A Night in 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.

This is a crazy episode. As a part of a series it brings down the quality. It is sexist, weird, illogical and both plot and character development go in the wrong direction. 5/10

But I happen to like "so bad it's good" episodes, so on it's own it is funny. Every now and then you start to think "Maybe this is going to get more normal" and suddenly something weird happens again. We already know the mirror universe exists, maybe this is another parallel universe? 8/10

First of all we have the race, the Kreetessians (sp?), who have no thickness in their skin. An advanced culture that can't recognize the fact that other species may not understand their customs. They are petty and self absorbed and expect others to understand what offends them. But the Enterprise needs something from them (something quite critical) and they aren't going to get it unless they apologize. It seems that Archer brought his dog with him when negotiating, and the dog peed on their trees. Porthoes comes back to the ship with an inflicted immune system and may die. Archer becomes enraged, ignoring the fact that he is putting the whole crew in jeopardy. He and T'Pol are in a very adversarial position. Dr. Phlox is the central figure here and we get to know a lot more about him. We also get to see some outrageous demands made by the Kreetessians. Archer's shortsighted behavior here really diminishes this episode and makes one wonder how he could be a true leader. Just not up to par.

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.

This episode sucks.

Over the past few years I have watched all episodes of "Next Generation" and "Voyager" and am now watching "Enterprise".

I am thoroughly enjoying this series. Until this episode. I stared at the screen in horror at the destruction of character and entertainment. It is more like an attempt at slapstick.

It does not build the characters but throws them out on a limb - and leaves the audience gasping. It does little to build the series.

Why this was ever allowed to go to air amazes me. Was it the writing? Was it the directing? Was it the producer? We'll probably never know.

But one bad apple isn't bad I suppose. I say that hoping it is only one.