A Night in Sickbay could have been drastically improved with but three simple changes:
1: Remove the ticking clock revolving around needing a critical piece of tech for the ship's safety. If it was some tedious Vulcan diplomatic mission dumped upon the crew that forced Archer to put up with these annoying Kretassians, then his petulance would have been more sympathetic.
2: Porthos' illness shouldn't have been Archer's fault. It was. Completely. It made him come across as a real jerk to be blaming these innocent aliens, no matter how much they dislike one another.
3: Remove the whole sexual tension subplot. It adds nothing except some horribly cliche Freudian 'slips'.
Okay, I disagree with all three of these improvements, and here's why.
1. There really was no ticking time frame except the idea that the longer it takes to apologize, the less likely it would be accepted. It's not like
very-bad-things-technobabble was going to happen in 24 hours (sorry, I've been on a
24 binge lately, so I'm all about the digital clock-induced tension). But the idea was that the combo of (1) the second-contact gone wrong, (2) the sick dog, and (3) extreme fatigue all blew the problem out of proportion. It should have been an easy decision: Get something to eat, get some sleep, then call the Kretassians and tell them,
really sorry, won't happen again, thanks for the spark plugs.
2. Porthos' illness was Archer's fault
and the Kretassians' fault. They missed something critical that had nothing at all to do with the sacred trees. The dog would have gotten sick anyway. Archer's mistake was assuming that the aliens had it covered, and not double checking. He was mad at them for that, and that gave him an excuse not to acknowledge his own contribution to the overarching problem (that he didn't realize the stand of trees was meaningful).
You know, there are times when
danahubby and I fight, and it's a cold war. He'll do something stupid and avoidable, and I'll call him on it in some snotty way, and suddenly neither of us wants to apologize because the other's bad behaviour becomes our focus. (You shouldn't have snapped at me! Yeah, well, you messed up my schedule!) Both of us are wrong and owe each other an apology, but neither one of us is ready to cough one up, dammit. Eventually, yes we will,
but not just this minute. I really don't think Archer was meant to come across as being right - he was meant to come across as being unprepared for the situation and overwhelmed (see point 1). T'Pol pretty much tells him this. The exercise room scene boils down to:
You're being a child, apologize. And Archer's whole demeanor is:
I know that, but not right now. Go away.
3. The sexual tension plot is just another element added to the ones I mentioned above. Phlox is a busy body with a captive audience. It's like when your friend tells you not to notice the big zit in the middle of her forehead, and suddenly, she becomes Cyclops. I did think it played very nicely into the idea that Archer is irritated with T'Pol because she is right, and now on top of that he's confronted with an attraction that he's trying really, really hard not even to think about. So now he's aggravated, guilty, tired, worried, in the wrong,
and sexually frustrated. Hi, Cyclops!
I've got no love for the bat chasing scene, though.
<--- even their smiley is mean.
Too funny.)
