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.

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.

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.

After a dozen episodes, the Star Trek series "Enterprise" comes into its own with this amazing episode, written by Maria and Andre Jacquemetton (known for their later work producing the great "Mad Men" series. Dealing with the central issue of how a space exploration might interfere with alien races' development, it's dramatized carefully in a very logical and in fact, emotional fashion, to deliver via Archer's final decision a terrific conclusion.

With an insidiously beautiful and subtle musical score, and central character John Billingsley's voice-over narration and bemused acting style, the episode personalizes theoretical issues. His relationship to his human crewmates, especially the platonic romantic interest well-played by Kelly Waymire, makes the notion about interspecies relations more palpable and personal.

Unlike literary science fiction, where concepts are paramount, movie (and TV) examples in the genre tend to be biased in favor of "action movie" cliches & SPFX. This episode is a thinking person's show in the genre, and packs a wallop.

The Enterprise finds a primitive starship with two dying alien astronauts, and one of them tells that his Valakian race is extinguishing due to an epidemic. Archer travels to their planet and assigns Dr. Phlox to find a cure for the disease. Dr. Phlox, who is trying to understand his relationship with the human crewman Elizabeth Cutler, discloses that the planet inhabited by two humanoid races that pacifically coexists: the developed Valakian and the primitive workers Menk. Further, he discovers that the Valakian have genetic epidemic that will annihilate their race in about two centuries while the Menk have linguistic and manual abilities to be developed. With the dilemma of interfering in the development of races, Phlox has a serious conversation with Archer.

"Dear Doctor" presents a good discussion of ethical and moral concerns. The story is centered in the pleasant Denobulian Dr. Phlox, who is totally integrated to the human style of life but still have doubts related to relationship between male and female. The advice of T'Pol is very funny and logical, since she does not understand the matters of heart and love. The excerpts of "For Whom the Bell Tolls", showing the gorgeous face of Ingrid Bergman with about twenty-seven years old, is a plus in this great episode. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Caro Doutor" ("Dear Doctor")