Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review V'Las, a recurring Vulcan character shown on Enterprise.
Administrator V'Las is the head of the Vulcan High Command in the era of Archer's Enterprise. While in this role, he conspired with a deep-undercover Romulan operative named Talok to facilitate an invasion of Andoria by the Vulcans, which would lead to the subjugation of the Vulcan people by the Romulans. He's a "tricky Dick" type of leader, by Star Trek presidential standards.
During the events of Enterprise, Captain Archer assists Vulcan and Andoria in signing a peace treaty and ending their long conflict. However, V'Las is already plotting in the background to make a full scale attack on Andoria, and this is just a delay tactic to put the Andorians off guard. His plans for invasion were threatened by a dissident group known as Syrannites. That leads V'Las to make it his goal to eliminate these political dissidents, root and stem.
Part of his plan involved bombing the United Earth Embassy on Vulcan, trying to pin it to the dissident group. To keep his plot secret, he ends up having to relieve Vulcan ambassador to Earth Soval of his job duties when Soval learns the truth about the bombing. Soval then ends up letting Archer know what was going on, leading to a space battle where the Enterprise joins the Andorians in defending against the Vulcan attack.
Archer and T'Pau end up going to the High Command and presenting the Kir'Shara to undermine V'Las's authority to stop the battle and make him step down. The last we see of V'Las is in a falling out with his Romulan agent Talok as they deal with the fallout of their conspiracy plots falling apart. While V'Las tried to sow seeds of war in Vulcan, his efforts being foiled actually becomes one of the key moments leading to the eventual founding of the Federation, including both the Andorian Empire and the Vulcans.
A couple of theories have emerged in the novels as to why this head of the High Command would be a double agent for Romulus. One theory is that the real V'Las was replaced by a Romulan agent at some point before he ascended to Administrator. Another theory is that he is the son of Romulan sleeper agents who infiltrate Vulcan society after a war between those planets. We are never given the total backstory on screen, so these are just interesting theories.
Robert Foxworth played V'Las, and this was also his second Trek role. His first was as Admiral Leyton from a Deep Space 9 episode as we covered a few months back. He's also known more recently as the voice of Ratchet, the Autobot medic in the live action Transformers movies.
----
Contact me with segment suggestions @BuckeyeFitzy on Twitter! Thanks!
No comments:
Post a Comment