4, 2004 and continued until October 12. Despite the desert locations, all filming took place on soundstages. These represented a variety of places throughout the Vulcan desert-like Forge. The remaining sets used were either standing sets, or those which had been constructed for the previous two episodes. The exceptions to that were two sets to represent scenes on board Commander Shran's Andorian vessel. The Andorian bridge set, which had been used previously in the series, had a single wall brought out of storage in order to appear as a backdrop for Shran when he appears on the Enterprise viewscreen. The Andorian brig was built specifically for this episode for scenes with Shran and Soval. Re-appearing in "Kir'Shara" were the traditional Vulcan weapon, the lirpa, which was first introduced in The Original Series episode "Amok Time". The lirpa is a long shaft with a crescent blade on one end and a spiked cudgel on the other. Brand new props were built for this episode, modifying the original design by making them more lightweight. They were wielded in "Kir'Shara" by Vulcan commandos, who were all played by stunt actors in non-speaking roles. Additional stunt doubles were required for Archer, T'Pol, T'Pau and Talok while two puppeteers were needed for the Andorian antennae seen on screen. Themes "Kir'Shara" followed up the events of the previous two episodes in the story arc as well some of the elements seen earlier in the season in the episode "Home". "The Forge" sees Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) travel into the Vulcan desert known as the Forge in order to find a renegade faction of Vulcans, known as the Syrrannites. During the journey, Archer has the katra of Surak transferred into him. In "Awakening", the duo meet the Syrrannites and find out they are peaceful. After Enterprise leaves orbit, the Vulcans start bombarding the caves where the Syrrannites are located, killing T'Pol's mother, T'Les (Joanna Cassidy). Speaking about "Awakening", show runner Manny Coto had previously said that he envisaged the story arc to be about a Vulcan reformation as a metaphor to the real-world 16th century Protestant Reformation with T'Pau playing the role of Martin Luther. This view was supported by the 2010 book Star Trek As Myth, which saw the original Vulcan religion prior to the Reformation arc seen from "The Forge" onwards as equating to the Catholic Church while the Syrannites