Did T'Pol NEED the Trellium D?

[Silverbullet]

Sussman admitted he was an Archer/T-Pol fan. He said that Twilight was his Archer/T-Pol love story.

I often suspect that Bragga also may have bena closet Ainter. The Abomination was too slanted against Trip and for Archer and T-POl pairing. that Hug Archer gave her was the seal on it.

The scene where T-Pol says she will miss him and then trip killing himself for no good reason. Nope. The Abominatin was pure Ainter and the Ainters love it for that reason

[WarpGirl]

Look I'm not saying they threw Harbinger together. I am saying that they didn't plan to have a TNT romance until they started the nuropressure scenes. That is what they said when they made the season. Anything after that is completely suspect.

[pdsldl]

SB at the end they didn't appear to care anymore or they would have reconsidered killing off Trip or at least given his death meaning. And with Trip dead any closet wished for a A/T match were free to flourish in their imaginings, although T'Pol didn't seem to be going along with that line of thinking. They tried on occasion to give a A/T match legs but it never happened and from what I saw on screen between the characters/actors it never, ever would have.

[WarpGirl]

Nobody can say with any certainty that the B's were on any particular ship's side. However part of the reason neither worked to full potential, and let's face it TnT did not work to full potential is because they wouldn't commit to one.

[Silverbullet]

Pdsldl, I agree. No legs at alll but that didn't seem to stop the Ainters. there are so many stories out ther about Archer/T-Pol being mates and married written by confirmed Ainters. I often wondered if they ever even viewed the show except the Abomination.

I have heard that JB and CT boycotted the Party afterward to protest the Abomination both have indicated it ws not their favorite episode although it is dangerous to bad mouth a show one is in.

I guess it is up to Tnt types to keep the standard flying high for our favorite couple.

[WarpGirl]

Regardless of how the plan was concieved we did get something. So why don't we focus on that. I didn't mean to start a firestorm about TPTB.

[Alelou]

If A/T was the purpose of *the_abomination*, they wouldn't have had T'Pol smelling TRIP'S uniform and caressing his little Frankenstein. And that hug between Archer and T'Pol wouldn't have been so stiff, either. *the_abomination* may have been some sort of weird-ass subconsciously angry gesture, but it was not any sort of bow to A/T. I suspect that BnB THOUGHT they were writing a paen to Trip Tucker in particular and Star Trek in general. I also think they were specifically designing it to also be something they could just toss as a messed-up holoprogram if the opportunity ever arose.

And with the exception of Twilight, which was a Sussman ep and which could qualify (except that it has a giant reset button at the end), I do not see ANiS, The Seventh, and Shadows Of P'Jem as real A/T shippy episodes at all. (They ARE A/TP episodes, but not shippy. Desert Crossing is an A/Trip episode and we don't consider that shippy.)

I suppose they may have been trying to establish a little chemistry between those two in those episodes, but I'm sure they were smart enough to see that it just plain failed.

[WarpGirl]

Nobody can say with any certainty that the B's were on any particular ship's side. However part of the reason neither worked to full potential, and let's face it TnT did not work to full potential is because they wouldn't commit to one.

See above. All I was trying to say was at the time they were developing season 3 the origional plan didn't include TnT until after they decided T'Pol was going to be the addict. I'm not saying that they just played willy nilly with their shooting and Harbinger. Only that they were not planning TnT until season 3. Bragga himself said that for the last half of season 1 and all of season 2 they were "considering" AinT for the romance. Hence ANiS, The Seventh, Shadow's Of P'Jem as well as other episodes he named that were testing the relationship.

[Alelou]

I'd be curious to see that discussion because to me that order of things just doesn't track. If they knew where that Trellium-D storyline was going, they should have planted more clues about her addiction earlier. It felt like it just came out of nowhere.

[WarpGirl]

According to Coto and Sussman that was the entire point of the addiction. I did have the magazine, but I moved to another state and they all got lost. I had a running subscription for years. Also remember Coto and Sussman were being groomed all season 3 to take over for season 4. The B's willingly were giving up control.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Jumping in here again...

I believe, as I said before, that neuro-pressure wasn't needed for T'Pol and Trip to get together. If they needed T'Pol to lose some of her inhibitions they could perfectly well have used the previously established pa'nar syndrome and the fact that she had been mind tortured by Silik (plus the later mind-rape by Rajiin). It might have taken longer without the NP and the Trell-D, but it certainly would have been possible. See all those TnT fanfics that were written in season one and two.

As for the need by TPTB to speed things up in Harbinger, um, no. There was no need for that, especially since nothing really came out of it. T'Pol peddled back and we had a drawn out will they/won't they angst up until late season four. And you don't have to devote an entire episode to TnT, just sprinkle it over multiple episodes and I still firmly believe that with competent writing they could have had TnT together by the end of season three, even without NP and the Trell.

As for how thought out TnT had been by TPTB, I think they toyed with it from the very beginning. Look at the pilot and the decon rub-down, and all the other hints in the first season. Alas, after a while they realized that the Archer character hadn't become as popular as they had planned, and by season two TPTB imagined that getting him in scenes with the resident hot babe would fix that. In fact, it did the opposite and things got worse. When season three came around, the arc they now had planned for Archer could necessarily not include anything with T'Pol. So they remembered TnT from season one and began to revive that right from the season opener, which had the first NP session. So by the third season their intent was to push Trip and T'Pol together again. Too bad, in my view, that they used the NP (and later thought of making T'Pol a Trell addict).

[WarpGirl]

I wish I could communicate like that!

[Silverbullet]

I believe that if they had stuck with "Its lonely at the top" for Archer keeping him alloof from any romantic entaglements so he could be a tough commander who would have to order his subordinates iin to dangerous situations. If he was involved with T-Pol heavily he could not have risked her. Unfortunately, they had established t-Pol as n ex intelligent agent well trained in vulcan Martial Arts and tough. then made her a Damsel in distress that archer had to rescue.

The T-Pol charcter was so screwed up in the series I doubt if they could have done much more to make her look bad except have her hang a Red light utside her door.

[Pegmumm]

I believe that if they had stuck with "Its lonely at the top" for Archer keeping him aloof from any romantic entanglements so he could be a tough commander who would have to order his subordinates in to dangerous situations.

Which is why they did Twilight... it was the only episode shot with Archer removed from the command structure and thus allowing any sort of relationship between the two. If there had been any improprieties between the two, he would have had to transfer her off the ship since they were of different ranks. He ended his relationship with Erica when he took captaincy of the Enterprise... she was of command rank as well.

T'Pol's relationship with Trip was logical, he was the same rank, same equivalent age, they had chemistry, etc. In hindsight the ambiguity between TnT is what allows us to fill the gap so to speak. I thank God it was so badly written. And I bless JB and CT for their apt handling of their roles. They could have absolutely butchered what little chemistry they had but didn't.

The whole trellium addiction thing was a chance to allow JB to actually be someone beyond a cardboard cutout. It certainly gave me food for thought.
But did she need it? Nah... she could have blamed everything on P'nar's syndrome. The addiction was just a chance to stigmatize her. It was kind of fascinating to see the different weaknesses portrayed by each character. At least they have gone on to live more interesting lives in our stories.

peg

[Alelou]

I liked her all the way through. She was hell on Trip, but I liked her.