Summary
- T'Pol and Trip's romance in Star Trek: Enterprise was unexpected and became a defining element of the show.
- Their relationship was complicated and required finding common ground between a Vulcan and a human.
- Despite odd turns and a tragic ending, T'Pol and Trip's relationship was the central romance of the series.
Star Trek: Enterprise season 3 created an "odd couple" when Subcommander T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) and Commander Trip Tucker (Connor Trinneer) sparked an unlikely romance. The T'Pol got together with Trip by offering to help him heal from the death of his sister by use of Vulcan neuro therapy. This intimacy soon turned the Vulcan Science Officer and the good ol' Southern Chief Engineer into a couple that became one of the defining elements of Star Trek: Enterprise two decades after the series ended.
In "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek" by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Connor Trinner offers his perspective on Trip Tucker and T'Pol's"complicated relationship" on Star Trek: Enterprise. Read his quote below:
For the first couple of years, no one seemed to know if it was going to be Trip and T’Pol or the captain and T’Pol. During the Xindi arc when she was doing all that neuro-pressure or whatever it was called to help him get through the death of his sister, she and Trip began to develop a deepened relationship. I don’t think it was ever on the page initially. What I liked about it was that it was a complicated relationship and it was one where he was trying to find common ground where they could relate to one another. That’s definitely kind of real life-ish. The fact she was a Vulcan and he was a human was a nice facet of the relationship. It was an odd couple.
