When Enterprise encounters an aged Vulcan freighter and its crew of emotion-exploring Vulcans (known in Vulcan Society as "V'Tosh Katur"), T'Pol warns Archer: "These people are dangerous."
Despite this warning and the fact that one of the Vulcans (Tolaris) is already displaying an aggressively creepy interest in her, Archer first encourages T'Pol to spend time with the V'Tosh Katur, then orders T'Pol to spend extended periods of time on the Vulcan ship with Tolaris on the pretext of monitoring the sensor scans the Vulcans are collecting of the Arachnid Nebula.
Given all this one-on-one time with her, Tolaris harasses, intimidates and harries T'Pol into foregoing her nightly meditation ritual to "help" her engage with her emotions. Once he has manipulated her into permitting him to mind meld with her, Tolaris then assaults her, refuses her demand, then her plea that he stop, and T'Pol ends up badly injured in Sick Bay.
Archer calls Tolaris into his ready room and goads him into a fit of anger. Tolaris assaults Archer and Archer warns him to stay away from his ship and crew.
The episode includes T'Pol in her skimpy pyjamas, T'Pol naked and engaged in a sexual encounter with Tolaris (in a dream sequence) and T'Pol psychologically raped by Tolaris. The episode also includes a depiction of Archer and his crew glorying in these emotional, meat eating Vulcans and casting aspersions at T'Pol and her people in the process.
It ends with a mano-a-mano encounter between the captain and the bad guy with the damsel injured in sick bay.
Can you guess who wrote the story? Yep, Braga and Berman. With Sussman and Strong stepping in to turn their abomination into a screenplay.
Archer's behaviour in this episode, as written by these four individuals, is appalling. He belittles T'Pol and her people, ignores her warnings, orders her into a situation of extreme (and predictable) peril, then acts as if the rape is nothing more than an affront to him as a man.
It has to make you wonder what kind of people these writers are in real life, if they can possibly think that this story, as presented, is even remotely acceptable. Archer is portrayed as the good guy in this. His actions are depicted as laudable and appropriate.
It is horrifying that show like this could have been written and filmed in 2001, not to mention to be intended to be an accurate presentation of the human race as it will evolve by the mid 22nd century.
The episode is so offensive that its more traditional flaws can get obscured.
For example, if the Vulcan freighter is so old that T'Pol can only say its design was discontinued "some time ago", and its propulsion systems are so old that even Tucker can understand and fix them, and it went out of service with the Vulcan High Command so long ago that they have no idea what has happened to it, how does it possibly have sensors that are more advanced than those on Enterprise?
If the Vulcans on board the freighter are involved in a communal effort to explore their emotions, why would they head out into deep space on a dangerously old freighter to do so, rather than settling on some nice comfortable planet somewhere? And why do they still have a Captain, suggesting some form of hierarchical structure to their relationships?
How is it that T'Pol doesn't know what a mind meld is at this point?
Why does T'Pol permit Tolaris to manipulate her as he does? Why is she depicted as being so psychologically vulnerable that, despite her clear discomfort in his presence early on in the episode, she would engage in what she clearly knows are dangerous behaviours with him?
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