Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About T'Pol
1. Jolene Blalock Was Critical About How The Character Was Written
Jolene Blalock was a fan of the Original Series, and Spock in particular when she agreed to take on the role of T'Pol. She saw from early on that the writers for Enterprise wanted to take her character in a different direction from the Vulcans who had come before, and she wasn't thrilled with that decision.
She famously said that 'you can't substitute t**s and ass for a good story,' when it came to describing her various costumes. However, she also struggled with the general levels of emotion that she was expected to deliver. She saw this as veering away from how Vulcans were supposed to act. She also acknowledged that she thought a relationship between T'Pol and Trip wouldn't work, both for her own Vulcan self, and for Trip's frequent emotional outbursts.
Finally, she believed that T'Pol was better than some of the directions she had been taken. She had been given a fatal disease, which went largely unaddressed. She became an addict and had been, in Blalock's words, shown as a weak woman. T'Pol, Blalock believed, was more than any of these, even if the writing wasn't up to the standard of the character.
While it is up to the audience to decide if they agree with Blalock's assessment or not, T'Pol remains a superb name on the actor's resume - one we all very much hope to see reprised in the future.