“It’s clear that living among Humans has caused my reasoning to become compromised.“
An indirect sequel to “The Andorian Incident,” “Shadows of P’Jem” has the obsequious, vindictive Vulcans of the 22nd century punishing T’Pol for revealing their military secrets; namely the revelation of a listening post inside an ancient temple of Kohlinar. Even though the Vulcans lied and broke the treaty, they want to take T’Pol away from Enterprise and Archer. While T’Pol is irritated (she, of course, never explicitly tells Archer she enjoys her time on the ship), she prepares to leave, but first, we have a mission to Coridan. Archer takes T’Pol with him to visit the Chancellor, but the shuttlepod is intercepted by dissidents who reveal in short order that a bloody civil war is underway on this strategically-positioned mining planet. They are captured and bound. We spend a little time watching Archer and T’Pol negotiate their bodies to break free. They fall over several times and T’Pol even manages to plant her breasts right in Archer’s face!
A Vulcan ship has arrived to take T’Pol home in shame, but Trip tells them about the abduction. The Vulcans offer assistance, but Trip doesn’t want their help, and this is why Trip is not a captain. A captain will ask for help from people he despises (see Janeway and the Borg or Kirk and various Klingons), and Trip wears his heart on his sleeve for the most part. Trip comes up with his own plan. He and Reed transport down, but are immediately captured, not by the natives, but the Andorians led by the testy Shran, who is still smarting from Archer’s unexpected altruism during the P’Jem incident. He has a debt to pay, so he can get a good night’s sleep. I guess P’Jem kept him up at night. Trip and Reed join Shran’s rescue mission and go in like clumsy surgeons and retrieve Archer and T’Pol even as the Vulcans almost get everybody killed. The Vulcans in this episode are not particularly perceptive. Their aversion to understanding irrationality in other beings reminds me very much of Spock in “The Galileo Seven.” Because Vulcans do not consider themselves irrational, they make dangerous assumptions about others.
The motivation of the Coridan rebels is vague. If they were responding to Vulcan incursion and know next-to-nothing about humans, why abduct a human? Unless they were drawing the same conclusions as the Andorians in the earlier episode. The rebels want weaponry. The superior phasers would represent a counter-balance in the skirmish, and there is no talk of cultural contamination or interference in this episode. This is a dangerous planet, and one thing these people do not need is more weapons. After all is said and done and everybody is rescued, T’Pol takes a plasma blast meant for the Vulcan captain. One of my favorite bits here is watching Archer pick up and carry T’Pol to safety. It’s a wonderful moment that speaks to Archer’s bravery and affection for T’Pol. I always saw him as more of a father figure than a rival or even a love interest. He is still intent on delivering T’Pol back to Vulcan, but Phlox tells the Vulcan captain she can’t be moved. Archer persuades him to put in a good word for T’Pol so she can stay onboard Enterprise.
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