Title :
The Aenar
Series :
Rating :
Overall Ep :
90
First Aired :
11 Feb 2005
Stardate :
Unknown
Director :
Year :
Writers :
Season Ep :
YATI :
If all the Aenar are born blind, how come their city is so well lit? I could buy them installing temporary lighting in a few rooms especially for their guests, but in every exterior shot of the city we are shown, there are hundreds of brightly lit windows all over the city!
Great Moment :
Trip leaving.
Body Count :
A Human cargo ship, the Ticonderoga, is destroyed with all hands. Gareb is killed by Valdore.
Factoid :
We learn a bit more about the Andorians in this episode; there is a subspecies of Andorian called The Aenar, who are blind and telepathic. There are very few Aenar, and few Andorians have ever seen one. We also get to see Andoria itself for the first time ever – and we learn that the planet is actually a moon to a ringed giant.
Plotline
Deciding that Humans are becoming a threat because of their ability to bring the other major species together, the Romulans send two drone ships to find and destroy Enterprise. Meanwhile Phlox determines that the drone was being piloted by an Andorian, prompting Archer and Shran travel to the planet to meet with the Aenar, a telepathic subspecies of the Andorians.
Analysis
Not quite so good as the previous two, The Aenar is still a reasonable episode. It was interesting to finally see Andoria, especially as it turns out to be a moon. I wonder if this could provide an answer to the whole Andor/Andoria problem – maybe the ringed giant is Andor, and the inhabited moon is Andoria? Then we just assume that when people talk about being from Andor they are referring to the whole planet/moon system...
Anyway, it was reasonably obvious how things were gong to turn out; the moment they decided to send two drone ships after Enterprise I could tell that one of them was going to wind up attacking the other. Still, the battle sequences worked fairly well – I liked the way the drones dodged out of the way of weapons fire in particular.
Overall, a pretty good arc. Not up to The Augments or The Vulcan War arcs, but still this is far better than anything Enterprise did in the first couple of seasons.
