Jolene Blalock disliked how T’Pol was written

As a lifelong Star Trek fan, Jolene Blalock was excited about portraying a Vulcan on Star Trek: Enterprise. She was also a big fan of Mr. Spock’s so playing a Vulcan was especially exciting. Until the Enterprise writers changed how T’Pol acted as a Vulcan, essentially, giving her emotions and removing a lot of the characteristics that make a Vulcan a Vulcan. .At one point, Blalock said “you might as well clip the ears,” because the writers were removing everything that made her a different species.

In addition, Blalock took issue with how loosely the writers played with realism. Though most of the plots called for suspended reality, there were real problems within those storylines that she objected to. For instance, her hair, more often than not, didn’t move even in a fight scene.

"T’Pol’s hair doesn’t move – even in battle! And if it does, we re-shoot it. We don’t bleed here, and nobody dies. Give me a break! And we’re all-knowing. Where’s the risk? Where the danger?"

And once T’Pol had resigned her commission with the Vulcan High Command at the beginning of Season 3, another problem took shape. The uniform Blalock had to wear changed, and it opened up the neckline, providing a little more cleavage. Though Brannon Braga said T’Pol simply needed a new uniform because she was no longer a member of the Vulcan High Command, costume designer, Robert Blackman said “The ratings dropped. That’s the frank, real answer.”

Unsurprisingly, Blalock took issue with the change in uniform because of the way it was used, the intent being to draw eyes to the screens for all the wrong reasons.

"You can’t substitute t*** and a** for good storytelling. You can have both, but you can’t substitute one for the other, because the audience is not stupid. You can’t just throw in frivolous, uncharacteristic… well, bull and think it’s gonna help the ratings!"

And she was right. Even though I am a fan of Enterprise, I know there were many episodes that could have been written so much better, and some that shouldn’t have been written at all.  Apparently, no one listened to Blalock, and even though Season 4 got increasingly better, it wasn’t enough to save the series which was canceled in 2005.