Vahklas The Vahklas was a Vulcan civilian transport commanded by Tavin , the leader of its crew of V ' tosh ka ' tur . The vessel used a Vulcan frequency to hail other ships and was capable of visual communication . The " Vahklas " left in approximately 2143 . Although the crew of the " Vahklas " disagreed with the common interpretation of Surak ' s teachings , an ornament resembling the Vulcan philosopher was displayed in a room aboard the transport ship . Encounter with " Enterprise " . In 2151 , the " Vahklas " encountered the Earth starship , charting the nearby Arachnid Nebula , far from Vulcan . Captain Jonathan Archer , commanding officer of " Enterprise " , commented that he had never seen a Vulcan ship like the " Vahklas " before . Sub - Commander T ' Pol revealed that the Vulcans had not used the class of ship the " Vahklas " for a long time . Repair work . Though the " Vahklas " was equipped with an impulse drive , the ship ' s propulsion and life support systems required several days of repair work when the vessel encountered " Enterprise " . When Captain Archer agreed to provide assistance to the Vulcan crew , the " Vahklas " docked with the Starfleet vessel . In " Enterprise " s main engineering department , Commander Charles Tucker claimed that he had never seen an engine as badly damaged as the one aboard the " Vahklas " . He reported that every plasma relay in the damaged vessel ' s reactor would have to be changed . The Vulcan crew asked for medical supplies and 1 , 000 liters of plasma coolant from " Enterprise " , a request which Captain Archer was happy to meet . Studying the Arachnid Nebula . While still docked with " Enterprise " , the " Vahklas " accompanied the starship to the Arachnid Nebula . Upon arrival , Tavin informed Captain Archer that the " Vahklas " was equipped with translinear sensor s . The Vulcan suggested using the advanced sensors to help " Enterprise " quickly complete a survey of the nebula . Archer , who was grateful for the assistance , ordered T ' Pol to visit the " Vahklas " and monitor the data collected there . " Enterprise " and the " Vahklas " entered the Arachnid nebula , while Tolaris , a member of the Vulcan crew , watched the spatial anomaly on a viewscreen aboard the transport ship . T ' Pol frequently visited the " Vahklas " , where she worked in the same room as Tolaris . During her first day aboard the " Vahklas " , T ' Pol noticed the statue of Surak and took readings of the Arachnid Nebula which she later brought aboard " Enterprise " . When she returned to the " Vahklas " on the following day , T ' Pol reported that she hadn ' t been able to scan the Arachnid Nebula ' s disodium layer , since the transport ship ' s lateral sensor s had been out of alignment . Later , she mentioned that the transport ship ' s sensors were detecting more than twenty million cubic meters of disodium and traces of ethylchlorate . Repair work continues . Aboard " Enterprise " , Kov , an engineer from the " Vahklas " , commented that the repairs to the Vulcan transport ship were going well . At night , Kov test - fired the " Vahklas " ' port thruster . The following day , Kov remarked that the thruster was still off by twelve percent , which Commander Tucker expected was due to a faulty plasma injector . The Human engineer believed the problem would be relatively easy to correct . As Kov was leaving " Enterprise " , Tucker told him not to let the intermix pressure aboard the transport ship drift above five thousand and to constantly be aware of the vessel ' s injector ports . Departure . Following extensive repair work on the " Vahklas " systems , the Vulcan craft disengaged its docking port from " Enterprise " and left the Arachnid Nebula . ( ) Background information . In the final draft script of , the " Vahklas " was described as " a small , weathered transport ship . " The fact that the teleplay characterized the vessel as an old civilian spacecraft which was in need of some repair influenced the vessel ' s design ; the CGI modelers at Eden FX added a rippled or melted effect to the ship ' s exterior surface texture to imply that the craft had been in space for a long time . ( " " , issue 88 , pp . 10 & 11 ) In a documentary included in the ENT Season 1 DVD , Geoffrey Mandel recalled some notable features of the room where T ' Pol and Tolaris work ; " " We basically saw , for the first time , Vulcan control panels , Vulcan backlits , kind of a Vulcan architecture . ' Cause we ' d always heard about these things , maybe glimpsed a little bit of it on but this , I think , was the first time we ever really saw it and . . . personally , I think it looked great . I mean , we had all sorts of cool things going on . There were domes that we had silk - screened and backlit so they were domes within domes that were sort of astrogator - type things where you see stars projected on the inside . " " He also revealed that one of his favorite things that he designed for " Star Trek : Enterprise " was a Vulcan starmap seen in the room where the Vulcans study . On the subject of Vulcan starmaps , he noted , " " I decided that , because Vulcans grew up in a planet with a different sun , they see colors differently , so " their " starmaps , instead of having a black background , would have reddish backgrounds . . . " "