Enterprise S1E12 - Dear Doctor

Phlox and Archer must decide where their morals lie about letting a species live or die from a pandemic – Wikipedia

The good:

This was a pretty deep one, particularly coming off the last shoot-em-up episode.

Phlox finally gets his spotlight . Good pacing between the opening montage/exposition scenes and the CSI planetary stuff, while keeping the focus clearly on Plox the entire time. I feel like this is what the writers really wanted to do for Malcolm in the last episode.

I continue to love Phlox, particularly the way his character walks the line between between being an outsider and companion amongst the crew. Of course, that has been a recurring gimmick on Star Trek from the beginning (e.g. Spock, Worf, Data, etc.) However, I think Phlox does it better than all of them. He is curious, but not naïve like Data. He is confident, but not stand-offish like Vulcans. And he is willing to be vulnerable, unlike certain Klingons I know.

Phlox and Porthos in a scene together! Boom.

We don’t get too caught up in the Trekno-babble of the medical research. Dudes are sick. Phlox is on the scene doing his thing. We learn just enough to follow along, and don’t care about the nitty gritty details. Phlox never even gives details on the cure, because it doesn’t really matter for the story.

Same thing with the relationship between the Valakians and the Menk. I think that this where the episode really could have gone south. In fact, I was kind of waiting for it to happen the whole time. But they pulled it off. The situation (peacefully co-existing humanoid species at different stages of development) is improbable but not impossible. We get little hints about the complexity of the relationship between the two species, but never anything definitive to make us feel like the Valakians are outright assholes to the Menk. 

Of course the centerpiece of the episode is the gut check Phlox and Archer face on “playing God”. It was set up perfectly with a relatively advanced race that had already encountered warp technology. We get to see their planet, and of course it sure looks a lot like Earth. We definitely want to help the Valakians.

Did Archer and Phlox make the right decision? We have the benefit of knowing that the Prime Directive is on the way, but they didn’t. This was a growing up episode for Archer. I feel like it is the first time he had to make a really tough command decision.

I was CONVINCED that the “cure” was going to be the Valakians and Menk interbreeding. I am so glad it didn’t go that way.

The bad:

Umm…nothing? How odd. 

I don’t want to go out of my way to find something just to make a point, so we’ll just chalk this up to a win and move on. Good job guys.