“Vanishing Point” 20th-anniversary reflections

Forced to use the transporter to escape a diamagnetic storm on the surface of an uninhabited planet, Hoshi Sato returns to the Enterprise not quite feeling herself. In fact, she’s slowly fading away, leaving her crew in danger and her dad confused. Unless she can find a way to get someone’s attention, the ship will be destroyed and, even worse, she’ll wind up just like Cyrus Ramsey. “Cyrus who?” you ask. Yeah, you’re not alone. Trip and Malcolm haven’t heard of him either. It’s all a trick of the mind—eight seconds of insanity, if you will—but it does give new meaning to the verb “to beam.”

In this episode of Warp Five, hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing continue our 20th-anniversary retrospective that takes you through all of Star Trek: Enterprise, one episode at a time. In this installment, we continue Season 2 with “Vanishing Point” as we discuss how the mind plays tricks on us, boogeymen in the transport beam, and how the story’s mystery unfolds. We also debate what Mr. Sato’s confusion over physics and family says about how Hoshi views her dad.

Hosts
C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing

Production
C Bryan Jones (Editor and Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Norman C. Lao (Associate Producer)