And yet, "Vox Sola" is a remarkably effective, creepy, fun episode. I cringe when I think about it. That slime the alien leaves on its victims? Those ultra-fake tendrils? Yuck.
A brief, unsuccessful first contact with an alien race (the "Cretassans"?) has two lingering impacts: 1) Sato suffers a crisis of confidence after her failure to provide adequate translation services during the first contact and 2) a strange, gooey, silly-string alien invades Enterprise from the Cretassan ship.
While the alien sets up camp in a cargo bay, Sato beats herself up about her own failure and interprets every comment her crew mates make to her as criticism. Sato, who complains that the Cretassan language is the most complex she's ever encountered, is especially sensitive to T'Pol, who simply advises her to learn from her failures.
Two minor characters (Rostov and Kelly) go to investigate power issues in the cargo bay and are the first to get sucked into the alien. Archer, Tucker and Reed then head in to see what's up and only Reed escapes. The effects, though cheesy, are remarkably effective and downright creepy as the two minor and two major characters are slowly enveloped in the goo.
T'Pol and the crew identify four approaches to the problem: Phlox looks at it from a medical standpoint; Reed takes the military route; Mayweather takes Enterprise in search of the Cretassans to see if they have any info; and Sato is finally permitted to pursue her suspicion that the alien is sentient and the Star Fleet crew could communicate with it.
Phlox confirms that the alien is sentient and, further, that it is slowly absorbing the four Star Fleet crew into its own body. He warns that soon there will only be one being in the cargo bay once Archer, Reed, Rostov and Kelly are completely absorbed. Phlox also refuses to permit Reed to torture the segment of the alien that they are studying in Sick Bay in his efforts to find a weapon to use against it.
When it becomes clear that attacking the alien means injuring their colleagues (see "Lights of Zetar" from TOS), Reed turns his attention to building a force field that will permit Sato to enter the cargo bay safely as she attempts to communicate with the alien.
Meanwhile, after some verbal jousting, Sato and T'Pol form an alliance to work together on decoding the alien's language, which appears to be mathematical in form. During several extended scenes where the two female characters work together on the problem, they are also able to resolve their own personal conflict as T'Pol assures Sato, in a typically unemotional Vulcan manner, that T'Pol considers Sato to be an asset to the ship and that T'Pol only pushes Sato because she knows the linguist can achieve great things.
Mayweather finds the Cretassan ship but, when hailing frequencies are opened, realizes he is alone on the bridge, facing the unenviable prospect of having somehow to communicate with a race whose language is ridiculously difficult and who get offended quite readily. To Mayweather's surprise, however, the Cretassan captain has taken it upon himself to learn English (??) and, once Mayweather has apologized on behalf of his captain, the Cretassan is willing to help.
Mayweather describes the alien (white with tendrils) and the Cretassan confirms that they had visited its home planet. Instead of being insulted that Mayweather seems to be accusing the Cretassans of inflicting the alien on the Star Fleet crew, the Cretassan sends the coordinates of the alien's home planet.
Using Reed's newly perfected force field, Sato and T'Pol enter the cargo bay and, as their crew mates' life signs fade, start to try to communicate. Several creepy, anxious moments ensue but finally they are successful. The alien gives them latitude and longitude coordinates on its planet and releases the captured crew.
Last scene, Enterprise returns the alien to its home world and it reintegrates itself into the main part of its body that it had left back on the planet.
Beyond the simple effectiveness of its suspenseful and creepy plot, there is much to like in this episode (story by Braga, Berman and Fred Dekker, teleplay by Dekker):
- The discussions of the linguistic challenges posed first by the Cretassan language and then by the alien language are interesting, intelligent and worthwhile;
- The inclusion in the plot of three members of racialised communities (Sato, Mayweather and Kelly, played by African American actress Renée Goldsberry) with reasonably major roles is a refreshing change from the usual all-white all-male productions;
- The inclusion of a crew member with apparently Russian (or similar background), in the form of Rostov, is also nice, since it took TOS a full season and a public outcry to add a Russian to the crew;
- It is great to see an episode with significant roles for women and, most particularly, to see entire scenes played out with female characters interacting with each other while conducting the important work of the ship; and
- It is awesome that Enterprise finally encounters a truly alien alien and, except for Reed, responds to the challenge in a thoughtful, rather than an aggressive and judgmental way.
- If the alien is actually part of a greater whole, why did a piece of it decide to leave the larger body and stowaway onboard the Cretassan ship?
- Why would T'Pol at first reject Sato's suggestion that she work on decoding the alien's language ("we don't have time," she says) when Sato was not needed as the rest of the crew pursued other options -- wouldn't it make sense to order to her to get started rather than permitting her to sit around waiting?
- Why would the Cretassan captain bother learning English after that very negative encounter with humans? And how did he manage to master it so fully in so short a time that he would understand the word "tendrils"? Surely, "tendrils" would not be among the first 1,000,000 words a newcomer to English would add to his vocabulary. I've been learning French for most of my life and I couldn't tell you what the French word is for "tendrils";
- How do the Star Fleet crew members recover so quickly once they are released? Weren't they near death? and
- If Star Fleet has been working on perfecting a forcefield for years (as Reed tells T'Pol), how is that Reed can perfect the technology in less than a day? Will we see more forcefields in future episodes?
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