Tag: Vulcans

The Enterprise encounters a Vulcan vessel manned by a curiously cordial crew. Over dinner with the crew, T’Pol identifies them as Vulcans without logic, something which the Vulcans refute, claiming instead that they have reached a balance between emotion and logic. T’Pol is skeptical, and reluctantly agrees to try a few experiments in emotional awareness with the persistent Tolaris. But while Archer, Trip and the rest of the crew find themselves becoming fast friends with the emotion-embracing Vulcan visitors, T’Pol discovers that Tolaris is intimately, and dangerously, acquainted with some of his baser emotions.

teleplay by Phyllis Strong & Mike Sussman
story by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
directed by Rob Hedden
music by David Bell

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), Enrique Murciano (Tolaris), Robert Pine (Tavin), Vaughn Armstrong (Admiral Forrest), John Harrington Bland (Kov)

Notes: This episode somewhat shockingly establishes that mind melds aren’t the norm among 22nd century Vulcans; the process is considered somewhat taboo, and T’Pol isn’t even aware of what’s involved or how to participate. Robert Pine is the father of Chris Pine, who would assume the role of Captain James T. Kirk in a big-screen reboot of the Star Trek franchise in 2009.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

T’Pol somewhat surprisingly recommends that the crew needs a vacation, and even takes the liberty of pointing Archer toward a planet called Risa. But just as Trip is getting his hopes up about the reports of Risa’s brand of hospitality, Starfleet contacts the ships with new orders – an urgent mission to pick up a Vulcan ambassador from the planet Mazar. When the Mazarites deliver Ambassador V’Lar to the Enterprise, Archer is told that she is being expelled due to criminal charges – charges of which V’Lar says she is guilty. The Enterprise leaves without incident, but before long, the Mazarites are in pursuit, demanding that V’Lar be handed over to them again. When the Mazarites attack and make it clear that they’re willing to kill Archer’s entire crew, the captain begins to wonder just what crimes his visitor has committed.

teleplay by Alan Cross
story by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Chris Black
directed by Patrick Norris
music by David Bell

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), Fionnula Flanagan (V’Lar), Vaughn Armstrong (Admiral Forrest), John Rubinstein (Mazarite Captain), J. Michael Flynn (Mazarite Official), Dennis Howard (Vulcan Captain), and Porthos

Notes: It is established here that this is the first time the Enterprise has actually reached warp five. We also learn that T’Pol attended the Rekahr Academy on Vulcan – which could also be the “Vulcana Rekahr” which was cited as T’Shanik’s alma mater in the Next Generation episode Coming Of Age.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

On the one-year anniversary of T’Pol’s assignment to the Enterprise, Captain Archer holds a dinner in her honor, also attended by Trip. When pressed to reveal why her last leave on Earth included a visit to Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania, T’Pol shocks Archer and Trip by recounting a story of the first contact between humans and Vulcans – a story which predates and completely contradicts the well-known and established historical accounts of Zefram Cochrane’s meeting with the Vulcans in the 21st century. And T’Pol has unusually intimate knowledge of the events that unfolded in Carbon Creek, for her own great-grandmother was one of three Vulcans who survived their ship’s crash-landing, forcing them to try to integrate into the small mining town until their distress signal was received by another Vulcan ship.

teleplay by Chris Black
story by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Dan O’Shannon
directed by James Contner
music by Jay Chattaway

Guest Cast: J. Paul Boehmer (Mestral), Michael Krawic (Stron), Ann Cusack (Maggie), Clay Wilcox (Billy), David Selburg (Vulcan Captain), Ron Marasco (Vulcan Officer), Hank Harris (Jack), Paul Hayes (Businessman)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

During a stopover near a medical conference, Dr. Phlox gets two unusual opportunities. First, a reunion with one of his three wives, Feezal, gives him the chance to catch up on family matters. But more pressing in Phlox’s mind is the opportunity to find out everything he can from a Vulcan delegation to the conference about a terminal neurological disease. Considered a taboo subject, and a disease suffered only by a group of Vulcans ostracized by the rest of their society, the disease is also a closely-held secret, and Phlox is able to find very little. When he presses, the Vulcans wonder why his curiosity is so keen. Could it be that the Enterprise’s only Vulcan crew member is facing a painful death due to this disorder?

written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
directed by David Livingston
music by Dennis McCarthy

Guest Cast: Melinda Page Hamilton (Feezal), Michael Ensign (Dr. Oratt), Bob Morrisey (Dr. Strom), Jeffrey Hayenga (Dr. Yuris), Lee Spencer (Vulcan Doctor)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Deep in the Delphic Expanse, the Enterprise encounters a drifting Vulcan science vessel – a ship that was T’Pol’s last assignment before serving at the Vulcan consulate on Earth. It has managed to drift through a chaotic asteroid field too dense and dangerous for the Enterprise to navigate, so Archer takes a small team in via shuttlepod to search for survivors. As it turns out, the Vulcan ship’s entire crew has survived – but they have become infected with a condition that breaks down their emotional control and leaves them in a zombie-like state, attacking anyone who comes near them. Archer and his boarding party are eventually beseiged in a closed-off part of the ship, and T’Pol is infected with this disease during a skirmish with the Vulcan crew, growing increasingly paranoid and violent toward her crewmates.

teleplay by Jonathan Fernandez
story by Jonathan Fernandez & Terry Matalas
directed by David Livingston
music by Dennis McCarthy

Guest Cast: Sean McGowan (Corporal Hawkins)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

The Enterprise crew returns to Earth, given a welcome befitting a crew of heroes. Archer discovers that he and his senior officers have become legends in their own time, and as his debriefing begins he finds that the battle-hardened attitudes that kept him alive in the Delphic Expanse are out of place on peacetime Earth. Dr. Phlox also comes to feel out of place when he becomes a target of anti-alien sentiment that has arisen since the Xindi attack on Earth. And “out of place” barely begins to describe the level of Trip’s discomfort when he accompanies T’Pol back to Vulcan, meets her mother, and discovers that she’s betrothed to a Vulcan named Koss – an engagement T’Pol refuses to break when she discovers that her abrupt resignation from the Vulcan High Command has come with a high price that her family has had to bear.

written by Michael Sussman
directed by Allan Kroeker
music by Velton Ray Bunch

Guest Cast: Joanna Cassidy (T’Les), Michael Reilly Burke (Koss), Ada Maris (Captain Erika Hernandez), Gary Graham (Soval), Vaughn Armstrong (Admiral Forrest), Joe Chrest (Bar Patron #1), Jim Fitzpatrick (Commander Williams), Jack Donner (Vulcan Priest)

Guest Cast: Guest star Michael Reilly Burke has had brief parts in previous Star Trek spinoffs, appearing as the Borg Goval in Descent Part II (Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1993) and a Cardassian named Hogue in Profit And Loss (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 1994). Jack Donner, who played a Vulcan priest, is no stranger to pointed ears himself, having played Tal, a Romulan, in the 1968 Star Trek episode The Enterprise Incident. Joanna Cassidy is a genre veteran on the big screen, with major roles in such films as Blade Runner and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Admiral Forrest is on Vulcan to attend a meeting about possible joint Vulcan-Starfleet missions, when a bomb lays waste to the Earth embassy; Forrest dies trying to save Ambassador Soval from the blast. The Enterprise is diverted to Vulcan to head up the investigation. Though the Vulcan investigators initially suspect at the Andorians, Reed and Mayweather find other evidence pointing toward a Vulcan woman named T’Pau – and they find it on a bomb left over to destroy what’s left of the embassy. The Vulcan investigators assisting Archer’s crew suddenly become less cooperative, admitting only that T’Pau is a member of the Syrrannite movement, a sect which embraces a different interpretation of Surak’s logical teachings than most Vulcans. Privately, Ambassador Soval tells Captain Archer that the investigators are not to be trusted. T’Pol is visited by her new husband Koss, who brings her a gift from her mother T’Les – and brings word that T’Les has gone into hiding as a member of the Syrrannite movement. The gift is her mother’s IDIC, which has been fitted with a holographic projector that may offer a way to find the Syrrannites. The hologram is a map of a Vulcan desert known as the Forge, a desolate region that suffers from such violent geo-magnetic disturbances that transporters, shuttles, and equipment like tricorders and phase pistols are rendered useless. Archer decides to cross the Forge on foot, while Soval and Trip find new evidence that shows that T’Pau is being framed – and that the embassy bomb may have been planted by one of the Vulcans in charge of the investigation. And in the desert, Archer and T’Pol are challenged, and then helped, by a Vulcan man, but when he is mortally wounded in an electrically supercharged dust storm, he entrusts a legacy to Archer without the captain’s knowledge.

written by Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens
directed by Michael Grossman
music by John Frizzell

Guest Cast: Vaughn Armstrong (Admiral Forrest), Gary Graham (Soval), Michael Nouri (Arev), Robert Foxworth (V’Las), Larc Spies (Stel), Michael Reilly Burke (Koss)

Notes: This episode features the first appearance of the Vulcan sehlat creature in a live-action Star Trek episode; the creature was previously depicted in the animated Classic Trek episode Yesteryear, in which a young Spock was seen raising a sehlat as a pet (apparently a common practice, as T’Pol had a pet sehlat as well). It would seems that mind melding is still considered deviant behavior among Vulcans, but apparently the stolid Ambassador Soval is familiar enough with it to perform one.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Ambassador Soval loses his position within the Vulcan High Command and returns to the Enterprise to help the crew search for Captain Archer. On the surface, in the hidden compound of the Syrrannites, Archer meets T’Pau, the Vulcan woman who has been framed for the bombing of the Earth embassy, and finds that T’Pol’s mother is also there. T’Pau denies any involvement with the bombing, and when Archer tells her about the Vulcan who died helping him reach the Syrrannites, she reveals to him that he was not only the movement’s leader, but he was carrying the living soul – the katra – of Surak himself, the Vulcan who led his people to embrace logic and self-discipline. T’Pau intends to retrieve Surak’s katra, even if it should prove to be harmful or fatal to Archer, while T’Pol isn’t even convinced that such a thing as the katra exists. Yet Archer can’t clear a vision from his mind – encounters with Surak himself, in which Archer is urged to find something called the Kir’Shara. The Vulcan High Command continues to consider the Syrrannites an extreme threat, and orders are given to bomb their compound from orbit and to drive the Enterprise out of Vulcan space. Soval reveals to Trip why the High Command wishes to eliminate the Syrrannites, even if it means resorting to violent means atypical of Vulcan: the Sryrannites’ pacifist ways are increasingly in conflict with a government secretly planning a war with the Andorians. As the Syrrannites flee their damaged compound and T’Pol witnesses her mother’s death, Trip takes it upon himself to warn the Andorians.

written by Andrè Bormanis
directed by Roxann Dawson
music by Jay Chattaway

Guest Cast: Kara Zediker (T’Pau), Gary Graham (Soval), Bruce Gray (Surak), Robert Foxworth (V’Las), Joanna Cassiday (T’Les), John Rubinstein (Kuvak)

Notes: T’Pau, though seen as something of a liberal pacifist here, is indeed the same character as the more rigidly traditional overseer of Spock’s mating ritual, and combat with Kirk, in the original Star Trek episode Amok Time. The katra concept is apparently not widely believed on 22nd century Vulcan, though it seems to have gained more ready acceptance by the late 23rd; the term was first coined in the film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. A decidedly younger Surak also appeared in the original series, as an illusion in The Savage Curtain.

LogBook entry by Earl Green