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NiVar front

The Ni'Var.

NiVar aft

Aft view.

The Ni'Var was a Surak-class Vulcan starship in operation in the 22nd century. The vessel was commanded by Sopek.

In 2151, the Vulcan High Command sent the Ni'Var to transfer Subcommander T'Pol off of the Enterprise and back to Vulcan. This was due to her role in the destruction of the sacred Vulcan monastery of P'Jem. The Ni'Var sent a commando squad to Coridan after T'Pol and Jonathan Archer were captured. (ENT: "Shadows of P'Jem")

Background information

Ni var was a term coined circa 1967 by linguist Dorothy Jones, who wrote the Dorothy and Myfanwy series of Star Trek stories for the fanzine T-Negative in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It literally means "two form" and is an art form practiced on Vulcan in which a subject is examined from two different viewpoints, or in terms of its having two different aspects or natures. Ni var poetry and art were printed in Spockanalia and various other fanzines, and the term (actually part of a sophisticated Vulcan language invented by Ms Jones) caught on like wildfire in the Star Trek fan community. It is possible that the writers of "Shadows of P'Jem" were aware of this fact.

"Ni Var" was also the name of a short story by Claire Gabriel in the 1976 anthology Star Trek: The New Voyages (edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. In the story, it is "a Vulcan term referring to the duality of things: two who are one, two diversities that are a unity, two halves that come together to make a whole" (from Leonard Nimoy's introduction to the short story, which did not credit Ms Jones as the originator of the term). It is much more likely that the ship was named after this story, as Ms Jones' Star Trek stories were never professionally published and have been largely forgotten.

According to episode co-writer Mike Sussman, the Ni'Var was in fact an homage to the short story published in Star Trek: The New Voyages. Template:SurakClassStarships

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