“Kir’Shara”
Written by Mike Sussman
Directed by David Livingston
Season 4, Episode 9
Production episode 085
Original air date: December 3, 2004
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. After getting scenes from both “The Forge” and “Awakening,” we see High Command having a meeting about the Andorians. V’Las shows Andorian ships massing at Paan Mokar—a.k.a. Weytahn, which is now an Andorian world. V’Las explains that they’ve used probes to create warp signatures to make the Andorians think the Vulcans are going to attack there.
In truth, they’re gathering at Regulus to invade. When Kuvak questions the invasion, V’Las shows footage of an Andorian ship testing a Xindi weapon. V’Las says that Vulcan needs to get ahead of things before the Andorians use the Xindi weapons on them. Kuvak is skeptical, and also annoyed that this set of troop movements was instigated without the rest of the council knowing about it. V’Las says that there may be Andorian agents in High Command, a notion that Kuvak also views with skepticism.
In the Forge, Archer, T’Pol, and T’Pau are traveling on foot with the Kir’Shara. Archer is determined to get it to the capital to show to the High Command. T’Pau is on board with that notion. T’Pol, not so much—she thinks they should go to the rendezvous point and beam back to Enterprise. (Boy, would she be surprised to find that Enterprise is in Andorian space right now.) But Archer is insistent that the Kir’Shara be revealed to the Vulcan people.
T’Pol and T’Pau argue a lot about what to do next. T’Pol’s concern is that Archer isn’t rational, since he has at least two katras in his head (that of both Surak and Syrran/Arev). T’Pol then apologizes for her emotional outburst, as she’s not dealing well with her mother’s death. T’Pau informs T’Pol that T’Les was a valuable confidant and comrade and T’Pau also misses her. T’Pau has melded with T’Les in the past, and offers to meld with T’Pol in order to share her mother’s thoughts. T’Pol explains that she can’t meld, as she has Pa’nar Syndrome. T’Pau angrily informs T’Pol that the notion that Pa’nar is incurable is bullshit propaganda from High Command. All it takes to cure it is a meld with a properly trained person, which T’Pau is.
Enterprise enters Andorian space. Reed—doing his job both as the head of security for the ship and as acting first officer under Tucker—objects to this course of action, as it’s a betrayal of their allies on Vulcan and against the orders Admiral Gardner gave to return to Earth. Tucker says they are returning to Earth, they’re just taking the long way ’round…
Soval then meets with Tucker, and they agree that their best bet is to contact Shran, since both the Enterprise crew and Soval have working relationships with the general.
High Command has captured eight Syrrannites who survived the bombardment. They have admitted that Syrran is dead, and that there are three more survivors—two Vulcans and a human—who have the Kir’Shara. Kuvak reports this to V’Las, who dismisses the Kir’Shara as a myth. V’Las then orders a sublieutenant to have Major Talok seek out those three survivors and kill them.
Enterprise arrives at a nebula where, it turns out, Shran is hiding with a fleet. Soval and Tucker inform a shocked Shran about the planned invasion. (The false signals at Weythan/Paan Mokar are never brought up for some inexplicable reason.) Shran is not sure he believes them, but returns to his ship to consult with his superiors.
Archer, T’Pol, and T’Pau are ambushed by Talok and some thugs. T’Pau and Archer manage to escape, but T’Pol is captured. She cleverly lies to Talok, saying that she’s a Syrrannite and that Archer and T’Pau were headed to Mount Seleya. Talok believes her, but also sends her to the capital to face High Command’s justice.
Archer refuses to leave T’Pol in Talok’s hands, and forces T’Pau to follow Talok and his thugs. However, by the time they find and subdue them, T’Pol is already gone. Now they have two reasons to get to the capital: to rescue T’Pol and to reveal the Kir’Shara. They need access to a transporter, and Archer has an idea who to ask…
Shran surreptitiously transports Soval off Enterprise then retreats to the nebula. Shran puts the erstwhile ambassador in a specially designed interrogation device, one that disrupts Vulcans’ emotional control, then asks where the Vulcan fleet really is. However, Soval stands by his answer that they’re massing at Regulus—mainly because it’s the truth. Shran doesn’t believe that Soval would betray his people, and Soval angrily says that he’s trying to save his people from a pointless war.
After Tucker does some tinkering, Enterprise is able to find and fire upon Shran’s ship in the nebula. Rather than get into a firefight and make enemies of the humans as well, Shran releases Soval back to Enterprise. Soval could have told Shran what he knew the Andorian wanted to hear, but he stuck to his answer anyhow, even with the torture. So Shran now believes Soval.
The Andorian fleet heads to Regulus, accompanied by Enterprise. Kuvak is not pleased to discover that a) the Andorian fleet has found them and b) the Andorian ships only have standard particle weapons. There’s no indication of any Xindi weaponry. V’Las insists upon continuing with the attack.
Archer and T’Pau then show up with the Kir’Shara. V’Las refuses to believe that it’s real, but Kuvak and the rest of High Command are more open-minded about it. When V’Las tries to destroy the Kir’Shara, Kuvak stuns him and has him arrested. Kuvak then calls off the Vulcan fleet.
Enterprise returns to Vulcan. Soval is reinstated, High Command is disbanded, and a Vulcan priest removes Surak’s (and, presumably, Syrran’s) katra from Archer’s head. Koss—who is the one who provided T’Pau and Archer with transporter access to High Command—releases T’Pol from their marriage, since he knows that she only did it to help her mother, who’s now deceased.
V’Las meets in secret with Talok, er, somehow (wasn’t he arrested?). The latter is revealed to be a Romulan agent, who promises V’Las that the plans for reunification are just delayed.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Andorians were said not to have transporter technology in “The Andorian Incident,” but they not only have it, but are able to use it covertly in this episode. In addition, Tucker is able to work his technobabble magic to allow Enterprise to function well enough in the nebula to find and fire on the Kumari. Because he’s just that awesome.
The gazelle speech. Archer says at one point that he feels more centered than he ever has since acquiring Surak’s katra. He also knows about High Command’s plans to invade Andoria, which Syrran apparently found out about before he died.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol gets cured of her Pa’nar Syndrome by T’Pau and is released from her marriage to Koss. Plus the same High Command that censured her and punished her mother for T’Pol’s actions is disbanded. It’s a good day for her…
Florida Man. Florida Man Commands Ship During Crisis, Doesn’t Screw It Up.
Optimism, Captain! After not appearing at all last week, all we see of Phlox this time ’round is him telling Tucker and Shran that Soval will recover from being tortured.
Ambassador Pointy. Soval tells Shran of the story of Nirak, a Vulcan who did something stupid that got a lot of people killed, and compares him to Shran.
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… High Command is disbanded with the unearthing of the Kir’Shara and the revelation that V’Las ordered the bombing of the Earth embassy and tried to start a war based on false evidence. In addition, Vulcan loosens the reins on Earth, letting humans stand on their own.
Blue meanies. At one point, Kumari takes a hit intended for Enterprise, at which point Shran proclaims to Tucker that now Archer owes him two favors (the first for helping during “Zero Hour”).
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. It’s obvious that Koss loves T’Pol, and T’Pol doesn’t really realize how much until he releases her from their marriage.
More on this later… That Vulcans and Romulans are, basically, the same people won’t be revealed publicly until the original series’ “Balance of Terror” more than a century hence. Spock will undertake a personal mission to try to do peacefully what the Talok and V’Las discuss doing more nastily in TNG’s “Unification” two-parter, a mission that will finally succeed years after his death, as revealed in Discovery’s “Unification III.”
I’ve got faith…
“You think I’ve lost my mind?”
“I’m not certain your mind is the one making these decisions.”
–Archer and T’Pol.
Welcome aboard. Back from “Awakening” are Robert Foxworth as V’Las, John Rubinstein as Kuvak, Kara Zediker as T’Pau, and recurring regular Gary Graham as Soval. Back from “The Forge” is Michael Reilly Burke as Koss. Back from “Home” is Jack Donner as the Vulcan priest. Back from “Zero Hour” is recurring regular Jeffrey Combs as Shran. Combs will next appear in “Babel One,” while Graham will be back as Soval’s Mirror Universe counterpart in “In a Mirror Darkly, Part II.”
And then we have a Trek-related Robert Knepper moment, as I totally forgot that Todd Stashwick—best known these days as Captain Liam Shaw in season three of Picard—played Talok.
Trivial matters: This concludes the second three-part arc in a row on Enterprise, finishing the story begun in “The Forge” and “Awakening.”
Shran got his hands on the Xindi weapon in “Proving Ground.” He and Soval worked out the terms of the treaty between Vulcan and Andor following the events of “Cease Fire.”
T’Pol was diagnosed with Pa’nar Syndrome in “Stigma,” having gotten it from an improper meld in “Fusion.”
This is the final appearance of V’Las, Kuvak, Koss, and Talok. The next chronological appearance of the character of T’Pau is in the original series’ “Amok Time,” which takes place 113 years after this, where she’s played by Celia Lovsky.
It’s been a long road… “Commander Tucker, you have a poor choice of friends.” Parts of this episode are really good. Other parts make me want to throw my shoe at the screen, for many of the same reasons why the closing scenes in Discovery’s “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part II” irritated the hell out of me.
There was a perception in the early 2000s that Enterprise completely rewrote the Vulcans and made them into assholes for no good reason. Except that wasn’t based on anything from the 79 episodes of Star Trek that aired in the 1960s as those complainers insisted (not to mention the episodes of the spinoffs dealing with Vulcans, particularly the entire run of Voyager with Tuvok in the main cast). If you actually look at the way Vulcans have been portrayed onscreen prior to 2001, there is nothing that’s inconsistent with how Enterprise portrayed them. (With one exception, which we’ll get to.)
No, this is the perception created by the years following the cancellation of the original series, when tie-in fiction and fanfiction and articles in magazines both fan and pro were near-hagiographies of the main cast of the show in general and the character of Spock in particular. Nimoy’s brilliant and nuanced portrayal of Spock—and, it must be said, his sex appeal—led to a rose-colored perception of Vulcans as noble space elves.
Meanwhile sitting down and watching “Amok Time” and “Journey to Babel” and just in general the sassy, snotty, sarcastic, sexist Spock reveals a people who are absolutely the types who would high-handedly limit humans in their development of space travel and protect their interests against the Andorians to an extreme degree.
But this entire three-parter is in service of catering to that vocal subset of the fanbase that misread the onscreen portrayal of Vulcans—just as the ending of the “Such Sweet Sorrow” two-parter catered to a similar subset of fans by pretending that the twenty-third century iteration of the U.S.S. Discovery and her crew didn’t exist by classifying their very existence out of proportion to common sense.
And even if you wanted to do a story that showed the Vulcans moving back toward Surak’s teaching after drifting from it over the centuries, that could work, but this one doesn’t entirely. Mainly because V’Las is way too over-the-top an irredeemable bad guy—amazingly, it’s even worse here than it was in “Awakening,” which I wouldn’t have thought possible—and the solution is way too facile.
Indeed, the entire storyline is half-assed, barreling to the foregone conclusion without really doing the work to get there. The very presence of the Kir’Shara has an unconvincingly quick effect on the non-V’Las members of High Command. T’Pau seems to be in a position of authority at the end of the episode that is not at all convincing for a person who was part of a group that was on the outs of mainstream Vulcan society five minutes ago. For that matter, T’Pol is offhandedly cured of her Pa’nar Syndrome by a ten-second mind-meld, which is also how Archer is cured of his overcrowded cranium.
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Which is also a blown opportunity. We don’t even see Surak conversing with Archer again this episode, and at no point does Archer act like someone who has two other consciousnesses in his brain meats. We’ve already seen a good example of a human with an extra katra, and Scott Bakula does none of the things that DeForrest Kelly did in The Search for Spock. Instead he, well, acts just like Jonathan Archer. Snore. We don’t even see evidence that he’s more centered beyond his one line of dialogue saying he does.
It’s fun seeing a younger Todd Stashwick as Talok, but the revelation that he’s a Romulan agent doesn’t quite work as well as it might—mainly because there is no context provided. Sure, if you remember that that’s what a Romulan uniform looks like, then you’ll get it, but it assumes that the viewer will remember that, will remember the Romulan-Vulcan connection, and put the pieces together. But not everyone watching the show is a dedicated fan, and this sort of in-reference without any kind of explanation to the casual (or forgetful) viewer is exactly why the show kept hemorrhaging viewers to the point of cancellation. And the idea is more eye-rolling than the shock the script desperately wanted it to be. See, look, Vulcans were mean because they were being influenced by those bad ol’ Romulans! Again I say, snore.
Where the episode shines is in two ways. One is the removal of the weird downplaying of melding that the producers had been doing since “Fusion” for reasons passing understanding.
And the other is every single scene not on Vulcan. Gary Graham does a superb job of Soval in his rebellious phase, as well as being emotionally tortured. Connor Trinneer shines as acting captain, navigating the minefield that is Vulcan-Andorian relations with aplomb. And Jeffrey Combs remains stellar, giving Shran tremendous nuance underneath the permanently angry façade he always carries.
Having said that, even that section of the storyline has its problems, particularly with Soval’s line, “You must know that torture is rarely effective against Vulcans.” In truth, that sentence should end after the word “effective,” but that would require turn-of-the-millennium American writers to believe that, in defiance of the Bush Administration’s propaganda, perpetuated by the popular culture of the time, that tried very desperately to normalize torture as an interrogation tool.
While this three-parter has its moments, and it’s always good to see Shran, ultimately this is an unnecessary bit of awkward fan service that forgets to tell the story required to get there.
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be an author guest at Capclave 2023 this coming weekend in Rockville, Maryland. He’ll be doing panels and readings and autographings and the like, and also will be spending some time at the eSpec Books table in the dealer room. His schedule is here.
