Star Trek: Enterprise: Awakening

EnterpriseThe 83rd episode of the prequel spinoff Star Trek: Enterprise airs on UPN. Joanna Cassidy (Blade Runner) and Robert Foxworth (The Questor Tapes) guest star. Read more


Star Trek: EnterpriseAmbassador 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.

Order DVDswritten by Andrè Bormanis
directed by Roxann Dawson
music by Jay Chattaway

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), Kara Zediker (T’Pau), Gary Graham (Soval), Bruce Gray (Surak), Robert Foxworth (V’Las), Joanna Cassidy (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