episode4x03e

“Home”
Page 5 of 7on something.” Soval tells him: “Your actions, while being morally questionable, were necessary. I opposed your appointment as captain of Enterprise but it’s obvious now that I was wrong (see season one’s “Shadows of P’Jem”). (Alprazolam) T’Pol has told me that the Expanse would have some day encompassed hundreds of systems, including Vulcan. You’ve done a great service for both our worlds. Thank you.” They shake hands.

At T’Pol’s house, Trip is getting ready to go to the wedding. T’Pol’s mother comes in and tells him “Koss and his family are waiting”. He is wearing T’Pol’s father’s suit. He asks her if she’s bothered that T’Pol doesn’t love Koss. She replies: “She’s fulfilling her family obligation.” She asks if he’s told her he loves her. He tells her he didn’t know he loved her till she told him she was going to marry Koss. He couldn’t tell her he loved her although he wanted to. T’Les tells him to tell her so she’ll “have all the facts”. He doesn’t want to as it will put more pressure on her. They go to the wedding. We see Koss striking the gong. T’Pol is glad Trip’s there and kisses him on the cheek. The wedding goes ahead and she marries Koss.

REVIEW:?
One thing I really like about this show is the attention to continuity within the series. In this episode alone, there are references to nine previous episodes no less:

“The Expanse”, where the Xindi weapon destroyed a good part of the eastern south of the United States down to South America. Trip mentions the death of his sister and the destruction of his home town to T’Pol in the episode “Impulse” where we also have the Vulcan ship ‘Seleya’ trapped in an asteroid field filled with Trellium ore with the Vulcan crew suffering the toxic effects. This is brought up by Ambassador Soval (Vaughn Armstrong) during the debriefings. Another is “Breaking the Ice” where T’Pol postponed her arranged marriage to Koss (Michael Reilly Burke) and of course in this episode the return of Koss and their wedding. Another is “Strange New Worlds” where the Enterprise crew was affected by the psychotropic compounds in the atmosphere. Archer brings this up when talking to Erika Hernandez (Ada Maris), the captain of the NX-02 while mountain climbing. There’s also “The Andorian Incident” where the events that occurred had consequences for T’Pol and in “Shadows of P’Jem” we now see here affected her mother as well, T’Les (Joanna Cassidy) in that she was forced to resign her post at the academy. In “Anomaly”, Archer tortured an alien and in “Damage” the crew took a warp coil from an alien ship leaving them stranded. Archer feels guilty about all this and mentions this to Hernandez and finally “Countdown” where the Xindi-Reptilians injected Hoshi with parasites to get her to work for them. We see Hoshi getting treated for this by Phlox here. It’s great to see the consequences of what happened in those episodes being referred to. And all this was really well done in that even those who haven’t followed the series could still understand what was being said. Kudos to Mike Sussman for a well-written story for the most part.

The episode centers on Archer and the guilt he feels for some of the things he had to do in the Expanse and of course T’Pol and her return to Vulcan with a minor subplot dealing with Phlox and how some of Earth’s people have become xenophobic. It all works well and is