the delphic expanse

My topic for friendship is.... Hoshi and T'Pol.

Hoshi and T'Pol? Friends? After seeing all four seasons we hardly seen any sign of friendship between the two leading ladies of the show.

In Sleeping Dogs and Vox Sola (both in season one) we seen a beginning of a friendship. T'Pol takes Hoshi hand in Sleeping Dogs to teach her a meditation techique that makes her relax and in Vox Sola they team up to crack a language.

That's it. I think it's rather strange. Hoshi speaks Vulcan and as a language expert she must have the most knowlegde about Vulcan culture of the crew, beside T'Pol. T'Pol seems to value Hoshi. But there is hardly any interaction between the two, which it's strange after the gestures of friendship from T'Pol side.

Maybe Hoshi came to dislike T'Pol and never expressed it. Any thoughts?

The certainly seemed to be exploring the idea of friendship between the two in those episodes, but it was dropped.

I suppose T'Pol being her superior and not inclined to socialize with her underlings played a part. Also, Hoshi seems to have had friends on the ship, not only Travis but seems to have gotten along with others, unseen. Perhaps she just wasn't inclined to be friends with T'Pol.

On one level, it's kind of refreshing that the two women appeared to respect each other professionally and like each other, but they did not need to do "girl" stuff or socialize.

T'Pol does say during Zero Hour (I think) that she is fond of Hoshi, but it certainly doesn't imply friendship.

Honeybee wrote:On one level, it's kind of refreshing that the two women appeared to respect each other professionally and like each other, but they did not need to do "girl" stuff or socialize.

T'Pol does say during Zero Hour (I think) that she is fond of Hoshi, but it certainly doesn't imply friendship.

I didn't remember that quote, but it throws new light on their relationship. It's nice to think they have a professional relationship - even fondness - without being friends that spent time together.

I think if they ever got into a conversation beyond work related stuff, it would be very interesting, given their unique talents and character.

I always perceived this as T'Pol being pretty closed off to all of her juniors, which is probably a Vulcan thing. I mean, if you really look at the show like that, the only real friends T'Pol has are Archer (which more often than not came across as mostly misplaced hero worship on her part, IMO, but there were occasions where I actually bought the friendship - the compass scene in season 4, for example), Tucker (with whom her ... friendship is all sorts of complicated), and Phlox (although that seems more of a professional friendship than a personal one.) She doesn't really interact with Reed, Sato or Mayweather unless necessary ...

But a lot of that could be due to the show's attempt to replicate the Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic with the Big Three...

I never got a sense of hero-worship over Archer from T'Pol, I think.

I simply have a hard time imagining T'Pol and Hoshi having those "girl talk" conversations...but I guess if there really *was* something that she had to discuss with another woman? Depends, I guess.

I do address this, kind of, in one of the sixteen billion in--progress stories I have going right now. I don't make it seem like they're all buddy-buddy, but I did take advantage of something organic to the situation to maybe build it out in a more realistic way--without giving away too much, Hoshi has occasion to tell T'Pol "Oh, no, you're not wearing that...!" and helps her to find something more appropriate. Not condescending, not like they're best friends, but more like Hoshi trying to be nice and hook a sister up. And then from here I can realistically see them getting a little closer during off-duty times.

Aquarius wrote:I never got a sense of hero-worship over Archer from T'Pol, I think.

Different strokes. I never actually bought into their "friendship" myself except on very rare instances, but that's neither here nor there.

I simply have a hard time imagining T'Pol and Hoshi having those "girl talk" conversations...but I guess if there really *was* something that she had to discuss with another woman? Depends, I guess.

Maybe it was Hoshi who convinced T'Pol to ditch the carpet suit between season 2 and 3? Or get her hair done?

THE Rigil Kent wrote:Different strokes. I never actually bought into their "friendship" myself except on very rare instances, but that's neither here nor there.

I'm not saying I thought it was wrong, Rigil. Only that I hadn't perceived it. When I see episodes again, it'll be through a different lens, because now I'll be looking for what you're talking about.

Well, I just posted my holiday fic, which contains a friendship between Hoshi/T'Pol. Okay, so it's me. The friendship is a little twisted and it is in the MU.



Shakaik

Old Post

I think if there were any kind of friendship Hoshi would have to work hard at it because I don't think it's in T'Pol's nature to try to form friendships, at least early on in her time on Enterprise. At that same time, Hoshi was also very young - she's only supposed to be 22 when the ship launched and she's very nervous about being in space, etc. so that could be why she didn't try to form a friendship with a senior officer. She may even have an inkling of just how old T'Pol is having studied Vulcans.

I think there's certainly a lot of room for friendship between them. I sent them off to Japan together and had Hoshi give T'Pol a different view point on Humans and Trip.