Vanishing Point (episode)

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 Sato and Trip Tucker are on an unnamed planet, devoid of lifeforms, taking pictures and gathering data from a set of ruins. They wonder what happened to the people that built the ruins and are forced to leave their work when they learn that a diamagnetic storm is approaching. Before they can reach the shuttlepod, another storm pushes the first one in much faster than expected, 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. Sato is hesitant to use the transporter and relates her fears of having scrambled molecules to Tucker while they await transport. However, after being reassured over the communicator that Tucker is fine, Sato beams up to the ship, and the transport sequence goes smoothly and without incident.

As it is the first time she has used the transporter, Sato starts to feel that things are not quite right. When she 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 crewmembers jokingly tease her, relating the story of Cyrus Ramsey, a man who was lost in an early transporter test and subsequently became the subject of various ghost stories. Despite the obvious familiarity her friends show with the legend (even Dr. Phlox has heard the stories, after being stationed on Earth for a mere nine months), Sato has never heard of Cyrus Ramsey before.

Sato 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 uncharacteristically overslept by three hours and missed the beginning of her shift. When she arrives on the bridge, Captain Archer informs her that Tucker and Travis Mayweather have been taken hostage on the planet by aliens that, somehow, hadn't been detected the day before. Sato is not able to be of any help, failing to translate a simple bi-modal syntax. Her relations with the crew increasingly deteriorate, with crewmembers apparently ignoring her more frequently. Because of her failure with the alien language and her missing shifts, Sato begins to question her own competence, and her duties are eventually assumed by another crewman.

After a couple of visits to sickbay, Phlox still can't find anything wrong with her, attributing Sato's strange experiences to emotional trauma caused by her experience with the transporter. A short time later, while in the gym, Sato 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 Sato, the crew begins to search the ship for her. While sitting, undetected, in sickbay, she hears Phlox tell Archer and T'Pol that he had missed some subtle changes between two bioscans, taken only twenty-four 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 Sato 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, Sato 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 Enterprise's 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 experiences since beaming back to the ship had been hallucinations, including the alien saboteurs and the story of Cyrus Ramsey.

Memorable Quotes
"Welcome to the club."
 * - Reed, to Sato on joining him, Archer, Novakovich, two unnamed security officers, and, most recently, Tucker, 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."
 * - Sato and Tucker, 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."
 * - Sato, 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 Sato

"You're upside down, Ensign."
 * - Tucker to Sato while in the gym's gyroscope

Background Information

 * Filming for this episode began on and was wrapped up on.
 * Keone Young previously played Buck Bokai in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season one episode.
 * 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.
 * 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.

Continuity

 * This episode establishes that Hoshi initiated the convention of using the word "beam" as a verb (as in, "Beam Me Up, Scotty.")

Starring

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

Guest star

 * Keone Young as Hoshi's Father

Co-stars

 * Gary Riotto as Alien #1
 * Ric Sarabia as Alien #2
 * Morgan Margolis as Crewman Baird
 * Carly Thomas as Alison

Uncredited co-stars

 * Mark Correy as Alex
 * Hilde Garcia as Crewman Rossi
 * Glen Hambly as a operations division ensign
 * Bryan Heiberg as an operations division crewman
 * John Jurgens as a command division crewman
 * Martin Ko as a command division ensign
 * Marnie Martin as an operations division crewman
 * Lidia Sabljic as a command division crewman
 * Jessica Vash as a command division ensign

External link


Vanishing Point Vermisst Vanishing Point Vanishing Point ja:ENT:転送空間の恐怖 Vanishing Point