Dear Doctor

One of the better Enterprise episodes so far. Even though I'm still not a fan of the doctor. Compared to EMH from Voyager or Bashir from DS9, this doctor is quite boring and also very annoying. The strange grin, the way he emphasizes his words and especially those ugly shirts. Couldn't they give him a proper uniform? However, there is a ray of hope: While the other doctors simply ran blinking tech gadgets 10 cm over the skin and healed both flesh wounds and complete broken bones, this doctor at least applies ointments or the like and carries out actual treatments on the body.

First of all, to the criticism of many commentators: NO, this is not about genocide and the crew of the Enterprise is certainly not committing genocide! Genocide is the deliberate killing of large numbers of people of a particular nation or ethnic group. Intentionally, actively and with the aim of extinguishing these people. What the crew is doing here is simply not interfering with a normal biological process of development or degeneration of a species. Enterprise, Starfleet and later the United Federation of Planets are not the Salvation Army of the Galaxy. Their goal is not and never has been to help every species from the outside and, so to speak, to shape them and pave the way for them.

This episode is basically the starting point of the Prime Directive. The basic guidelines that we will encounter again and again in Star Trek. If you don't approve of this episode, you should avoid Star Trek, because Star Trek is basically all about when and whether one civilization should interfere in the fortunes of another civilization. And Star Trek has always raised the warning finger that no good deed goes unpunished. The message has always been that a species, a culture, a civilization must develop itself and chart its own path into the future and must also make mistakes in order to learn and develop morally.

Dear Doctor has some serious issues to discuss and does so very well indeed. Confronted by two different humanoid races inhabiting the same planet but possessing conflicting developmental challenges, the crew experiences the type of moral dilemma for which the iconic Prime Directive was created. The problem for the Valakians and the Menk is that this new Star Fleet policy hasn't been ratified yet. Captain Archer very much wants to help these interdependent races but doesn't know who to assist or how to do so.

We see hear the story unfold through the means of a long letter in which Doctor Phlox documents his doubts and discoveries in order to shares them with his exchange colleague Doctor Lucas. This is a well constructed episode with both Rick Berman and Brannon Braga taking writing credit. John Billingsley turns in a faultless performance as he always does when given a worthwhile part and, apparently, particularly liked this episode because he felt it was his first opportunity to flesh out his character.

Movie Night aboard the Enterprise is a good idea which will be resurrected many years down the line in Star Trek Discovery but, as with all those theatrical performances which took place aboard the 1701D, we are often left wondering who is minding the store when so many cast regulars are taking the evening off.

David Kimbel as the Valakian, Esaak, and Alex Nevil as the unnamed Menk give credibility to the plight of their respective races and Kelly Waymire continues to stand out as the lively Crewman Cutler. Jeremy Lewis, recipient of the doctor's revealing missive, does not appear in person until the Fourth Season but establishing him in this episode helps to round out both the professional and the personal aspects of Doctor Phlox.

Senior Trekker scores every episode with a Five.

The Enterprise comes upon a ship where there are a few folks in stasis. When they revive them, the humans learn that these people are from a plague-infested planet and they sent ships to space to look for more advanced species that might be able to help them cure the disease. Unfortunately, Dr. Phlox is having a heck of a time treating the illness. Plus, there is a serious ethical dilemma, as allowing the species to die out might just be in line with what would later be known as the prime directive.

This episode is interesting because it's told from the Doctor's perspective. In addition to the main plot there are some interesting subplots involving romance in the air for the Doc as well as his learning that the Captain is actually a far more capable man than he'd assumed.

With Star Trek you have to take some of the view points with a grain of salt. This episode is good in that it makes you think what is the best decision. Either way, by choosing to do something, or not do something you have made a choice. "Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject." John Stuart Mill. So should we find a cure for cancer? Should we find a cure for MS and other genetic diseases, or let evolution/nature take its course. Was it okay to let small pox wipe out most of the natives in the Americas? If the Europeans had a cure for small pox, should they have withheld it from the natives in the name of evolution. When do we decide to help other species and when do we decide to let nature take its course? This is why this episode is both good and bad. It's difficult to see a doctor go against the Hippocratic oath in refusing help and then rationalizing this behavior to science. Humans may continue to wipe out species due to being a more evolved species but it doesn't make it right.

This episode surrounds discovering a new species who is rapidly dying of a genetic defect, to the point of total extinction in their near future. This species is pre-warp but technologically/industrially advanced.

There is a second species, probably of similar ancestry, who live primitively, where there are somewhat treated inferior by the dominant species. They seem to be immune to the disease that is killing the dominant species.

Once they mentioned that the 2nd species' immunity (and certain dependence/inferiority to the dominant species) I kept anticipating that Dr. Phlox would suggest interspecies mating to potentially weed out this genetic defect. It would solve the problem of the 2nd species being treated like inferior, as well.

Unfortunately that suggestion was never brought up and I guess the writer of the episode just wanted to bring up the "We can't play god" theme where you don't intervene technologically/medically with a less advanced species. Honestly you don't need to intervene medically to eliminate genetic defects - it's called diversification with mating. Telling the dominant species to integrate the other 'inferior' species into their own and interbreed wouldn't be the 'playing god' thing. It's just common sense for anyone who has any comprehension of (genetic) diversity.