Somehow, despite having just been repaired to "good as new" condition, the Enterprise has blown one of its Technobabble Injectors. Trip has to go down to four injectors while he repairs the faulty one. The ship can run on four injectors but then Trip would only have four. And as the classic MASH episode, The Incubator, reminds us, four isn't as good as five.
To negotiate for a replacement part, Archer goes to the planet of the Drama Queen-Assians, the race that was previously offended when the Enterprise crew ate in front of them. While they are down there, Porthos urinates on a sacred tree, which offends the Drama Queen-Assians all over again. While Archer wrestles with the newly-demanded apology (one which will apparently involve a chainsaw... though not in the way Archer would doubtless like it to), Dr. Phlox detects a contagion in Porthos' system. If Phlox cannot get the contagion under control before it destroys the beagle's immune system, then Porthos will die!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Archer: You may have noticed that many recent reviews have included notes about how much Archer has learned and progressed from his early mistakes. Well, forget all that. This episode sees Archer not just headstrong, but outright hostile to pretty much every character he encounters. All right, the alien race in question would try the patience of Mohandes Gandhi. Still, this is an episode in which the captain's dilemma, a captain whom we are informed actually was trained as a diplomat, revolves around having to make a pointless apology. Um... doesn't making pointless apologies represent a fair percentage of diplomacy?
Archer gets into snits with T'Pol, for wanting him to apologize, and with Dr. Phlox, for picking up on sexual tension between Archer and T'Pol. Said sexual tension is as much news to me as the exposition we are force-fed about Archer and T'Pol experiencing increased friction lately. Increased friction? Haven't Archer and T'Pol been working better together than ever? Oh, and just to make sure that Archer is stripped clean of anything resembling dignity, he actually threatens to pee on the sacred alien trees himself at one point. Long before the end of this episode, I found myself reflecting that Ambassador Soval may have had a point about Archer being unsuitable for command.
T'Pol: Shows more restraint and a better sense of diplomacy than her captain does, even at the end when Captain Scrooge has reformed after his difficult night. The last scene between her and Archer, in which she very gently but firmly deals with the issue of sexual tension between them, is extremely well-acted by Jolene Blalock. At this point, I have difficulty believing that in my review of the pilot, she was the cast member I had pegged as "the weak link."
Dr. Phlox: For the first half of this episode, we get Dr. Phlox, Komedy Creation. Hear Dr. Phlox loudly clip his toenails! See him scrape his tongue! Watch him run around chasing a bat while making bat noises! Thankfully, the complex and alien character of other episodes does reappear in the second half. Phlox finally has enough of Archer's temper tantrums when Archer explodes about Phlox's race not having dogs. He calmly replies that perhaps he does not "fully appreciate the bond between yourself and your subservient quadruped," but that Archer needs to make a decision about Porthos' latest treatment very quickly. It's difficult to describe just how well John Billingsley's delivery works, but he calmly and efficiently puts a lid on Archer's idiocy.
THOUGHTS
I had been duly warned. For the past few months, I have heard over and over again that A Night in Sickbay was a bad episode, many citing it as Enterprise's worst episode.
Nevertheless, I held out hope. After all, Enterprise itself was a show reputed to be the worst Trek (though by now I think its reputation has gained to the point where it's at least held above Voyager). It was the franchise killer - a title it almost entirely doesn't deserve. Add to that, from the title alone, it was guaranteed to be a Phlox-heavy episode. John Billingsley has been good value in virtually every episode, and Dear Doctor was my favorite first season episode. Surely a Phlox-centric episode can't be all bad?
Well... It isn't all bad. There are two very good scenes buried in the manure. Once the forced comedy is dropped and Phlox and Archer talk as two mature adults about subjects like family, there's a wonderful scene with terrific performances by two fine actors. The final T'Pol/Archer scene is also a very good exchange. Finally, while Archer has never been worse-characterized, Scott Bakula still does a decent job of conveying Archer's worry for his beagle.
Unfortunately, almost everything else is bad. Archer and T'Pol are reset to early Season One. T'Pol has no faith in Archer's judgment, and given Archer's behavior, I don't blame her. After Archer throws a snit on the bridge over the demanded apology, and Hoshi asks if they have a chainsaw on board, I half-thought she was expressing homicidal thoughts about her emotionally adolescent captain. By that point, I surely know I was! Archer spends three-quarters of this episode being an insufferable lout to every character he encounters.
The excuse for this is that he's worried about his dog. I'm sorry, I grew up with dogs and cats, and I've always loved my pets. But "my dog is sick" is not an excuse to be a miserable jerk (replace "jerk" with 7-letter word of your choice) to people you supposedly call friends. By the end of the episode, I fully expected that if a crew member was wheeled into sickbay, bleeding copiously from the head with third-degree burns, that when Phlox went to operate, Archer would whine in the background, "But what about my dog!?!"
All of this is in service of Archer Learning A Very Important Lesson about diplomacy. Never mind that Archer should have mastered this particular lesson before he ever left spacedock! Regressing a character to mental adolescence just to make him behave with a modicum of sense at the very, very end is NOT character development. What it is, is a bad writing trick frankly worthy of a franchise killer.
Random notes: Reed and Mayweather only appear in a dream sequence, and do not speak. That makes them the two regulars who escape this episode with the highest amount of dignity. Also, T'Pol is dead right when she observes that Archer should never have taken Porthos on a diplomatic mission. Again, the sort of common sense thing Archer would have been aware of, if this wasn't a crappy filler episode requiring him to be an idiot in order to provoke a (rather mild) crisis.
Rating: 2/10. Without John Billingsley, this would get a "1."
Previous Episode: Dead Stop
Next Episode: Marauders
Search Amazon.com for Star Trek: Enterprise
Review Index
No comments:
Post a Comment