Episode 28: Carbon Creek

A charming episode that permits an exploration both of an earlier period in Earth's history and of Vulcan-Human relations on a personal scale.

As part of banter over dinner, Archer brings up the issue of performance reviews. As part of his review of T'Pol's file, he noticed that, while on Earth, she had paid a visit to Carbon Creek, Michigan. In answer to his inquiry as to purpose of her visit, T'Pol agrees to "tell a story" for the gratification of her captain  and Tucker.

It would seem that T'Pol's second fore-mother (her great grandmother), T'Mir, paid a visit to Earth in the late 1950s as part of a Vulcan survey crew sent to monitor the Human race after the launch of its first artificial satellite, Sputnik. As a result of a malfunction, the Vulcan ship crashes in a remote area of Michigan, killing the captain and leaving T'Mir in command of the two surviving crew members. They don't know if their distress call was actually sent before the crash so they settle in to try to survive until help arrives.

One of the crew members, Mestral, shows an interest in getting to know the local Humans. T'Mir resists the suggestion until the Vulcan rations run out and the crew faces a choice between interacting with Humans and starving to death. To their surprise, the violence-addicted, nuclear-weapon testing, primitive Humans welcome them into their community and, as time passes, the three obtain employment I(T'Mir in the local pub, Mestral in the mine and the third unnamed Vulcan as a handyman) and begin to develop relationships with the Humans.

T'Mir is hesitant, Mestral is interested and the third Vulcan resists the temptation entirely. When Mestral's relationship with the divorced owner of the local pub, who is saving desperately to permit her precocious son to attend university, begins to take on a distinctly romantic flavour, T'Mir attempts to intervene.

An explosion in the mine traps a group of humans underground and Mestral, over T'Mir's objections, decides to use Vulcan technology to help to rescue them. Once the decision is made, the three Vulcans work together to save the Humans without exposing their tech. Mestral becomes something of a local hero.

Just as they have given up all hope of rescue, T'Mir's communicator beeps. A Vulcan ship is three days away. The three begin to prepare to leave. T'Mir spends one last evening at the bar and, after closing, begins to meditate. The bar owner's precocious son arrives and chats with her about meditation, Earth religions and the fact that he has had to give up his scholarship and his hopes of attending college due to lack of money.

T'Mir heads back to the Vulcan ship and retrieves an item, which she then takes with her on a trip to the big city. There, she reveals the item to be a satchel with a Velcro closure and her plan to be to sell the technology for Velcro in order to obtain sufficient funds to permit the son to attend college.

T'Mir leaves the money in the tip jar on the bar and then permits Mestral to remain behind to spend the rest of his life exploring the Human race, telling the arriving Vulcan captain that both Mestral and the captain died in the crash.

Tucker and Archer challenge the truth of her story and T'Pol refuses to confirm or deny it. When she returns to her quarters, however, she pulls out the purse T'Mir had carried with her to the city, lending some credence to the tale.

It's a nice episode. The exploration of the Human race on the cusp of space travel is interesting and the fact that, but for Mestral, the Vulcans express sincere concern that the Humans' technological knowledge has far outpaced their maturity. The seeds of Vulcan mistrust of Human development, so clearly established in the 22nd Century, are sewn here.

I would have preferred to have seen at least passing references to the climatic and atmospheric differences between Earth and Vulcan (Earth is colder, its air "thicker", its gravity weaker) so as to create at least some form of link with Trek lore. I don't see any justification for the decision to have T'Mir's silhouette projected so crisply on a hanging sheet as she strips naked to don Human apparel near the start of the story -- it's a childish indulgence of the more prurient natures of the show's creators and completely unnecessary in an otherwise high quality episode.