Comments on story "The Commissioning"

[Transwarp]

All,
I'm new to this site, and I've barely scratched the surface of what's here, but what I've seen, I've enjoyed. I tried to post the following remarks in the comments section following my story, "The Commissioning", but I was a little long-winded and I exceeded the allowable word count. I decided to try posting here in the forum, instead.

After distilling out the heartfelt welcomes and expressions of enjoyment--thank you for those--most of the comments centered on whether T'Pol's emotions were out of character. For those who thought her too emotional, I offer the following defense:

- Vulcans possess *all* the emotions of humans, they just suppress them
- She had difficulty (for a Vulcan) in controlling her emotions, going back to her childhood
- She suffered lingering effects from the Trellium-D poisoning
- She had not recovered from the still-recent and extremely painful experiences in the Expanse
- She had just been coerced into a wedding with Koss
- She had unresolved feelings for Trip

Add it all up and T'Pol was an emotional time bomb, just waiting to explode. On top of that, I was writing from T'Pol's POV. I tried to show her inner-most thoughts and all the emotional turmoil she was experiencing. This might have magnified how emotional she seemed.

My thesis was this: Because of the bond, Trip was acting as T'Pol's emotional counterweight. Normally, Vulcans dare not release their suppressed emotions, because they could be destroyed by them. T'Pol was able to do what other Vulcans could not (experience emotion without being destroyed by them) only because she could draw on Trip's strength, and his human ability to deal with emotion.

In retrospect, I didn't do a very good job explaining this in the story, probably because I couldn't figure out how to do it without adding a distracting paragraph of exposition to the narrative.

*Ahem* There is also another reason I gave T'Pol so many raw emotions. This second reason is a closely-held secret, which I have never revealed to anyone else. (It's more secret than my wife's biscotti recipe, which she refuses to share with her friends, and stores in an underground vault at constant temperature in a nitrogen-helium atmosphere.)

I wrote this story as therapy. Yes, therapy. I am new to the Enterprise series; I never saw it when it was first out. Last month, a friend loaned me the season one DVDs and I was hooked. I viewed all four seasons in four weeks. But I was also emotionally scarred by the bone-headed and incompetent manner in which the Trip and T'Pol relationship was handled (rather, mis-handled).

I'm an engineer, but I can suspend my disbelief at all the pseudo-science, techno-babble and hand-wavium that populates the Star Trek universe, and still manage to enjoy the stories. However, I can NOT suspend disbelief at the irrational, illogical, and completely unbelievable way the Trip and T'Pol characters were portrayed. For me, the final straw was the scene in season four when T'Pol begs Trip to return to Enterprise, complete with a desperately passionate kiss, and Trip just smirks at her. Puh-LEASE. This is the same Trip who transferred from Enterprise in the first place because he couldn't get her out of his mind? It's like the writers of each episode had no idea what happened in the previous episodes. Or worse, like they didn't care.

Anyway, I'm a sucker for these star-crossed lover scenarios (I watch Battlestar Galactica primarily because of the Helo/Athena relationship), and the way Trip and T'Pol were handled on the show left me with a severe case of Trellium-D poisoning.

Then I discovered this site, and I learned that there was hope for Trip and T'Pol after all. The healing began. I wrote my story, and the healing continues. I can now take short trips from my darkened bedroom, and the voices only talk to me at night. I have canceled the mafia contract I put out on Berman and Braga, and next week I might cancel the Fatwah calling for their martyrdom, if I continue to show progress.

Thank you, all, for the therapy. I'm feeling MUCH better.

[Distracted]

I'm an engineer, but I can suspend my disbelief at all the pseudo-science, techno-babble and hand-wavium that populates the Star Trek universe, and still manage to enjoy the stories.

Hand-wavium

Welcome to group therapy, dear.

[Asso]

Mh... therapy...
Mh...It's just so.

[justTripn]

OK. I buy all that. Your story was awesome. AND fresh. Welcome.

[panyasan]

Thanks for your story and insights why you portrayed T'pol like you did. It does makes sense to me and makes me understand your story better. Great that you are an engineer, seems to me a very interesting profession (I have worked with engineers for 7 years).
Yes, it looked sometimes if the writers did not know what happened in the last episodes and and it came across to me if they did not care about the characters. Hard to imagine , but anyway they lost a lot of opportunities for good stories in my opinion.
I think you have written a good story, it shows potential, so I would like to encourage you to write more stories, perferably about TnT of course .