“Fusion”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Phyllis Strong & Mike Sussman
Directed by Rob Hedden
Season 1, Episode 17
Production episode 017
Original air date: February 27, 2002
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. Enterprise is approaching the Arachnid Nebula, which was on the cover of Archer’s first astronomy book, which his father gave him when he was eight. Now he gets to check it out in person.
A Vulcan civilian ship, the Vahklas, approaches. The captain, Tavin, has heard of Enterprise, and is actually friendly and stuff, which confuses the heck out of Archer. Turns out Tavin and his crew are all V’tosh ka’tur—Vulcans without logic. Tavin and his first mate, Tolaris, correct that, as they haven’t abandoned logic, they just don’t think that emotions need to be as heavily tamped down as the mainstream of Vulcan society thinks.
Tavin and Tolaris also eat meat. Privately, T’Pol tells Archer that every Vulcan who has attempted what the Vahklas crew is trying has failed. Vulcan emotions are too turbulent, and need to be controlled.
The Vahklas has a bunch of repair issues, and Archer has them tether to Enterprise while they explore the nebula and has Tucker provide them with engineering assistance. Tucker works with Kov, who has several misapprehensions about humanity that Tucker amusedly corrects. (Football players aren’t trying to kill the quarterback, e.g.)
Tolaris flirts with T’Pol, who mostly responds with indifference, at least at first. Tolaris notes that her emotions are closer to the surface than that of most Vulcans, which is probably because of her time both on Earth and serving on Enterprise. T’Pol is surprised to learn that Tolaris and the rest of the crew do meditate, but not every night. Tolaris suggests that she try not meditating for a few nights, as it will make her dreams more interesting.
T’Pol foregoes meditating and has a complex dream involving her on Earth going to a jazz club and also her having sex with Tolaris. The next morning, she goes to sickbay with a headache, and decides she won’t go without meditating before bed again.
The Vahklas has better sensors than Enterprise, so they offer to help survey the nebula. T’Pol works with Tolaris on that, and Tolaris also encourages her to try not meditating again. She eventually tells him about part of her dream—she describes the jazz club, but leaves out the sex-with-Tolaris bit—and he offers to help her deal with the dreams and the emotions associated with them.
Forrest contacts Archer with a message from Soval: Kov’s father is a minister in the Vulcan High Command, and is also dying. He wishes to speak to his son, but Kov has refused all communiqués. Forrest asks Archer to try to convince Kov to talk to his old man. Kov politely refuses, saying that he and his father said goodbye a long time ago, when his father said Kov had brought shame to fifteen generations of their family.
Tucker also works on Kov, telling him about regret and that it’s a particularly powerful emotion. Kov eventually gives in and contacts his father.
Tolaris tells T’Pol about an ancient ritual that is no longer practiced among Vulcans called a mind-meld. He says it will help deal with the emotions even more than meditation would. But when the meld gets too intense, T’Pol tries to end it. Tolaris refuses to do so, and T’Pol, after saying “no” several times, finally manages to disengage from the meld. Tolaris leaves, and T’Pol collapses.
Archer confronts Tolaris for assaulting his science officer. He provokes Tolaris to throw Archer across the room, causing the captain to smugly (if painfully) say that maybe his emotional control isn’t all that and a bag of chips. Archer kicks him off Enterprise and sends Vahklas on its way.
T’Pol asks Archer if he dreams, and he says he does. She asks if they’re pleasant, and he says they are. She says she envies him that.
The gazelle speech. Archer is thrilled at getting to see for real the nebula on the cover of his first astronomy book, which he stared at all the time when he was a kid. He also is surprised to learn that the nebula is eight billion kilometers across—the textbook said it was only six-and-a-half billion. (Sato allows as how they should send their survey results to the publisher so they can put out a revised edition.)
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol has her first mind-meld, which turns into an assault.
Florida Man. Florida Man Corrects Hilarious Misapprehension That Football Is A Fight To The Death.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox tells T’Pol that, if she’s going to continue to try dreaming without meditating, she should take it slow, advice she doesn’t entirely follow…
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… The V’tosh ka’tur are outcasts from Vulcan society.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Tucker tells Kov about a woman he had a crush on in high school, but he never worked up the courage to talk to her. He regrets not doing so to this day. Also T’Pol is attracted to Tolaris, having a few dreams about him.
More on this later… Kov blithely tells Tucker and Reed all about the pon farr (though he doesn’t name it), which was established in “Amok Time” on the original series, and which most Vulcans don’t discuss hardly at all—which Kov mentions also. Tucker and Reed are likely the first humans to be told about Vulcan mating habits…
In addition, we find out that mind-melds, which were established in the original series’ “Dagger of the Mind,” and which were used regularly on the original series and Voyager, as well as periodically on TNG and DS9, were apparently verboten in the twenty-second century.
I’ve got faith…
“‘From the library of Admiral Jonny Archer’?”
“I had high hopes when I was a kid.”
–T’Pol reading the nameplate in Archer’s astronomy book and Archer being adorable.
Welcome aboard. Enrique Murciano plays Tolaris. Robert Pine, the father of Christopher “Kirk in the Bad Robot movies” Pine, and who was last seen in Voyager‘s “The Chute,” plays Tavin.
John Harrington Bland plays Kov. The role was originally offered to Matt Malloy, who couldn’t take the part because of a movie he was filming. They then cast Kelly Connell, who had to pull out due to illness, at which point Bland was cast. Malloy will later be cast as a Ferengi in “Acquisition.”
Plus Vaughn Armstrong is back again as Forrest.
Trivial matters: Forrest passes on a message from Soval, which indicates that the ambassador has returned to Earth after being recalled in “Shadows of P’Jem.”
This is the first time we’ve seen the interior of a Vulcan ship that wasn’t the limited perspective shown over a viewscreen, though the Vahklas is an older model that isn’t in much use anymore.
In the second-season episode “Stigma,” it will be revealed that the mind-meld in this episode will result in T’Pol contracting Pa’nar Syndrome.
While this is the only time the phrase V’tosh ka’tur has been used on screen, it’s reasonable to assume that Sybok from The Final Frontier was also considered thus.
It’s been a long road… “You and your colleagues have chosen a reckless path.” When Enterprise first debuted, there was a very loud, very vocal subset of Trek fandom that hated the show, not so much because of the quality of the writing or acting, but because they felt that it violated continuity and ruined what came before and had to take place in an alternate timeline and any number of other complaints that a) were ridiculous and b) should sound familiar to anyone who’s observed the behavior of a similar subset of fandom with regard to Discovery over the last five years.
Most of the complaints were, as I said, ridiculous, but there was one that I found myself nodding in affirmation with: the notion that twenty-second-century Vulcans didn’t do mind-melds, and it was an old ritual that nobody really practiced anymore.
It was a plot choice that I always found baffling. I guess they thought that they could get story mileage out of showing the Vulcans coming back to the mind-meld, but it’s at least partly a biological function—Vulcans are touch telepaths, which means that almost any touch would have some telepathic component. That’s just an odd thing for Vulcan society to repress, especially given the meld’s useful medical applications.
On top of that, it’s not even a little bit necessary to this story. The events of “Fusion” don’t require that the meld be this forbidden old thing they don’t do anymore. It’s such an intrinsic part of Vulcan lore in the franchise anyhow, so why bother having the extra layer of having it be forbidden? I guess to show that the Vahklas crew are rebels and won’t be hemmed in by squares, but the rest of the episode did a pretty good job of that already.
The thing is, even with that oddity, I was really grooving on this episode, for the most part, until the ending. I love the idea of Vulcan hippies, especially because they’re not pure hedonists, they simply have a different interpretation of Surak’s teachings.
The conversations between Kov and Tucker are particularly entertaining, with some good emotional content from Connor Trinneer when he talks about his high school crush.
And the storyline with Tolaris and T’Pol almost works. Tolaris is a predator of the worst kind, but T’Pol is obviously intrigued by him and the others, no doubt “corrupted” by living among humans. But things go too far too fast, and when she tries to stop it, he refuses.
I must admit to being annoyed at first, because this was an assault, but then the very next scene was Archer telling Tolaris that he assaulted a member of his crew—
—except he uses this information, not to bring Tolaris to any manner of justice, but for a “gotcha” moment to prove that his emotional control isn’t as strong as he thinks it is, which results in Archer getting thrown across his own ready room.
And that’s it! Now while it’s true that Archer has no jurisdiction over a Vulcan civilian, he can, at the very least, report Tolaris to his captain in the hopes that Tavin might do something about it. As it stands, Tavin has completely disappeared from the narrative after the captain’s mess scene, which is a blown opportunity.
In the end, T’Pol gets mentally raped, and her rapist suffers absolutely no consequences for it. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, which combines with the peculiarity of how they handled mind-melds to pretty much ruin an otherwise strong episode.
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido is also reviewing the new episodes of Discovery and Picard that are airing side-by-side in these early weeks of March.
I agree that the retcon about mind-melding was hard to reconcile, especially given that everything we learned in “Amok Time” about childhood betrothals was kept intact later on in the series. Don’t those betrothals involve a telepathic bond? Even the show retconned this later on, since here, T’Pol acts as though she’s never heard of the mind meld, but “Stigma” next season would establish that melders are a known and ostracized subset of Vulcan society. So even the show’s own makers apparently felt they went overboard here. I tried my best to reconcile all this in my Enterprise novels, but it doesn’t fit together perfectly.
But I do like the idea of the V’tosh ka’tur, and I’ve followed up on it to some extent in my novels too (e.g. by having other Vulcans perceive Spock as one after his emotional epiphany in ST:TMP). Trek (and other screen sci-fi) has too much of a tendency to stereotype entire species as having only a single culture and belief system among them, so it’s great when they do stories like this establishing that there are actually opposing points of view within a single alien civilization.
Still, the story is a little muddy on exactly what it’s trying to be about. Do Tolaris’s actions mean that the Vulcans are right about relaxing their control being too dangerous? That doesn’t seem to be the case, since the other VKs are perfectly nice and sympathetic. It seems that Tolaris is just a predatory jerk. All in all, it feels kind of like an attempt to revisit the ideas of TNG: “Violations,” but less successfully.
Odd that this episode established the idea that Vulcans in that time period didn’t do mind melds but also talked about Pon Farr, which is part of a mating ritual that starts at age 7 with a mind meld!
And what about the katra? What did a dying Vulcan in that time period do with his/her katra? In the TOS Movie time period, he/she mind melds with a carrier (usually another Vulcan) to bring the katra to the Hall of Ancient Thought. Did that just pop out from nowhere sometime between the 22nd and 23rd centuries?
It’s been a while since I watched aEnterprise, and I mistakingly thought this was the episode with Fionnula Flanagan. I guess not.
@krad, I most definitely agree with you that failing to show his crew-mates reaction to Tolaris’ mistreatment of T’Pol is an own goal that ends a fairly solid episode with a car crash – if nothing else, leaving us with note of frightening ambiguity where it comes to the morality of these atypical Vulcans should have been a deliberate choice, rather than what amounts to an accident of scripting.
Going by what we see in the rest of this episode, I seriously doubt that Tolaris’ crewmates would be happy with his treatment of T’Pol; they might, however, become the victims of their own enlightenment and offer him a chance for counselling (Rather than flush him out the airlock like the … well, we all know what he is), displaying a generosity of spirit one suspects that he would abuse.
It’s all too easy to imagine Tolaris becoming a negative influence on the younger Sybock (Since it’s easy to imagine the Vahklas and her merry crew doing their culture-counter thing well into the 23rd century, even easier to imagine the elder son of Sarek being powerfully drawn to their way of thinking).
I also find the taboo nature of mind-melding in the pre-Reformation 22nd century quite an interesting plot point; while Vulcans are tactile telepaths, they’re also notably leery of touching & being touched with good reason – the individual Vulcan has enough trouble dealing with their own emotions without having to deal with those of others and the Mind Meld obliges an individual to not only feel the emotions & sense the thoughts of another on a facile level, but to take a deep dive into everything a Good Vulcan is taught to regard as personal, private and rather dangerous.
With that in mind it makes perfect sense that, at certain points in Vulcan history, mainstream culture would be very, very uncomfortable with this particular discipline (especially given the ways in which it can be abused, as show in this episode, in THE FINAL FRONTIER & THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY); one would also like to point out that history is always more back-and-forth than a strict, lineal progression – so it makes perfect sense that the respected discipline of one era could well be the untrustworthy, ill-regarded practice of another.
Right, with the Heavy Stuff out of the way, can we emphasise how shockingly adorable this episode can be? Captain Archer looking back on Admiral Johnny, Hoshi Sato cheerfully giving the boss the chance to make a Geek moment EVEN BETTER, the crew of Vahklas being (with one dishonourable exception) the nicest Vulcans this side of Mr Spock, Trip & Kov being buddies … yes, this would be a remarkably nice episode without that d*** Tolaris.
Honestly, if they’d had a little more Porthos this episode might have somehow managed to be horrible & adorable at once (though not at the same time).
” . . . report Tolaris to his captain in the hopes that Tavin might do something about it.”
Fat chance on anything coming of it. The whole thing smells like a cult, and they’ll protect each other.
Unfortunately, that’s reality. Ask anyone who’s watched their harasser or assaulter “moved to another position, away from you” that essentially amounts to a promotion.
Hell, Archer taking T’Pol’s word that she was assaulted is a hell of a lot more progress than where we’re at now, forget when this was written.
Which is why I simultaneously like and really don’t like this episode. It’s too uncomfortably real, right down to the damage done beyond the initial assault and no consequences for that, either. Up to and including the “gotcha” versus providing support to the victim and trying to achieve actual consequences against a predator.
I also don’t like that this was the one thing used to show “intense emotions bad.” As someone who has had my emotions weaponized against me and used to shame me, this idea that Tolaris was dangerous because of his intense emotionality and lack of control is not just insulting, but hazardous to me. Tolaris is dangerous because he is a manipulative, entitled [expletive] who doesn’t respect boundaries, full-stop. Not to mention the whole idea that people with intense emotions only have the choice to bury them or hurt other people.
I wish I could say the end was infuriating or outrageous. Unfortunately it’s just all too much the way it’s always gone. I don’t know why we’d automatically expect a 22nd century that can’t even achieve gender parity (only a third of the crew isn’t men, and they’re proud of that? The top admirals are all men?) to be any better.
I haven’t seen this episode either but I have seen it’s successor, “Stigma,” which I enjoyed, so I’ll be sure to check this one out purely for the connection.
I would be outraged if my mind were violated – thoughts and memories being accessed without my permission. So it surely is a failing of this story that Archer and T’Pol didn’t push for any kinds of consequences against Tolaris. One can presume that in today’s climate that if the episode were written today that the aggressor would be shown receiving some form of justice.
I have to disagree with our esteemed reviewer about the revelation that the Vulcans of the 22nd century don’t mind meld. I liked the fact that it is a notable difference and that it was a storytelling opportunity to show a little bit of “getting from there to here” (to quote a certain song).
Given that many of the Vulcans of the first three seasons (including T’Pol herself) are essentially lapsed from the “true faith” of Surak, it makes sense that they would also abandon telepathy as a distasteful display of internal emotion. Also, I imagine that the Romulan influence we see in season 4 may have played a role. I can’t imagine anyone as secretive as the Romulans would want a talent for telepathy cultivated
You’re upset because the rapist didn’t come to justice? Good. THAT makes the message and the story more impactful. In fact, your reaction proves it. If it had just been another typical “rape is bad, mmmkay kids?” it wouldn’t have had quite the effect. I dont think any person would watch this episode and be stupid enough to think “well golly gee, the raper didnt get punished so that must, mean rape is OK!” The message doesn’t have to be explicit. Star Trek fans, especially, arent stupid.
Give the viewer a little credit.
“Just because they smile and eat chicken doesn’t mean they’ve learned to master their emotions.”
Another episode where the main selling point is the growing bond between Archer and T’Pol. Again, he’s somewhat amused by her discomfort at being around emotional Vulcans (and bemused at the fact there actually are emotional Vulcans) but it’s also clear how much he cares for her deep down: He expresses concerns about her spending time with Tolaris fairly early on, and at the end he comes across almost like a protective father warning off an unsuitable boyfriend. Their final scene is full of subtext as they perhaps begin to understand each other a bit better. Tolaris was right about one thing: Living among humans has changed T’Pol, in the same way that her being around has changed their perception of Vulcans.
As for T’Pol’s view about the Vulcans, it feels a bit like the episode is trying to offer a simple answer. By the end of it, Tolaris has been shown to be a bad egg, but he’s one of three V’tosh ka’tur we meet here and Tavin and Kov both seem quite calm and even personable. (And Tolaris comes across as pretty sleazy throughout, so it’d be a bigger shock if he wasn’t the bad guy.) Perhaps the conclusion we should draw from this is that it may not be completely impossible for Vulcans to reintegrate emotions while still controlling them, but they have to be very very careful about it.
It’s mentioned that T’Pol’s been on board Enterprise seven months. Forrest refers to High Command letting her stay on board (following “Shadows of P’Jem”). Tucker says a third of the crew are female. Kov statement about Vulcan males being driven to mate every seven years ties in with what we’ve been hearing since “Amok Time” but his statement that they’re working to accelerate the cycle is rather curious. Maybe it’s, ahem, better during pon farr?
I have to agree with Krad’s point about the ending. As powerful as Archer’s confrontation with Tolaris is, and even satisfying in a way, ultimately he gets away with…a telling off. As I said above, the episode seems to turn an individual crime into a collective one, as Archer’s response is to make all the Vulcans leave, rather than, as Keith suggests, trusting them to discipline one of their own.
The point about mind melds, though, seems to be at best criticising the wrong episode. The change of showrunners probably doesn’t help, because it seems as though the premise changes with every episode it’s brought up. Mind melds being forbidden is how it’s presented in “Stigma” next season. Here, T’Pol acts as though she’s never heard of mind melds and Tolaris says the technique was abandoned centuries ago, which doesn’t really fit with them being the great cultural taboo that we’re told they are later on. How realistic is this? Well, I don’t think it’s as simple as them being touch telepaths so they must do it all the time: It’s always been presented as something that requires rigorous mental training to do with any skill. It seems more likely that, both here and in the next two centuries, Vulcans actually undergo training to avoid this sort of thing except in circumstances where it’s felt necessary or desirable. So I’m willing to give them this one for now, but it’s a subject that I think we’ll be revisiting a lot!