Tag: Andorians

Following Archer’s revelation of a Vulcan listening post on the disputed planet of P’Jem, the Andorians mount an attack on that outpost, destroying it completely. The Vulcan response is swift – diplomatic relations with Earth become very chilly, and T’Pol is cited as key player in the listening post’s discovery. She is to return to Vulcan for disciplinary action, something to which Archer objects. The captain is surprised when T’Pol shows no signs of resisting her impending reassignment. Archer takes T’Pol with him for one last mission, a visit to the planet Coridan. But the routine visit turns violent when their shuttle is shot down over the capitol city by rebels. Archer and T’Pol survive their shuttle’s crash-landing, but are taken hostage by the rebels, who proceed to demand weapons from the Enterprise for their safe return. The Vulcan ship which was to take T’Pol back to her homeworld arrives, and its captain tries to take charge of the situation. Trip isn’t eager to sit back and wait for the Vulcans to intervene and launches a rescue operation of his own – and he and Reed are just as quickly captured on Coridan. Their captors, however, turn out to be Andorians – still engaged in hostilities with the Vulcans. Andorian officer Shran informs Trip that the Enterprise crew has just walked into a conflict being engineered by both the Vulcans and the Andorians…and they’re not likely to walk out alive when the shooting starts.

teleplay by Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong
story by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
directed by Mike Vejar
music by Paul Baillargeon

Cast: Scott Bakula (Captain Jonathan Archer), Jolene Blalock (Subcommander T’Pol), John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox), Dominic Keating (Lt. Malcolm Reed), Anthony Montgomery (Ensign Travis Mayweather), Linda Park (Ensign Hoshi Sato), Connor Trinneer (Commander Charles “Trip” Tucker III), Jeffrey Combs (Shran), Vaughn Armstrong (Admiral Forrest), Gary Graham (Ambassador Soval), Steven Dennis (Tholos), Barbara Tarbuck (Chancellor Kalev), Jeff Kober (Traeg)

Notes: The planet Coridan is a reference to the Coridan treaty negotiated by Ambassador Sarek in the classic Trek episode Journey To Babel; that 1967 episode, incidentally, was the first appearance of the Andorians in Star Trek and made a brief mention of their conflict with the Vulcans. Also, Dr. Phlox mentions that T’Pol is not the first Vulcan officer to serve alongside humans on a Starfleet ship, but that she is the first whose tour of duty lasted more than a few weeks; the previous instances ended when, according to Phlox, the Vulcan officers found their human crewmates “chaotic and unpredictable.” Guest star Barbara Tarbuck played the part of another beleaguered alien leader in the 1991 Next Generation episode The Host.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Archer is hand-picked by Shran to serve as the negotiator between the Andorians and Vulcans in yet another tense territorial dispute. Ambassador Soval is suspicious of why Shran is insistent on Archer’s presence, but reluctantly goes along. Though Archer barely understands the conflict, he does his best to get the two parties to talk, and he believes that both Shran and Soval are sincere in their desire to settle the matter peacefully. So who is trying to derail the talks, bringing the Vulcans and Andorians precariously close to the brink of war?

written by Chris Black
directed by David Straiton
music by Jay Chattaway

Guest Cast: Jeffrey Combs (Shran), Suzie Plakson (Tarah), Gary Graham (Soval), John Balma (Muroc), Vaughn Armstrong (Admiral Forrest), Zane Cassidy (Andorian soldier)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

The Enterprise races to Andorian space. Soval cryptically leads Trip to a location where Vulcan intelligence says Commander Shran’s task group is hiding; Trip hopes that Shran will listen to the warning about the impending Vulcan attack more readily than any other Andorians. Shran is naturally suspicious, and when Soval mentions that the Vulcan High Command is planning the attack based on intelligence that the Andorians are arming their ships with Xindi weapons of mass destruction, Shran denies it. The Andorian returns to his ship and then kidnaps Soval via transporter, torturing him to make sure that the tip about the Vulcan attack is accurate. On Vulcan, V’Las has directed his forces to stop trying to capture the Syrrannites – and to start trying to eradicate them completely. Reassured that Soval is telling the truth – at the cost of much pain to the ambassador – Shran convinces the High Command to head off the Vulcan assault force. Trip puts the Enterprise between the two fleets, trying to stop a war, but it quickly becomes apparent that, despite the fact that no illegal weapons are detected in use by the Andorian fleet, someone is all to ready to take plunge an entire quadrant of the galaxy into war, regardless of the evidence, the consequences, or the truth.

written by Michael Sussman
directed by David Livingston
music by Dennis McCarthy & Kevin Kiner

Guest Cast: Robert Foxworth (V’Las), Jeffrey Combs (Shran), John Rubinstein (Kuvak), Gary Graham (Soval), Michael Reilly Burke (Koss), Kara Zediker (T’Pau), Todd Stashwick (Talok), Jack Donner (Vulcan Priest), Melodee M. Spevack (Andorian Com Voice)

Notes: T’Pau reveals that the “disease” T’Pol contracted from her mind meld in Fusion is an easily-corrected condition whose supposed “severity” has been exaggerated by the High Command in order to discourage the practice. This would appear to explain why Spock and Tuvok, among others, have never suffered from the same disorder. Soval mentions a chapter of Vulcan history involving the city of Gol; presumably that’s also the origin of the Stone of Gol, a Vulcan artifact of immense power which was the subject of an intense search in the Next Generation episode Gambit. Actor Robert Foxworth previously appeared as Admiral Layton in the Deep Space Nine episodes Homefront and Paradise Lost, a guest appearance which led to the demise of his recurring Babylon 5 character General Hague (he was double-booked by his agent for both SF series at the same time and chose to appear on Star Trek).

LogBook entry by Earl Green

With Paxton aiming his array on Starfleet Command in San Francisco, Archer backs the Enterprise off – and the ship still suffers damage when Paxton blasts a low-power warning shot toward it, demonstrating that he’s more than capable of destroying a target on Earth. Trip and T’Pol are trapped with Paxton, who confesses that he created the baby with samples of their DNA to serve as a scare tactic to recruit more humans for his Terra Prime movement. Archer tries another approach, leading a team from the Enterprise to reach Mars by hiding a shuttlepod in the wake of a nearby comet, but that mission almost becomes a disaster – someone aboard the Enterprise has sabotaged the shuttle’s systems. Mayweather is able to bring the shuttle in for a smooth landing under manual control, but even if Archer and his team can thwart Paxton’s plan, will the threat derail the conference on Earth?

teleplay by Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens and Manny Coto
story by Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens and Andre Bormanis
directed by Marvin V. Rush
music by Jay Chattaway

Guest Cast: Peter Weller (John Frederick Paxton), Harry Groener (Nathan Samuels), Gary Graham (Soval), Eric Pierpoint (Harris), Adam Clark (Josiah), Peter Mensah (Greaves), Johanna Watts (Gannet Brooks), Derek Magyar (Kelby), Joel Swetow (Thoris), Josh Holt (Ensign Masaro), Amy Rohren (Tactical Officer)

Notes: Guest star Joel Swetow appeared as Gul Jasad in the two-hour premiere of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and later as a Yridian information merchant named Yog in the First Born episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dr. Phlox confirms here that human and Vulcan DNA are compatible in a natural mating – Paxton’s genetically-engineered child was created with flawed cloning techniques. Jay Chattaway‘s music was somewhat reminiscent of a score he composed for another television program involving Mars, the 1992 PBS documentary Space Age; Chattaway joined the Star Trek franchise in 1990, scoring the third-season Next Generation episode Tin Man, which also guest starred Harry Groener, and this was his final musical score for the series.

LogBook entry by Earl Green