Manny Coto and others involved in the production of Enterprise have mentioned that they planned to make Shran a member of the bridge crew in season five. Their motives are pretty obvious: Make a popular guest star (and the excellent actor who played him) as involved as possible. In Coto’s own words, “get Jeffrey [Combs] Somehow.”
The question for me is, why would Shran have been willing to take up a (presumably subservient) position aboard Archer’s ship? Shran is frequently shown in command of Andorian Imperial Guard starships, which gives him significant practical and political power. He is clearly a man of action, and strongly dislikes feeling indebted to anyone. He certainly does not strike me as someone inclined to surrender a command position.
So, how could Shran’s intended presence on the bridge of the NX-01 be explained?
In Shran’s penultimate appearance (The Aenar), the ship he’s commanding is destroyed, and he states he’s probably not going to be given command of another one any time soon. I assume this was meant to lead to him winding up on the Enterprise in season 5 if the events in the finale hadn’t happened instead.
This. I always thought this was the tease of Shran joining. I don’t know about everyone else but Shran is possibly my favorite character in all of Star Trek. He is so compelling and interesting. I don’t feel like we’ve done near enough exploration of Andorian culture and would love too see that get some screen time in the vein of the Vulcans or Klingons
Maybe they could have worked Shran in as some sort of observing diplomat. Only taking orders and doing work if it’s an emergency situation, but otherwise just there to take notes on the pink skins and learn about their culture. And we would of course also learn about them. Idk, just off the top of my head.
Every time I learn more about the cancelled seasons of ENT its super frustrating because it seems they kept the best things for later and then got canned.
I hope they deliver those seasons somehow, even if it’s just a shitty cartoon or animation series
