Christopher wrote:
And the same is true here. I don't really agree with the decisions Phlox and Archer made, but that's beside the point. What matters is that "Dear Doctor" is a challenging, powerful, character-driven episode, and it deserves recognition as one of Star Trek's finest hours. It's something very rare in the franchise's history -- a pure drama, a story where all the conflict and tension come from character interaction and moral dilemmas, without any tacked-on violence or danger to meet some arbitrary quota for action.
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While I made an off-the-cuff comment, there is more wrong with
Dear Doctor than the outcome. The biggest problem is that Phlox description of what is happening with the Menk doesn't match with what we visually see of them. It was very clear that the Valakians weren't hindering Menk evolution. They had their own structured language, were able to use logic to sort, worked in hospitals and used tablet computers.
Then you add in that there was no real tension until the last ten or twelve minutes and Archer's terrible proto-Prime Directive speech and I think it's one of the worst Trek episodes out there. YMMV.
