A Night in Sickbay

... and not a captain. This is a completely out of character and complete nonsense story that you should just skip.

One of the weaker entries of Enterprise for sure.

I know, sex is part of life, but these people seem a little overly obsessed with it. I find it disappointing and a little disgusting, the way Archer acted throughout this episode; not only the sexual tension bull pucky with T'Pol, but also the dog. I love dogs, but I would never presume to take my dog to some alien planet, for the dog's safety. I honestly don't think the dog should be on the Enterprise in the first place. Archer wants something from these people, but instead of doing whatever he can to be nice and try to observe their cultural requirements, he acts like an arrogant asshole. The best part of this episode, and the only reason it got a 4 instead of a 1, was the scene with Archer and the Doctor trying to catch the bat; that was entertaining.

Trip advises that the Enterprise needs one additional plasma injector for safety reasons, and Captain Archer contacts the Kreetassans, who produce a high quality device. However, the aliens end their conversation feeling offended again with some unknown attitude of the diplomatic group and Archer returns upset to Enterprise. While in the contamination chamber, Dr. Phlox finds that the immunologic system of Porthos is affected by a pathogen from the planet, and puts the dog in quarantine in the sickbay. Archer spends the night in the sickbay with Pathos and Dr. Phlox, and learns about the life of the Deobulans, sexual tension and humbleness to say I am sorry.

"A Night in the Sickbay" is a different episode based on the friendship of Captain Archer with his pet and the revelations of Dr. Phlox. The unbalanced attitude of Archer, prioritizing his dog over the needs of the Enterprise, is weird and unexplainable, disclosing a total level of lack of professionalism and childish behavior. The low paced story has funny moments but also silly ones, and I liked the dream of Archer with the gorgeous and sexy T'Pol. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Uma Noite na Enfermaria" ("A Night in the Sickbay")

Porthos becomes gravely ill and Archer accompanies him during a night in sickbay.

I found two things I liked in this episode. Firstly, I admire the willingness to try something different that let the writers depart from the usual Trek formulas. Secondly, I appreciated the parts that deal with Porthos' treatment. That unfortunately is where it ends for me with this one.

We open with one of those scenes in the decontamination chamber where physically fit actors and actresses are almost naked under a mood light and asked to wash each other whilst chatting.

Things then get worse as Archer spends the remainder of the episode either ranting about the Kreetassans or indulging Dr Phlox in his psychological analysis of his captain and sub-commander's repressed sexual desires. It is all broken up by a series of physical "comedy" sketches where Phlox clips his toenails, scrapes fluid off his tongue and with Archer's help attempts to catch his escaped bat.

In the same vein as Malcolm Reed, Harry Kim and others, the writers succeed in humiliating a main character, in this case the central one. It carries on from one scene to the next and gives us nothing but badly written dialogue unsuited to Scott Bakula's personality.

We have a pointless dream sequence that translates things that Phlox said in an earlier scene into visual imagery. For me this is just repetition and serves no purpose. I think it would have been better to have cut the previous dialogue and just show this instead. In fact cut all the dialogue about Archer and T'Pol and do it all visually in little moments throughout the series rather than make an issue out of it in the one episode.

The scene with Archer cutting the log would have been good if the episode had been approached differently. Here he has to take one for the team and humiliate himself to obtain the required tech from the Kreetassans. If the writers had given him a level of dignity to begin with it would be funny to see him lose it, but unfortunately by this time he is already like the clown who is about to have the final cream pie shoved in his face.

A Night in Sickbay is a truly bizarre and unusually dramatic episode of enterprise. Unlike most episodes of this series, the action focuses on character development. If you were to watch the series episode by episode, this one would likely increase your understanding of Captain Jonathan Archer tenfold, your understanding of Doctor Flox by about double, and would also provide nice insights into the character of T'pol.

Archer's achilles heal turns out to be his beagle Porthos. Porthos is sick with a life threatening illness, and Scott Bakula does a great job of acting out a manic, somewhat deranged Captain Archer as he crumbles under the stress of the possible loss of his best friend. For once, we are presented with a Captain Archer who is not guided by his best lights of professionalism. Stress also affects his job performance, as he can not concentrate on an important diplomatic mission, and repeatedly offends those who he is negotiating with.

In the end, the story offers a nice take on a Star Trek theme which can be traced back to the first series - how even the most powerful members of a team need every member of that team to get them where they need to go.