P'Jem

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The monastery of P'Jem in The Andorian Incident
The monastery of P'Jem in The Andorian Incident

P'Jem, a fictional location in the Star Trek universe, is a Vulcan monastery about 3000 years old. Vulcans go there to find solitude, peaceful meditation and to go through the Kolinahr. To visit P'Jem there is a strict protocol to follow involving bowing and praying. Inside, the monastery is adorned with important artifacts and relics. The Stone of J'Kaa is a stone given to guests upon leaving as a part of a blessing ritual.

Additionally, P'Jem was being used covertly by the Vulcan High Council as a base for a mass surveillance system, with only one monk in the entire monastery being aware of this. The station was located beneath the monastery in a large subterrainian cavern that had presumably been excavated solely for this purpose, and was accessible through a hidden doorway in the monastery's lower vault (normally only used for storing ancient artifacts relating to P'Jem's founding monks--though it is very likely that there were other entrances given the number of personnel operating the equipment, as well as the inconvenience of passing through both a hidden chamber and the preceding catacombs which were accessible only through a secret passage in the monastery's rear chambers.

In the episode The Andorian Incident, a group of Andorian commandos were sent to P'Jem to locate the listening station that the Andorian government had come to suspect existed. Shortly after their arrival, most of the Senior Officers of the NX-01 beamed down to visit, unaware at first of the Andorians who arrived a few hours earlier. The listening station was uncovered later, after a brief fight in the lower vault, where Captain Archer then ordered T'Pol to give the photographic evidence they collected to Captain Shran (who led this particular Andorian mission to P'Jem). Thereafter, the Andorian government gave the monastery's inhabitants a short notice for evacuation, afterwhich they proceeded to destroy both the monastery and the listening post.

This episode's events proved to be the basis for many future occurrences and plot devices to follow in Star Trek: Enterprise, including many underhanded reprisal attempts directed against both Captain Archer and T'Pol by the Vulcan High Council. Additionally, many fans of the show have taken note of the resemblance of the listening post at P'Jem to its real-life counterpart ECHELON and other NSA programs, even though the story was written more than a year before the events of September 11th, 2001.