Fallen Hero

*** (3 stars out of 5)

We now return you to our spit-take already in progress. Archer and Tucker are taken aback at T'Pol's abrupt suggestion that they get laid immediately. To improve ship's efficiency, she's already arranged a little something-something.  You know, like Spock and Tuvok always used to do for THEIR Captains. (Well, in Fan Fic, anyway.) To that end she sets a course for Risa... planet of triple-cupped tri-kinis, double-pouched speedos, and next-day regret.

Still, before we get TOO excited, here's a bland, well-trod story about Vulcan politics. V'Lar was ambassador to the Mazarites, and role model to T'Pol. T'Pol once asked V'Lar to autograph her still-unopened shrink-wrapped copy of Seven Logical Mating Positions To Be Used Once Each for the First 49 Years of Your Adult Life. (The title loses something in the translation.) But the starry-eyed, puffy-lipped young T'Pol was too terrified to approach when V'Lar offered her a hearty handshake. She offers them to everyone- Curzon Dax and Noonien Soong spring to mind for some reason.

Enterprise must escort the diplomat safely to the rendezvous with the Vulcan ship Sh'Raan. (That loveable Andorian commando is so rad even his enemies name ships after him!)

The nonsensical plan here enacted is that since V'Lar is key witness in a corruption scandal on Mazar, the "Fallen Hero" must come under a false cloud of suspicion herself, be spirited away by third party humans, and when the heat dies down, pop back up again at the trial... and still seem credible. Riiight.

Fortunately, this will probably work: if the hired goons sent to rub her out are any indication of Mazarite intellect. Firing blindly into Phlox's imaging chamber, waiting for the vital signs monitor to stop bleeping, then walking out without checking for a corpse seems like a shoddy work ethic. They probably attended the Rocksteady and Bebop School for Whackin' Dem Pesky Toitles.