 Filming began on October 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 <unk> . The Andorian brig was built specifically for this episode for scenes with Shran and Soval . 
