Lorian

Lorian was the commander of a version of from an alternate timeline, in which Enterprise was thrown back in time from the year 2154 to 2037. He was the son of Vulcan science officer T'Pol and Human chief engineer Charles Tucker III, a conception made possible after Doctor Phlox found a way of combining the Vulcan and Human genomes. Lorian was influenced by both of his parents, and over his lifetime, he was able to balance emotion and logic.

Lorian's father died when he was fourteen, but Lorian taught himself engineering by reading his father's old logs. While Jonathan Archer was on his deathbed, Lorian promised the captain he would continue his mission to stop the Xindi probe from attacking Earth. Upon Archer's death, Lorian became the captain of Enterprise.

However, Lorian was unable to stop the Xindi probe from reaching Earth when it launched in of 2153. He had planned on ramming the probe with Enterprise, but hesitated, unable to give an order that would kill his entire crew. The moment passed, and by the time he had made his decision, the probe was gone, en route to Earth. With no other alternatives, he was forced to wait until Enterprise once again entered the Delphic Expanse in search of the Xindi weapon, in order to prevent it from entering a subspace corridor that would send it on its fateful journey through time.

In February of 2154, Lorian took Enterprise to meet the present version of the vessel just before it entered the subspace corridor. However, Lorian needed to provide an alternate way for the ship to reach its rendezvous at the Xindi Council planet, so he provided the present-Enterprise with Haradin schematics that would allow the ship's crew to modify their plasma injectors and increase speed to warp 6.9 for brief times. However, Archer rejected Lorian's plan on a recommendation from the elder T'Pol, who demonstrated that there was a risk that if the ship exceeded warp 5.6, the injectors would overload and destroy the vessel.

T'Pol's alternative was reconfiguring the impulse manifolds so they would not destabilize the corridor and send the ship back in time, but Lorian was not convinced it would work. He stole the plasma injectors of the present-Enterprise so that his ship could make the rendezvous (as his own injectors were too old), but Archer talked him into assisting with T'Pol's plan. With help from Lorian's ship, Archer's Enterprise made it past a group of Kovaalan ships which were between them and the entrance of the corridor. Lorian attacked the Kovaalan ships and kept them busy, allowing Archer's Enterprise to safely enter the corridor and successfully rendezvous with Degra, who proceeded to escort Enterprise to the Xindi Council planet.

Lorian's ultimate fate, as well as the fate of the rest of his crew, remained unknown. It was speculated by Archer and T'Pol that his ship was destroyed, was able to escape, or even that, due to both crews' success in changing the timeline, his ship might have been erased from history. 

Background information
Lorian was played by actor David Andrews.

According to episode writer Mike Sussman, the name "Lorian" was an homage to the Elvish forest Lórien, found in J. R. R. Tolkien's novel Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Sussman speculated that Trip was a big fan of the, "so when he had a kid with pointed ears, it made perfect sense." (NX-01 File 09, ENT Season 3 DVD special features)

In the final draft script of "E²", Lorian was described as "a Vulcan man in civilian clothes [...] (late forties, with light hair) [...] He's a commanding presence, but he also has an edge. Although he appears Vulcan, he is half human, and at times can be emotional and impulsive [...] His human half emerges unexpectedly sometimes."

In an ultimately omitted line of dialogue from the final draft script of "E²", it was established that, according to the elderly T'Pol, Lorian "struggled with emotions all [his] life" and occasionally became overwhelmed by them.

The Pocket ENT novel To Brave the Storm revealed that Lorian was born anyway to T'Pol and Tucker, along with a sister named, as of 2186.

External link


Lorian Lorian ロリアン