Changes: Vanishing Point (episode)

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Following her first experience with the transporter, an eerie series of events makes Hoshi think she is becoming invisible to the rest of the crew.

Summary

Hoshi and Trip are on an unnamed planet, taking pictures and gathering data from a set of ruins. They are forced to leave their work when they learn that a diamagnetic storm is approaching. Before they can reach the shuttlepod, another storm blows in very quickly, so they are forced to use the transporter to return to Enterprise. They must transport one at a time due to the storm's interference. Hoshi is hesitant to use the transporter and relates her fears of having scrambled molecules to Tucker while they await transport.

As it is the first time she has used the transporter, Hoshi starts to feel that things are not quite right. When Hoshi goes to relax and change her uniform in her quarters she sees her reflection in the mirror fade away and water drops pass through her hands as she is taking a shower, among other things. Later, in the mess hall, some of her fellow crew members jokingly tease her, relating the story of Cyrus Ramsey, a man who was lost in an early transporter test, which she has never heard before.

Hoshi retires to her quarters for the night, hoping to feel better in the morning. She is awakened by an emergency call from T'Pol and realizes that she has overslept by three hours and missed the beginning of her shift. When she arrives on the bridge, Captain Archer informs her that Trip and Mayweather have been taken hostage on the planet by aliens that, somehow, hadn't been detected the day before. Hoshi is not able to be of any help, failing to translate a simple bi-modal syntax. Hoshi's relations with the crew increasingly deteriorate, with crew members apparently ignoring her more frequently. Because of her failure with the alien language and her missing shifts, Hoshi begins to question her own competence, and her duties are eventually assumed by another crewman.

After a couple of visits to sick bay, Phlox still can't find anything wrong with her, attributing Hoshi's strange experiences to emotional trauma caused by her experience with the transporter. A short time later, while in the gym, Hoshi vanishes completely. Although she is still conscious, she cannot see herself in the mirror and is unable to interact with her environment.

When they can find no trace of Hoshi, the crew begins to search the ship for her. While sitting, undetected, in sick bay, she hears Phlox tell Archer and T'Pol that he had missed some subtle changes between two bioscans, taken only 24 hours apart, indicating that her sub-cellular membranes were degrading. Later, while in the transporter room, again undetected, she hears Tucker tell Archer, T'Pol, and Phlox that the secondary phase coils are out of alignment, and that was the source of the problem with the transporter when Hoshi went through it. She is unable to tell the crew that she is still alive and can not help but watch as Archer calls her father to inform him of her death.

In her wanderings through the decks of Enterprise, Hoshi encounters two aliens who are planting bombs throughout the ship. Because of her condition, she is not able to warn anyone and, in the end, she takes it upon herself to save the ship and crew from destruction. That eventually leads her to use an alien transporting device, which mysteriously brings her back to the transporter room. There, Malcolm explains that she had been trapped for 8.3 seconds in the pattern buffer because of the storms on the planet's surface. This leads her to the realization that all of her recent experiences had been hallucinations, including the alien saboteurs and the story of Cyrus Ramsey.

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Memorable Quotes

"Welcome to the club."

- Malcolm, to Hoshi on joining himself, Captain Archer, Novakovich, two unnamed security officers, and, most recently, Trip as the only Humans who have gone through the transporter on Enterprise.

"It was very unsettling. Didn't you find it unsettling?"
"For a minute or two, but once I counted my fingers and toes..."
"I don't know, I just don't feel right."

- Hoshi and Trip, discussing their recent experience with the transporter.

"Ever since I used that transporter, nothing has been the way that it's supposed to be. I couldn't translate a simple bimodal syntax but Crewman Baird could. Crewman Baird doesn't know the first thing about our linguistic database! And Captain Archer told me to stay in my quarters, but my mirror doesn't want to give me a solid reflection and my shower can't decide whether to bounce off me or go through me! And nobody wants to talk to me."

- Hoshi, lamenting about her situation to Phlox

"Transporter technology is very new. I'm sure Humans were equally frightened when the automobile was introduced, or the aeroplane. New forms of transport take a while to get used to. I'm not at all surprised at your reaction - you wouldn't catch me using that apparatus."

- Phlox, sharing his opinion of the transporter with Hoshi

Background Information

Filming for this episode began on 2 October 2002 and was wrapped up on 10 October 2002. [1]
Keone Young previously played Buck Bokai in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season one episode "If Wishes Were Horses".
Hoshi's imagined experience is not unlike that of Ensign Ro Laren and Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge during their encounter with a Romulan interphasic cloaking device in "The Next Phase".
Among the items from this episode which were sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay was the alien explosive device. [2]

Links and references

Starring

Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer
John Billingsley as Phlox
Jolene Blalock as T'Pol
Dominic Keating as Malcolm Reed
Anthony Montgomery as Travis Mayweather
Linda Park as Hoshi Sato
Connor Trinneer as Charles "Trip" Tucker III

Guest Star

Keone Young as Hoshi's Father

Co-Stars

References

aeroplane; automobile; bioscan; Ramsey, Cyrus; explosives; hallucination; matter stream; Morse code; pattern buffer; plasma circuit; shuttlepod; S.O.S.; sub-cellular membrane; transporter; transporter phobia; turbolift; universal translator; warp reactor

Previous episode:
"Singularity"

Star Trek: Enterprise
Season 2

Next episode:
"Precious Cargo"

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