Weekend Trek “Vanishing Point”

So, is there any piece of technology that causes more trouble than the transporter in the entire history of Star Trek?  OK, sure, the holodeck potentially caused more trouble, but the transporter is certainly up there.  Considering the transporter was invented to save money on special effects by not showing the Enterprise landing on new planets every episode, well, it sure has caused problems.

For Enterprise, it makes a bit more sense for there to be nervousness about the transporter:  it’s new, and here at close to the midway point of the second season, it’s only been used to transport people, like, three times.  So, when a scenario arises when Hoshi and Trip need to make an emergency transport back to the ship to avoid a dangerous storm when they don’t have time to take the shuttlepod back from a survey mission.  For Trip, no issues, but Hoshi?  She’s afraid of that sort of thing.

Now, there is a long-ish history of characters who don’t care for the transporter.  Dr. McCoy in the original series was famously not a fan, and apparently, neither as Dr. Pulaski as a McCoy knock-off for the season season of TNG.  And yes, when Barclay was not having social anxiety, he was apparently have transporter fear for one episode.  Hoshi is getting a spotlight there, and she is the most, shall we say, nervous of the crew here.  Not every episode, but when the plot needs a member of the cast to be spooked, then Hoshi gets the call.

Of course, unlike McCoy, Barclay, and possibly Pulaski, I’m guessing, most stereotypical Trek fans wouldn’t want to see running around with a bare midriff, but Hoshi?  Played by an attractive actress in (I think) her twenties?  Oh sure, she can spend most of the episode in her workout gear with the exposed bellybutton and have a shower scene in a rare moment when the series remembers that T’Pol isn’t the only attractive woman on the ship.

But here’s the thing:  Hoshi might be right because, over time, she starts to phase out of sync with the rest of the ship, her molecules becoming more diffuse as time goes on until she fades from view, only the home viewer able to see her.  There are moments when she sees herself disappear in a mirror, or when water in her shower flows through her hands, but it also means, for reasons, that she can pass through walls but doesn’t fall through the floor or that her clothes, that she wasn’t wearing in the transporter, also seems to have the molecule problem, but in the end, she has to fight some aliens that came from the planet, aliens she hadn’t seen before but somehow knows it’s them, aliens that had briefly held Trip and Travis captive when they went back for the shuttlepod.

The thing is, these moments actually work within the final plot when it comes out that Hoshi is fine, that she was in the transporter for a couple seconds longer than expected, and the whole thing, including Archer’s calling her father to tell him that Hoshi appeared to have died as far as Archer knows, is effectively a dream sequence, so plot inconsistencies can be chalked up to dream logic.

That said, the episode does something rather clever:  Hoshi’s disappearance from her perspective comes after the other members of the crew seem to keep overlooking her.  She’s being told to go get some rest all the time, and she has to really speak up before the others notice her standing there.  Even the turbolift at one point doesn’t work for her.  Yes, when she does get someone’s attention, they do pay attention to her, but they also tend to downplay her concerns.  The episode, smartly, doesn’t draw a direct connection to her molecules separating to the fact the others are somehow oblivious to her presence at times now, but it is similar in the end:  she feels like she’s fading away, and since this is all basically an extended dream sequence, then it makes sense that her subconscious might see her fading socially as well as physically.

That was something I don’t think the franchise attempted before.  Then again, McCoy is too ornery to be ignored and Barclay might prefer it half the time.  Those sorts of things make a difference.