[ENT] Lynch's Spoiler Review: "Vanishing Point"
Timothy W. Lynch
thin, but it hasn't yet disappeared entirely -- so 'ware the spoilers for
ENT's "Vanishing Point."
In brief: Not bad for a while ... but I can't recommend the last fifteen
minutes at all.
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"Vanishing Point"
Enterprise Season 2, Episode 10
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
Directed by David Straiton
Brief summary: After using the transporter for the first time, Hoshi
fears that she hasn't been put together quite properly.
======
"Vanishing Point" is probably an episode that appeals more to new
viewers than to veteran Trek-watchers. Relatively new viewers will
think that it makes a lot of sense for Hoshi to be concerned about new
technology, and that it's worth making the point that this is still new
and relatively untried technology ... and they'll be right. Long-time
viewers will say this is a rehashing of plots and situations from at
least half a dozen modern-Trek stories in the past, and that there's not
a lot new here ... and they'll be right as well.
Ironically enough, after all the "transporter accident" episodes Trek
has had over the years, _Enterprise_ is the series that's most entitled
to have one: the transporter is extremely new, only having been
cleared for humans in the last few years, and everyone from Archer to
Reed has been nervous about using it. It seems only fair that
somewhere, at sometime, something should go wrong -- and
dramatically, using poor Hoshi seems a decent enough notion.
On the other hand, it's precisely *because* there have been so many
transporter episodes in the past that _Enterprise_ needs to do
something different to separate this one from the pack. Considering
that we've already seen characters who make it a point never to use the
transporter (Bones, of course, and Pulaski as well), and that we've
already seen the transporter do everything from splitting people in
two (TOS' "The Enemy Within" and TNG's "Second Chances") to
turning adults into children (TNG's "Rascals"), it's a little hard to see
what's left. Hoshi's worries are natural, but if the story itself follows
paths all too well trodden there's not much to invite viewers back.
The odds did not appear encouraging at the start, as we needed a dose
of both character idiocy and technical illogic just to get the party
started. It's all well and good that a sudden storm could ground Trip
and Hoshi on the surface, but it strains credibility when (1) the
interference makes a shuttle impossible but the transporter okay, and
(2) Archer and T'Pol apparently didn't bother looking at the weather
situation beyond the immediate vicinity. T'Pol's the science officer,
after all -- is there some reason she's not doing her job?
That said, Hoshi's initial worries were both justified given the
situation and well stated. I was particularly fond of her asking, "What
if some of the pieces get put in the wrong place? You know, I bet a
lot of them look *real* similar." Hardly meaty stuff for long-term
viewers, but a nice piece of stage-setting for those with no idea what's
to come.
Hoshi's worries that she wasn't reassembled properly work well
enough, and it makes sense that she might view a lot of otherwise
ordinary events through the prism of that worry: she feels as if she
has to work harder just to be noticed, for one thing, and she fears that
a birthmark may no longer be in its proper place. All well and good -
- they could be real effects, or they could be psychological.
My suspicions about what might actually be happening were raised
early on, when every single scene we saw included Hoshi and tended
to focus on her point of view. Yes, when a character's the focus of an
episode he or she tends to appear a lot, but every scene? That's
unusual, and often suggests that what's shown is a subjective reality.
Sometimes this can be done extremely well, as in Stephen
Donaldson's _Chronicles of Thomas Covenant_ series (or, if you
want televised SF, try TNG's "Remember Me" or "The Inner Light"),
but it usually works best when readers/viewers are brought into the
secret well in advance. (It also works well if they're utterly fooled
until the time is right, a la DS9's "Whispers," but that's even harder to
pull off.) Feeling as though you've stumbled on the secret early on is
rather like watching a magician trip up mid-trick: it tends to break the
spell.
"Vanishing Point" gets as far as it does because, for the most part, the
past Trek stories it's reliving are good ones. This may not be an
exhaustive list, but it's worth noting where a bunch of the parallels are.
So...
-- Hoshi's fears sound a lot like Barclay's transporter phobia in
TNG's "Realm of Fear" (written, probably not coincidentally, by
Brannon Braga).
-- The "voices in the turbolift" that are actually her comrades talking
to or about her: TNG's "Remember Me."
-- Hoshi being intangible and invisible, yet trying to get others'
attention and having to save the ship from other creatures no one else
sees: TNG's "The Next Phase." (They didn't fall through the floor in
*that* episode either.)
-- The ending: akin to TNG's "Frame of Mind" or VOY's
"Projections," both written by Braga.
If you wanted to go for more tenuous connections, there's no shortage
of other ones you could make ... but these strike me as ones where
"Vanishing Point" was similar enough to actively remind me of its
predecessors. Most of those are decent (some better than others, like
"Remember Me" and "Frame of Mind"), so the episode gets by for a
while. Things get stranger and stranger, from the "cellular residue" of
Hoshi's which can't possibly be hers to the mysterious aliens only
Hoshi can see, but any qualms about "wait, is this making sense" are
temporarily set aside as the tension builds.
There is, of course, the near-obligatory skin quotient as per usual,
summed up by Hoshi's shower scene and by the convenience that she
changes into skimpy workout attire just before she goes intangible
and can no longer change clothes, but Linda Park is a lot better at not
calling attention to it than some of her colleagues (of either gender).
Episodes like these, however, tend to live or die by their endings.
"Frame of Mind" and "Remember Me" worked as well as they did
because pretty much everything that happened made sense once you
looked at it from the right vantage point. What's happening to
Beverly Crusher in "Remember Me" seems utterly mysterious and
inexplicable, but once we see some of the perspective of Geordi, Wes,
and the Traveler, everything falls into place and has a beautiful
internal logic to it. "Frame of Mind" (or "Parallels," another TNG
standout of Braga's) succeeds in much the same way: Riker's
jumping from perspective to perspective is explained pretty well in
light of what his captors were putting him through.
"Vanishing Point," unfortunately, goes for one of the oldest endings
in the book: "it was all a dream," or more accurately a hallucination
Hoshi had during the 8.2 seconds it took her to materialize. One
could lobby the same accusations about "The Inner Light," for
example, but that episode had a reason for Picard to experience what
he did and a profound effect on him afterwards.
The "it was all a dream" ending can work, but not when it's used as an
excuse to toss in any damn strange thing you want because "in
dreams, anything can happen." Dreams and visions have worked
exceptionally well on occasion in Treks past -- Data's dreaming in
"Birthright" and "Phantasms", not to mention many of the better Orb
or Prophet visions in DS9 -- but all of those had underlying ideas
behind them and events which eventually made sense in the proper
light. "Vanishing Point," on the other hand, had events occur
randomly because they could. Braga's done much better than this
with dream imagery in the past, and I was deeply disappointed to see
that "Vanishing Point," in the end, basically had no point.
Even the "real" moments in the teaser are rendered more or less
meaningless. What did happen to this civilization? What do the
various inscriptions mean? Apparently, we're not meant to care, since
the only time the planet's mentioned again is during the dream
sequences involving their nonexistent hostile inhabitants.
It's a shame, because some of the moments within the show were
quite good from a character point of view. Trip's "damn it, why didn't
you listen to me?" lament about Hoshi's apparent transporter accident
is one of the better treatments the character's had lately (mostly
because this time he's at least taken seriously), and John Billingsley
once again does wonders with Phlox's gentle wit. (Reassuring Hoshi
about her privacy with "as far as I'm concerned, I never even saw you
come in here" was just beautiful.) The moments are there -- they just
don't linger when it turns out that all of the episode can drift away in
the breeze.
Other thoughts and observations:
-- Trip's reaction to Hoshi's apparent death stands out as especially
good compared to the terrible, *terrible* "Archer informs Hoshi's
dad" scene. I felt rather embarrassed for both Keone Young and
Scott Bakula in that scene.
-- I'm not sure what to make of the "Cyrus Ramsey" bit. If Hoshi's
going to invent a fictitious historical event to justify her own worries,
that doesn't speak well of her. On the other hand, I wouldn't be
surprised if there were accidents similar to those that allegedly befell
Ramsey. (Free plug: David Brin's TNG graphic novel
_Forgiveness_ deals with some of the early days of transporters, and
does a nice job of it.)
-- The ending, where Archer notes that Hoshi really did face her fears,
whether due to a real threat or an illusory one, is something that could
be used for the character later ... but given that she basically dismisses
the point, it doesn't seem likely. Sigh.
That's pretty much it, I think. Like so many episodes this season,
"Vanishing Point" had a lot of potential -- but like almost as many, it's
giving the impression of a series that's just going through the
motions. "Vanishing Point" is reliving so many past Trek glories that
it's almost cannibalistic, but it's not bothering to integrate them in any
way that viewers are going to find particularly new and unusual -- and
what *is* new is an ending that renders the episode somewhat
pointless.
I remain convinced that _Enterprise_ can succeed at far above the
level of basic subsistence. I remain worried that no one's going to
bother making it do so.
Wrapping up:
Writing: Good atmosphere and mystery with some minor "idiot plot"
moments, but shot all to hell by the ending.
Direction: Nicely eerie on occasion, but mostly pedestrian.
Acting: Linda Park held up her end of things as much as she could.
Trinneer and Billingsley had the occasional wonderful
moment.
OVERALL: 5.5. Watchable, but be prepared to get annoyed.
NEXT WEEK: A rerun of "Carbon Creek." I'll be making other
plans that week...
Tim Lynch (Castilleja School, Science Department)
tly...@alumni.caltech.edu <*>
"You're in perfect health. You're neither transparent nor porous."
"You won't put this in my medical record, will you?"
"As far as I'm concerned, I didn't even see you come in here."
"Not funny, Doctor."
-- Phlox and Hoshi
--
Copyright 2002, Timothy W. Lynch. All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
This article is explicitly prohibited from being used in any off-net
compilation without due attribution and *express written consent of the
author*. Walnut Creek and other CD-ROM distributors, take note.
ANIM8Rfsk
<< Considering
that we've already seen characters who make it a point never to use the
transporter (Bones, of course >>
Huh? Bones bitched about it, but used it routinely.
<< and Pulaski as well), >>
Pulaski was even bright enough to use it to cure herself when she caught the
ageing disease on Planet Malibu.
Timothy W. Lynch
><< From: tly...@alumnae.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch) >>
><< Considering
>that we've already seen characters who make it a point never to use the
>transporter (Bones, of course >>
>Huh? Bones bitched about it, but used it routinely.
Fair enough -- can we settle on "were generally wary of using the
transporter" and consider the overall point made?
TWL
Robert Hutchinson
> -- I'm not sure what to make of the "Cyrus Ramsey" bit. If Hoshi's
> going to invent a fictitious historical event to justify her own worries,
> that doesn't speak well of her.
Considering that it was her subconscious inventing the historical event,
I don't think it fairly speaks anything of her.
--
Robert Hutchinson | "[Destiny's Child] got booed at the NBA
| playoffs. Even men in plush animal costumes
| don't get booed at the NBA playoffs."
| -- Fametracker.com
Brian Thorn
(Timothy W. Lynch) wrote:
>-- The "voices in the turbolift" that are actually her comrades talking
>to or about her: TNG's "Remember Me."
I don't remember a scene like that in "Remember Me". Are you sure
that's the right episode?
Brian
Mark Musante - Sun Microsystems
> "Vanishing Point," unfortunately, goes for one of the oldest endings
> in the book: "it was all a dream," or more accurately a hallucination
> Hoshi had during the 8.2 seconds it took her to materialize.
I didn't interpret it as a dream. Rather, I saw it as her having
entered a parallel universe.
-markm
A Bag Of Memes
"Mark Musante - Sun Microsystems" <mmus...@Sun.COM> wrote in message
news:at2mg8$9uu$1...@eastnews1.East.Sun.COM...
They said it all happened in her head.
Windsor Morgan
> There is, of course, the near-obligatory skin quotient as per usual,
> summed up by Hoshi's shower scene and by the convenience that she
> changes into skimpy workout attire just before she goes intangible
> and can no longer change clothes, but Linda Park is a lot better at not
> calling attention to it than some of her colleagues (of either gender).
In other words, in regards to the episode, she pulled it off. Is that
what you are saying, Tim? :-)
'Verily, there be no leader as wise as the Vision!'
Windsor Morgan, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Dickinson College
Carlisle, PA 17013