The Enterprise crew decides to visit a old Vulcan monastery. While they talk to one of the monks, T'Pol realizes that one of the figurines is at an odd position. She get's suspicious that something is wrong and indeed they find a blue faced alien hiding in a corner. Too late they realize that they have just stumbeld into a hostage situation. Suddenly they are surrounded by a group of Andorians. They claim that the Vulcan are hiding an illegal long range sensor array in the monastry in order to to spy on the Andorian homeworld. The Andorian leader Shran (Jeffrey Combs) interrogates Archer and accuses him to collaborate with the Vulcans.
In the meantime on board of the Enterprise Hoshi and Reed are getting worried about their friends and try to contact Archer. Shran finds the communicator and destroys it. Now the only hope to contact the ship is an old transmitter hidden in the catacombs of the monastery. One of the monks opens a secret door and Tucker is able to get hold of the transmitter.
The Enterprise crew beams into the monastry and manages to overrun
the Andorians. Archer, T'Pol and one of the Vulcan monks pursue the aliens
who into the catacombs. During a heavy fight suddenly a secret door
appears....
What a cool episode. Not only it brings Jeff back to Trek, we also encounter the mysterious bluefaced Andorians with their cute antennae wiggling around according their moods. But despite of their funny appearance, the Andorians are a paranoid and agressive race. It is hard to believe they will become one of the founders of the federation. But maybe they have their good sides hidden behind their grim manners. On the other hand we start to question the "noble" and "peacefull" Vulcans, giving this race more depths than before. Being always perfect would be just too boring.
Jeff on his character in "The Andorian Incident": "....His name is "Shran, you could call him a terrorist. We believe that the Vulcans have been spying on us, so we have something to do about this. And I leave it to you to find out whether or not we are right or not...[The makeup] was more demanding. I'm used to the constrictions of the make-up, but this one had hair, wig,m ake-up, prosthetics, but there were also mechanics involved to move the antenna. So I had to be hocked up to a radio operated control and I had that going on as well. I could hear them moving - zoooom - zooooooom (laughs). So that affected your concentration, but not that much...I think [Enterprise] really has the flavor of the original series. I always noticed to DS9 that there was always an A-story and a B-story. The main story and then this little subplot. They never had that in the original series, it was always one story all way through, and that's what they have here. It's one plot and no cutting over to another story..."
Full
interview
Thanks to Stefan from
STenterprise.de for the pictures!