Like coming back to school after Christmas break to face finals, production on the 17th episode of Season Two was interrupted for two weeks for holiday hiatus, with two days of strenuous shooting left to do upon the cast and crew's return.

The eight-day schedule for "Canamar" commenced the day "Star Trek Nemesis" launched in theaters — Friday, December 13 — and concluded just yesterday.

In the story, Captain Archer and Trip Tucker have taken a shuttlepod to the homeworld of the Enolian people to make first contact, and upon leaving are mistakenly apprehended and incarcerated on a prisoner transport vessel headed for the penal colony Canamar. Before the Enolian government can see to their release, another inmate on the transport seizes control of the vessel, leading Archer to engage in a precarious scheme to gain the trust of the insurgent in order to save his and Tucker's lives.

Mark Rolston plays "Kuroda," the alien who leads the prisoner revolt. Rolston previously played the murderous engineer "Walter J. Pierce" in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Eye of the Beholder," and has also been seen in Profiler, Babylon 5, The X-Files, Angel, Dark Angel, Alias, etc., and movies such as "Aliens," "The Shawshank Redemption," "Robocop 2," "Rush Hour" and many others.

Most of this production took place in the swing sets of the prisoner transport ship, focusing on Scott Bakula, Connor Trinneer and the guest actors. The rest of the principal cast actually got to take an extended hiatus, as they performed scenes on the standing ship sets which finished on the second day of shooting. Then the action moved into the confining quarters of the alien ship's Cockpit and Main Cabin, with the most vigorous work saved for the New Year. When things got physical, Shawn Crowder returned as "Stunt Trip" while Ed Conna came on board as "Stunt Kuroda." Doubling for Archer was stunt coordinator Vince Deadrick Jr.; Chester Trip and Steve Blalock stunt-doubled other aliens. There were about eight extras in alien makeup filling out the prisoner population in the background.

"Canamar" was written by co-executive producer John Shiban and directed by Allan Kroeker. Shiban previously scripted "Minefield" and tonight's "Dawn." Kroeker has directed dozens of episodes from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, including the series finales of each, plus four Enterprise segments including "Shockwave" and "Shockwave, Part II."

This episode is tentatively slated for February 26 on UPN.