Oh, I've heard things about "Dear Doctor"...and none of them good. I know I watched it when it first aired, but of course I don't remember anything about it. I figure, if I really hate it, I'll just pretend it's not canon. Crisis averted!
I am rather fond of "Dear Doctor." Will be looking forward to your impression of it. Interesting how the Doctor character in many Trek series were stand-outs.
Silent Enemy: A pretty average episode, but better than most I've seen so far. Some strange aliens attack the ship, Archer is forced to acknowledge that the Enterprise's weapons are inadequate, and finally does something about it. Also, I find out that Malcolm and I have the same favorite food. There's a moment in this episode where Archer displays a rare moment of maturity. I can't remember his exact words, but he basically admits to Trip that they weren't fully prepared when they left Earth. I'm surprised he actually owned up to this. Maybe he's growing a brain at last. Except, if the Enterprise just happened to have the parts for three phase cannons just lying around, why haven't they installed them before now? They've had plenty of opportunities in the last five months. And why do they decide they don't need to go back to Jupiter Station anymore, just because their phase cannons just happened to work this one time during their encounter with this one alien ship? It also blew out half the relays on the ship. Not exactly the result you want to see in a weapon. Anyway, the aliens were cool. I liked that they weren't just people with prosthetic makeup, but actually looked like aliens. It made them more mysterious and unsettling. Although something tells me we'll probably never see them again. The B-story was kind of meh, and felt out of place, but at least they gave some attention to Malcolm's character. It's nice to see a Trek character who's introverted but not a jerk. And hey, he loves pineapple. So he can't be all bad. Next up: Dear Doctor. Dun-dun-dunnnnn!
Well, even I can't find much wrong with this episode. Malcom's happy happy, joy joy that he gets to blow stuff up and get's pineapples. Though does Phlox just give away anyone's medical info on request? Guess that's small change compared to next week though! Also, these mysterious enemies... as fascinating as they are.. naturally, you're right, we never see them again. But it was an entertaining episode, if rather average.
Totally called it! Yeah, somehow I suspected they were just a plot device, to emphasize the need for some better weapons. I suppose it's just as well. It was becoming a bit embarrassing to watch the Enterprise getting their asses handed to them in almost every battle.
They looked to much like typical "greys" for my taste. I also like that this episode shows that the Vulcans are right, humankind is not ready yet. They go out there and expect everybody to be friendly. Doesn't mean that they should stay at home of course. You could argue that this culminates in the third season, when Archer the explorer has to become a soldier.
Given all the goofy time travel elements to season 3, the events triggering the whole explorer/soldier transformation probably would've happened anyways even if Archer wasn't out there the first two seasons, transmitting Earth's location to every hostile alien species.
I doubt that Archer exchanged maps with a new species he did not trust but your point is nonetheless correct, space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence. If they had stayed at home the war with the Romulans also wouldn't have happened and the Federation have emerged. This was the beautiful thing about Enterprise, humans and Vulcans were both correct. Humans aren't ready yet to go out there, they never will be, but once they are out there they also create something marvelous like an alliance among species who have a history of not getting along.
In the 3rd episode, before he even got a response he'd sent out Earth's location. So... yeah, that just always struck me as a bad idea to say the least. In the Terra Prime episodes they were complaining about this too, so one would assume it was general practice for whatever reason. It was a catch 22 though with the Vulcans and humans both being right. On the one side... especially during the first two seasons, Archer and company... just so often woefully seemed out of their depth the way the bungled around through the various situations of the week. On the other hand, it's a valid point that the Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites otherwise formed a hate triangle that it took the humans to break up and be the happy go lucky friends they are later on. Though I guess there's no way to know how things will turn out if Earth wasn't involved, it's entirely possible they could've put their differences aside themselves. Go back in time to the early 19th century and tell someone from America that Britain would be their strongest ally in the future and they'd call you crazy probably.
Good catch and I totally agree, this was utterly stupid. The guy is excited about meeting new species and lacks prudence. It took me a lot of time until I started to like Archer, my first impression was that he was impulsive and stupid. I think the idea of the show was to show that Archer is just a pilot. He is a regular guy not a captain like the other four, he has not enjoyed a well-rounded Starfleet Academy education, he is out there without any guidelines. The textbooks don't exist yet. He is naive and doesn't want to listen to the advice from the High Command because they are humankind's parents and now the kid entered has entered puberty. This implies a lot of messing up. After some time he starts to listen to the one Vulcan he trusts though and also takes advice from Phlox, even when it runs against his own instincts.
First Flight did imply Archer came up through the program as a pilot. Though yeah, as lacking as he was in areas of diplomacy and common sense at times, you really got the feeling the only reason he got the job was plain old nepotism, since his dad built the engine. You'd think though, if Archer wasn't qualified to do complex diplomatic negotiations they'd send an ambassador or something who was along with the crew though as an adviser to help out with that. Though as you mention, his track record for listening to T'Pol wasn't that great... why should he listen to one of his own people? It was great that they showed the crew evolving and becoming more accustomed to deep space encounters... but at the same time, the lack of planning was just ugh... at times. NASA meticulously plans -everything- with contingencies for every conceivable scenario. While naturally you can't anticipate every situation by the nature of space exploration, but that really never seemed to excuse the fly by the seat of the pants approach Archer took, just lunging forward into any given situation.
Archer is the kind of guy who would meet a stranger on the street and give him a detailed map to his house, not knowing the stranger is an axe murderer.
Although the show was the most realistic of all five and tried to extrapolate current NASA designs to not make it look too futuristic I totally agree that it wasn't realistic in terms of planning the entire NX deep space mission. Yet I also think that this would be dramatically inferior, a setup with humankind stumbling into deep space without being totally ready (Archer quickly scrambled his crew together, not all hardware yet installed) it leads to more interesting stories. Having a not-so-perfect captain, more of a John Doe than a larger-than-life Kirk or Picard, was in my opinion quite refreshing. About your point concerning diplomats, didn't Archer become friends with Shran precisely because he was so blunt and direct?
Archer's doesn't dislike Vulcans, he just doesn't like the High Command. For all of Archer's shortcomings, a disciplined and restrained diplomat would have never gained the friendship of Shran. Which was another one of ENT's brilliant ideas, to take Journey to Babel as a benchmark and show how species who have a hard time to get along slowly begin to change.
Dear Doctor: What. The. Hell. What did I just watch? "Social Darwinism: Star Trek Style"? You guys. I don't even know where to begin. Okay. Here's what happens. So Enterprise meets a species called the Valakians, who are suffering from a deadly epidemic, and who also share their planet with another, less developed species called the Menk, who seem to be immune to the disease. Phlox eventually discovers that the disease is not caused by a virus or bacteria, but is actually genetic; in fact, he believes that the Valakians will become extinct within a couple centuries. He develops a cure, but decides to withhold it on the grounds that -- get this -- the Valakians are destined to die off, and the Menk must be allowed to take over as the dominant species on the planet. And Archer goes along with it. Is there an emoticon for ripping one's own hair out? How is this okay? Their basic reasoning is, "Your genes are inferior, so you don't deserve to live." Isn't that essentially the same reasoning that has been used throughout history to justify genocide? Holding back the cure would be like a doctor refusing to treat a patient with a hereditary disease, because if they really deserved to live, they wouldn't have been born with that predisposition in the first place. Also, refusing to cure the Valakians because they're meant to die off is not science. It's an assumption. And a pretty damned big one. Has Phlox seriously never heard of symbiosis? How does he know that two sentient species can't coexist on the same planet? And how does he know that the Menk would survive if the Valakians went extinct? Sure, they may have been developing quickly, but they still relied on the Valakians for food and shelter. If the Valakians did die off, there's a good chance that most of the Menk will, too. And who's to say that the Valakians need to be gone in order for the Menk to thrive? Maybe they'll become the dominant species anyway. There's no way of knowing for certain. But based on an assumption, Phlox and Archer were both okay with being complicit in the deaths of millions of people. This wasn't a bad episode -- I mean, it wasn't badly written or poorly acted. But the serious moral issues were treated as if they didn't even exist. And that's how they introduced the idea of the Prime Directive. I have to go take a shower now.
Yeah... you pretty much summed it up as well as anyone. Obviously what they were going at is an episode to set up the Prime Directive. The PD itself is quite often morally lacking at times, but this one... well I guess if they're trying to set the precedent for every TNG and VOY episode where they watch a disease or some other disaster destroy a planet and entire race and just shrug citing the Prime Directive, well... mission accomplished. This episode... I just don't know what they were thinking. As you said, everyone gave a great performance in it.... but it's the material, not how it's presented that's just... morally repugnant. This is a minor spoiler, but since the guy appeared in TOS I'll bring him up. In a future episode Colonel Phillip Green is mentioned. He's the guy who purged 37 million people after WW3 because they had radiation sickness and he didn't want them passing the defects to the next species. Archer condemns this as barbaric and sickening to a person who idolizes him... yet that's small change compared to this. And the exact same concept really. It just comes back down to... what were they thinking?! I'm sorry, but I think Phlox and Archer are both first rate jerks for this alone. Which is kinda why I said skip the episode if you're a fan of Phlox.
Uh, yeah. It's exactly the same. Don't you just love inconsistent characterization? That's much like Janeway saying that it's morally reprehensible to sacrifice one life to save another, and then doing it in "Tuvix". But that's another thread. I know... I'm just not an episode-skipping kind of girl. And anyway, it's not Billingsley's fault that the writers decided to make him a mass-murderer. I guess I'm going with the old "Pretend it's not canon" standby. What I was really watching was Mirror Universe Enterprise. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Mirror Phlox only murdered a few people. I just love the heroic music at the end of the episode as Archer declares that one day they'll have a Directive to condone things like this. Oh and here's the appropriate emoticon: