T’Pol turns out to be the ‘cool’ Vulcan, at least by comparison.
The other developing theme of the show, other than the ‘space is dangerous’ message, is ‘we don’t trust the Vulcans yet’. It makes sense – a whole lot more sense than the relationship we see in TOS and beyond. Relationships are based on shared values and interests, and by this metric Humans would seem better allied with the Klingons than the Vulcans.
But there’s still a substantial credibility gap the show has to bridge, in two respects. First, T’Pol needs to be a likeable character to see every week. And second, there has to be some path from here to the situation of TOS and TNG. This episode progresses the first agenda well, but it does so by muddying the water on the second. T’Pol builds credibilty, but mainly by making the other Vulcans look bad. Not so much a problem here, as a difficulty the writers will have to start solving before too long.
Still some poor judgment around. The ‘message to the class’ sequence was a bit cringeworthy. As was the snowman (although at least Archer disapproved of that).
Callbacks: it’s been in a few episodes, but it’s made clear that the ‘protein resequencer’ is indeed the replicator. Someone even asks it for ‘Green Tea, Hot’.
645 down, 92 to go.