answered truthfully, Jack rattled off all kinds of questions, revealing that he often studied at the library to learn as much as he could about everything. T’Mir was impressed by Jack’s passion for knowledge.

Sometime later, there was a cave-in down in the mines, and several older men were trapped. Mestral went to the wreckage of their ship, and asked the others to help find a means to help free the trapped men. T’Mir and Stron disagreed with Mestral’s decision, claiming that they could not use higher technology, lest they be discovered and contaminate Earth culture. Mestral simply wanted to help preserve life. T’Mir criticized his emotional response.

Still, in the end, T’Mir assisted Mestral in finding an alternate route close to the position of the trapped men, and he used a particle weapon to blast open a means of egress. He managed to keep from being detected, and his efforts saved the trapped men.

Three months passed, when without warning, they received a signal from a Vulcan survey vessel. They were told to return to the crash site in three days. When Jack received the news, he said farewell to T’Mir, mentioning that he wouldn’t be going to college. There wasn’t enough money to pay the tuition, and so Jack would have to work in the mines to attempt to make the money for the next year. But it’s clear he was not likely to ever make it.

That night, T’Mir rummaged through the wreckage, and found a small bag. She went off by herself the next day to a larger town, and met with a man who wanted to buy her “invention”...a bag with a Velcro fastener. The man gave her quite a bit of money for it. The next morning, Maggie noticed the money in the college fund jar on the bar, and excitedly called for Jack to give him the good news.

As the others prepared to leave, Mestral announced his intention to stay on Earth. Stron strongly objected to the notion, based on Mestral’s duty to Vulcan, and T’Mir believed he wanted to stay to be with Maggie. But Mestral intended to travel, to see as much of humanity as he could. T’Mir offered to arrange for him to be on the crew of the next survey ship, but Mestral refused.

When the Vulcan survey craft arrived, only T’Mir and Stron were at the crash site. T’Mir told the captain of the survey ship that both her captain and Mestral died in the crash. The survey ship left, and presumably humanity was none the wiser.

Back on the Enterprise, Archer and Trip express their doubts as to the veracity of the story, and T’Pol suggests that she was simply telling a story. After all, during her “vacation”, she also visited other geologically interesting sites.

But back in her quarters, T’Pol reaches into her personal storage locker, and retrieves an old-fashioned coin purse...the same purse that T’Mir had been carrying.


Analysis

Every so often, a series will need to take a step back and produce a relatively cheap episode, usually for the purposes of saving money for another episode or making up for one that ran over budget. These episodes are short on special effects, and if the writers are smart, don’t involve long stretches of clips from previous episodes.

I have no idea if this was the basis for “Carbon Creek”, but it certainly feels like it. And while I applaud the efforts of the writers to make such an episode mean something in the scheme of things, I’m not entirely pleased with the results.

There are essentially two ways to look at this episode. One can take the story that T’Pol tells to be largely fiction, something that she decided to tell Archer and Trip to defy their expectations of her. It would be an interesting twist on the character to have her come to this point, and it would fit with the more relaxed and flexible T’Pol that we should be seeing this season. And of course, the final scene would indicate her inspiration for the story, perhaps something of humanity she purchased while she was exploring her newfound fascination with the culture (as evidenced in “Fusion”).

However, having watched every Star Trek series to date, I have come to be skeptical of the originality of Berman and Braga. I am quite sure that they intended T’Pol’s story to be completely true, with only minor touches to make the story more accessible to Archer and Trip. If that’s the case, then it flies in the face of the first retcon of the chronology, “Star Trek: First Contact”.

I have no problems with the idea that the Vulcans were observing Earth for quite some time before First Contact, because that makes logical sense. Just as the later Federation would keep an eye on emerging cultures, the Vulcans would have an interest in watching the progress of a species so close to home with rapid technological growth.

But what doesn’t make sense is the rest of the story. We are talking about three green-pallored aliens, all of which should have some pretty damned odd accents if they’re speaking English, running around in a small American town in the middle of the McCarthy era. The fact that no one saw the ship crash, let alone stumbled across the massive wreckage, simply staggers the imagination. After all, wasn’t Jack into astronomy, watching Sputnik sputter across the morning sky?

So where was the constant suspicion of strangers that permeated American culture at the time? Or the wariness over their cover story, which never would have lasted three months? Or the suspicion that ought to come when some guy walks in and cleans up while playing pool? Or the fact that the three outsiders, now immediately part of the town, have these really frickin’ odd names, that even today would make a person wonder? Or how about the fact that aliens that aren’t prepared for a given biosphere ought to have some serious problems eating processed food? Or the fact that another Vulcan ship comes along and rescues them, apparently leaving the wreckage behind for anyone to discover?

I could go on and on, but I don’t have to. The end of the episode is more than enough to point out the extreme illogic of the plot. Even if Carbon Creek was the one odd town that wasn’t all that worried about Communist sleeper agents and what not, the rest of the country certainly was. So how could Mestral and T’Mir have gone to larger cities without being suspected? They’re green! And why build up Jack as someone important to the future, if we never even get a hint as to whom he might become?

Again, all of this would have been a pleasant enough story had it been made clear that it was T’Pol’s invention, but that final scene forces one to assume that the story was meant to be true. OK, fair enough, but it simply couldn’t have happened the way T’Pol tells it, because even Star Trek is better at historical accuracy than this!

An additional flaw is inherent in having three Vulcans step into the past. There’s a very fine line in terms of the humor that can be evinced from this concept. This episode pushes Mestral a little too close to that line, though of course, we’re meant to see that he’s a little off the beaten path to Mount Seleya. But aside from that, when the best lines come from the scant scenes set on Enterprise, you know that this episode is pushing the mundane factor.

The writers here…and there are far too many of them for an episode this thin…should have let this be a whimsical little episode with absolutely no overtones of changing Star Trek history. I’m not one to harp on continuity issues, since there’s plenty of room to maneuver in the franchise, but sometimes there are temptations that ought to be avoided.

This episode is a fine example of that.


Memorable Quotes

TRIP: “You had a personal matter in Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania?”

TRIP: “Right...just how old are you? It’s gotta be our record!”
ARCHER: “Trip...that’s classified information.”

TRIP: “Two Vulcans stroll into a bar...hustle a couple games of pool, and stroll out with an armfull of TV dinners?”

T’MIR: “If they discovered the truth, do you think they would still be so compassionate?”

MAGGIE: “I’m sorry...I’m usually much better at keeping a lid on my emotions. It’s not easy.”
MESTRAL: “I know...”

MESTRAL: “I did say ‘very pleasant’...”

T’MIR: “You’d be surprised what a disciplined mind can accomplish.”


Observations

- If there’s one thing I like about this episode, it’s T’Pol’s ever so slightly playful expression in the teaser. It’s very well done!

- Is it just me, or did Mestral look and sound an awful lot like Christopher Reeve?

- OK, we know Jolene Blaylock is rather well-endowed, but wasn’t that bit with the bedsheet just a little gratuitous?

- Mestral’s “disguise” is very reminiscent of Spock’s similar look in the Original Series episode “City on the Edge of Forever”

- Could the guys listening to the baseball game have been less convincing?

- Why didn’t the men walking right by Mestral notice T’Mir talking through his communicator, when it was echoing in the passageway?

Overall, this episode was something of a disappointment. Had this episode been crafted to allow that T’Pol’s story was nothing more than a clever fabrication, then it might have worked better. By suggesting that the story was true, the writers open the door to all of the inconsistencies and logical errors along the way. Considering that the episode was bland to begin with, those problems just pulled it down farther.

I give it a 4/10.


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