Movies - TV
Jolene Blalock Had One Issue With How Star Trek Wrote T’Pol
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
Like Jeri Ryan being introduced in “Star Trek: Voyager” as an attempt to boost ratings, professional model Jolene Blalock was brought on for “Enterprise” to play T’Pol.
While the showrunners hired Blalock for her looks as much as her acting ability, the actress and series co-creator Brannon Braga disagreed on how T’Pol should be characterized.
Since “Enterprise” is set 100 years before the original series and humans were new to space exploration, Blalock argued her Vulcan character should have been confident.
In the book “The Fifty Year Mission,” Blalock shared, “I personally believed that T’Pol should have more of her Vulcan culture. I don’t believe she should be so desperate...”
She continued, “The original ‘Star Trek,’ which I grew up with, had a very simple message that I took from it, and that is that not everyone is like me.”
T’Pol was depicted as struggling with her Vulcan upbringing after living on a ship with humans for several years. For Blalock, the issue was her dialogue.
The actress said, “In the dialogue ... Why is it that when we’re trying to teach each other something, all our analogies involve Earth lore?”
Blalock was also concerned with details and errors on the show, pointing out several problems, such as Vulcan’s not eating with their hands yet showing T’Pol doing so.
Braga and Blalock often butted heads, with Braga saying, “She and I just never saw eye to eye with the character, and she just didn’t like the way the character was going.”
The co-creator attributed Blalock’s workplace difficulties to her being stressed, saying, “We had to shut down for a month. I think she was going through some s***.”