Things that didn't make sense in "the_abomination"

[Aikiweezie]

But Trip NEVER blindly followed Archer.

I just watches the ENTIRE series (many episodes multiple times) and there are many instances where Trip and Archer get into ugly arguements because Trip is questioning Archer's decisions.

I never understood where they were going with that.

[Aquarius]

They were just trying to show that because Riker's issue was likewise questioning orders, and he was told to watch this period in history to help him solve his problem. Other than that, it had absolutely no point whatsoever.

[panyasan]

But Trip NEVER blindly followed Archer.

I just watches the ENTIRE series (many episodes multiple times) and there are many instances where Trip and Archer get into ugly arguements because Trip is questioning Archer's decisions.

I agree, and it's also puzzling that Trip and Archer seemed to be best buds again. I mean, when we left off, with Terra Prime, Trip and Archer weren't good friends any more for 2 to 3 years.
Now in this "Everybody loves Archer"-episode, Trip is singing Archers praises. We are told by him that Archer is such a great guy. Isn't the basic rule of story telling "Show us, don't tell us"?
Don't get me wrong, I would applaud a story line where Trip and Archer would reconnect on some level. Instead we get a story that is not consistent on many levels of the episodes we seen before. No continuity.

[Alelou]

Archer and Trip had some rough patches, but I never saw anything that made me conclude they were no longer friends (and I include Daedalus in that). Their different roles certainly got in the way at times, and yes, Trip ultimately forged a closer relationship with T'Pol, but if you ask me they were still friends to the extent the command structure allowed.

[panyasan]

You may have a point: they continued to stay friends on some level, but they driffed apart and were not as close as before. Not best best friends. In a way, Malcolm and Trip are more best friends in season 3 and 4 then Archer and Trip.
In *the_abomination* we seen them drinking a bourbon together and Trip praising Archer. The last time we seen those two have a friendly drink together, was in Shockwave part one, the end of season one. I know, a lot of things can change during six years, but we don't know what happened. So you see them returning to their old friendship and in a way ignoring season 3 and 4 (and to a lesser extent season 2).

[panyasan]

Sorry. Double post.

[Asso]

It just shows that Trip was really their favorite.

Well. Do you think what the hell would they have done to a "not favourite character?"
Alelou, I can understand your reasons, but frankly I think you are smarter than the writers. And subtler, too.
There are times in which people (without exception) act and think stupidly: the writers wanted not to miss their own opportunity.

[Kotik]

It just shows that Trip was really their favorite.

Well. Do you think what the hell would they have done to a "not favourite character?"
Alelou, I can understand your reasons, but frankly I think you are smarter than the writers. And subtler, too.
There are times in which people (without exception) act and think stupidly: the writers wanted not to miss their own opportunity.

ENT writers acting stupid? If *the_abomination* is anything to go by, those guys wouldn' find their own butt without a map and a torch. I'm starting to believe, we give that episode too much credit by just acknowledging its existence by mentioning it.

[Asso]

Eh... eh... You're right.

[Silverbullet]

I guess then the Abomination was praise Archer and to Hell with everyone else.

Given that Hoshi, Malcom, Travis had never been romoted in all those years especially when promotion from Ensign to Lt J.G. is automatic and to Lt almost automatic. Certainly Reed should have made Lt commander by then. TnT broken Romance, Trip basically commiting Suicide. Yup, to Hell with everyone.

NOw Archer, is praised to the skies as the savior of Earth, made Admiral, president of the new Federatiion That is fair and balanced, one side gets screwed and the other gets
everything. that even things out nicely.

Bittter? Who me? Perish the thought.

[Escriba]

I think my biggest problems were the deification of Archer (I think not even Bakula himself liked it, it's shown in his acting) and the apparent lack of mourning (except for the little scene between Archer and T'Pol) of the rest of the crew.

I wrote a little piece time ago, to try to fix this "lack of mourning". I sent it to Alelou, fixed what she said was "wrong" and then forgot about it (so yeah, I can imagine her face of right now ) I'll publish it here (but moderators can erase it if they think it's not the place for it), since it's not very long and I don't think it's good enough to be a proper story (no, really.) It's not beta-read (I can imagine Alelou's face again), so expect the worst And now I go back to lurking again (my study schedule is killing me, I'm exhausted.)

1. Archer

He rubs his hands under the water stream, desperately trying to clean the blood.

He desperately tries not to think of what has just happened. Like a mantra: ‘He’snotdead,he’snotdead,he’snotdead…’

But he is, of course. Trip is dead.

He wonders how he has finished there, wiping the blood of his best friend out of his hands and the only thing that comes to his mind is his first encounter with Trip. It was in Florida, in a sunny day of June. He wanted to go scuba-diving and he met what looked like the tiniest boat and the most irresponsible instructor ever. Until he, overconfident of his ability, made a fatal mistake and only Trip’s speed and professionalism saved his skin. Trip didn’t tell him off, he didn’t even frown, he just burst in laughs because Archer had a starfish stuck to his head.

They talked for hours after that, sat down on the small gunwale. Trip was humble and insecure at that time, and he wasn’t sure if his future was on the space. That’s why he listened to Archer, in awe, while he talked about his father and the warp project and all his dreams. Instead believing he was crazy, Trip asked him which were those dreams. He took the starfish —that was already dry— then and raised it to the blue blue sky and he told him “I want to catch the stars”. And the brilliant Engineer smiled and winked playfully and promised him “We’ll catch them.”

That’s how it began.

Years passed and difficulties seemed to pile up, but it didn’t matter, because there was always the starfish against the blue sky and Trip’s smile and his wink and his promise: “We’ll catch them.”

And one day, their ship was finished and they could, at last, travel through the galaxy. It wasn’t as exhilarating, as funny as he had supposed. On the contrary, it became dangerous and gloomy and almost discouraging. But he dragged Trip with him over the memory of the starfish against the blue sky and Trip’s smile and his wink and his promise.

Mission after mission turned him into a bitter man and detached himself from the crew and especially Trip, until the distance between them became almost physical, like a deep precipice, and sometimes they seemed strangers. But even then he still took Trip’s presence for granted, because he had the starfish against the blue sky and Trip’s smile and his wink and his promise.

His wink and his promise. That’s what he remembers, that’s what he will always remember. But from this day on, there won’t be a starfish or a blue sky, just the alarms and the burnings and the gasps and the blood and among them Trip’s smile and his wink and…

He yells and punches the mirror in front of him. A sharp pain erases the memory. At least for a second. Then there is the crude reality. The Captain’s loneliness.

He moves his hand away from the mirror. Several splinters are stuck in his flesh. He takes them out one by one. The fleeting sting every of them produces is almost comforting. A trickle of blood goes from his knuckles down his fingers. His own blood over Trip’s.

He raises his head. The shattered mirror reflects a myriad of stares.

All of them are accusing him.


1. Phlox

He finishes cleaning the biobed.

Any of his assistants could do it, but he wants to be the one to perform the heartbreaking task. There is something purifying in it, like the ceremony of the ablution in some religions.

After that, he revises his report once more. He searches for any mistake, for any error, for any little detail he left out in the first place.

He tries to focus and ignore the cries, croaks and whimpers of his pets. He tries to ignore the constant flicker of the light that Maintenance hasn’t fixed. He tries to ignore the pungent smell of disinfectant.

He tries to ignore the real metallic stench it tries to conceal.

The report is impeccable, his work was impeccable, and he lets a sigh escape, a shaky reverberation that tickles his sternum and rasps his throat. Anybody should be happy for carrying out his work, for doing as best as he can, but he can’t be; he would rather to make some kind of mistake, because that way, if it happened again, he could prevent it.

He never told anybody, but he hates causality.

His pets seek attention and Phlox rushes to comply their wishes. He is a doctor, but first and foremost, he is a father.

And one dead is enough for today.

Feeding the different animals makes him relax. Vulcans have meditation, he has this.

When he has done it, he opens one of the tallboys and takes out a middle sized box. It is white and seems very used. On its lid is an adhesive tape with an inscription.

Commander Tucker.

Phlox opens the box and does a thorough inventory of every object he placed here for Trip, result of his “bad luck” (rather recklessness) in away missions.

Bandages, of course. Band-aids. Iodine. Various hypo-sprays. Calamine, because even bushes hated him. A “special” thermometer that showed some degrees more than it was real, to convince him he had to rest. T’Pol’s Decalogue of How to Convince Trip to Rest. A book with sudokus for when the treatment was too long for him. The DNA tests of Lorian and Elizabeth. And a pacifier.

He watches carefully each item while he takes them out. Then he closes the box and peels off the tape.


2. Malcolm

He gets out of the turbo-lift, runs along the corridor feeling his heart pounding in his throat, he takes one curve to the left, other to the right…

And there is the hole.

He looks at his watch. 2 minutes and 58 seconds. Two seconds less than what it took them to reach it when the real thing happened. But still too late. It should be an entire minute earlier to prevent the explosion, to prevent the hole, to prevent the rubble, and behind it…

He returns to the Bridge. Once more, he recreates the incident. Intruder alarm, jump for the turbo-lift. Go down. Get out the turbo-lift. Run along the corridor as fast as you can. Curve to the left, curve to the right…

And there is the hole.

He looks at his watch. 2 minutes and 58 seconds.

He wheezes and spits to the ground. He didn’t lose time. He was as fast as he could. But the hole was still there. And each time he sees it, he can only remember the bloody bust, the arm turned in an unnatural position and the bruised face. The coughs and the gobs of blood. There was so much blood. Too much.

He returns to the Bridge and repeats all the process again. Intruder alarm, jump for the turbo-lift and push the bottom while you’re entering. Go down. Get out the turbo-lift. Run along the corridor faster than you ever did. Take the left curve as tight as you can, use the impulse to take the curve to the right…

And there is the hole.

He looks at the watch. 2 minutes and 55 seconds.

He falls to the ground. His lungs hurt, his throat rasps and his head throbs. The shirt under the coverall is soaked by sweat. The bad news are that the exhaustion doesn’t stop his mind from working. He still sees the injured Trip. But he doesn’t want to remember him like that. He wants to picture him as the smiling man inside Shuttlepod One, the best pal who covered for him on Risa, the everyman Trip, the trusted and trusting comrade that worked with him in the Romulan Drone, the silly Trip who could get totally drunk or being completely in love with an aloof Vulcan and still maintained his integrity.

He wants to remember the real person, not rubble covered in blood.

He goes back to the Bridge, although his thighs suffer spasms because the effort. OK, once more. Alarm, turbo-lift, corridor, left turn, right turn…

And there is the hole.



3. Hoshi

There are too many different words for death. Too many nouns, too many verbs, too many expressions.

All of them try to convey the terrible fact of the loss, of the grief, of the emptiness.

“Corpse” is called “cadaver” in Spanish, which in Latin means “to fall” or “the one who has fallen down.” Defunct comes from the Latin expression defunctus terra, “to set free from Earth or the soil.” Sarcophagus comes from Greek and it’s a mixture of the terms for “meat” and “to eat”, because they thought they were ghouls.

Strange, what people think about Death.

The most horrible thing for an ancient Egyptian was for his body to be abandoned in the desert. Australian aborigines can’t say the names of the people that have passed away. Hindus believe that the North is the direction of Death and they place the head of the bodies pointing to that way. The Buddhists believe in the Antarabhava, an intermediate period between death and rebirth which will influence the form that the rebirth shall take. When her grandfather was dying nobody could talk about the funeral and when he expired her parents forbid her to say “four” during the wake because it sounded too much like “death”.

Because that’s another thing: all the euphemisms that exist to name Death. Meeting one's end; passing away; ceasing to breathe; taking one's last sleep; passing in one's chips; joining the greater number; kicking the bucket; buying the farm; pushing up daisies…

She has always believed that using expressions to avoid saying “death” is stupid. She believes that the precise word is the most beautiful thing in this world.

If she wanted to say the most accurate word for death, the one that would convey everything it means, it would be the description of the padd in her hands. A report for Engineering. And its addressee: Commander Tucker. And the empty desk in front of her, with an abandoned mug with the legend “Best Chief” sitting there.

She tries to find a right term to express everything she sees in one, perfect word.

She fails.


4. Travis

The universe is big and exciting and mysterious and he loves it.

He has always loved it: the unpredictability, the continuous surprises, the eternal amazement. Even in the middle of a battle, even after the Xindi or the Romulans, he always looked at the screen in front of his Helmsman’s post eager to see the stars.

He knows the stars. They are like his family, old acquaintances that he visits from time to time, just to know how they are doing.

“You are a breathing poem,” Trip told him when they were on their first Minshara class planet, just before everything went crazy. “Poets write about the stars, but you actually walk among them.”

The universe is still big and exciting and mysterious and he suddenly hates it.


5. T’Pol

She has never cried. Except for the short slip when she was using (abusing) trellium, she never cries.

Vulcans never cry.

She didn’t cry when her father died. She didn’t cry when she realized Jossen was unarmed. She didn’t cry when Tolaris raped her. She didn’t cry when she found out she suffered the Pa’nar Syndrome. She didn’t cry when or after Silik tortured her. She didn’t cry when Trip was crying for his sister in front of her. She didn’t cry after her marriage ceremony, when she saw Trip leaving away. She didn’t cry when her mother died. She didn’t cry while they wrapped her corpse up with some filthy rags they found and they buried her as well as they could. She didn’t cry when Phlox confirmed she was cured from the Pa’nar syndrome. She didn’t cry when Trip left for Columbia. She didn’t cry when he came back. She didn’t cry when baby Elizabeth died. She didn’t cry in her funeral, when Trip was pouring his heart out, clutching her between his shaking arms. She didn’t cry when he told her it wasn’t working. She didn’t cry when he told her they had to break up. She didn’t cry when she saw him the next morning. She didn’t cry for the rest of the time that they kept working together.

She didn’t cry for the entire five years. 60 months. 1826 days. 43824 hours. 2629440 minutes. She didn’t cry when Archer informed her about Trip’s death. She didn’t cry when she saw his corpse.

She never cried.

Archer pats her shoulder, a little clumsily, as if he isn’t very sure of what he is doing. He says he has to go away, something about last minute preparations for the funeral. He is slouched like an old man. For the first time, he seems as if he carries the entire universe on his back. When he leaves the cabin T’Pol can still sniff his faint smell of salt, whisky and medicines.

She gets up from the bunk bed to continue packing Trip’s belongings. When she does so, she involuntarily knocks over the Frankenstein figure on it. It crashes against the floor with an unpleasant sound. She kneels down and takes the pieces. The figure is whole, except for the right arm, detached. She stares at the two parts, not trying to fix them, not leaving them either. Her hands shake. Her sight blurs.

Something warm and wet goes down her cheek.

Surprised, she touches her face.

She is crying.

PS: I know you hate me, Asso

[Asso]

Absolutely.

[Alelou]

You may have a point: they continued to stay friends on some level, but they driffed apart and were not as close as before. Not best best friends. In a way, Malcolm and Trip are more best friends in season 3 and 4 then Archer and Trip.
In *the_abomination* we seen them drinking a bourbon together and Trip praising Archer. The last time we seen those two have a friendly drink together, was in Shockwave part one, the end of season one. I know, a lot of things can change during six years, but we don't know what happened. So you see them returning to their old friendship and in a way ignoring season 3 and 4 (and to a lesser extent season 2).

Actually, at the end of season 2 they're also drinking together as they head out into the Expanse. (And Trip admits T'Pol has grown on him.) In the one where Trip tells Archer he's leaving, Archer's already pulling out the glasses. I think we can deduce that drinking together was a friendly custom for them even if we didn't see it on camera that often.

I do agree, though, that Malcolm and Trip may have become better friends by the end -- which makes sense, because neither one of them is the captain. But you can see in the Vulcan arc how being in command could possibly strain that relationship between them.

[Alelou]

Ooooh, I forgot to nag you about that story, Escriba! I LOVE it now. You should post it for real.

(But yeah, it does need just a quick beta.)

[Asso]

Damn! Angst! Again!