A Night In Sickbay

DVD, Enterprise S2 (A Night In Sickbay)

I usually love stories that are out of the ordinary. They don't fit into any category but their own and provide a completely new way of experiencing the universe. Generally such stories occur later in a series' run, once the traditional types of episode have all been done, the crew fleshed out, and the audience is long established, allowing recurring characters or little-seen areas of the ship to come to the fore. With this episode they decided to do one of those sixth season-type stories now, here in Season 2, and for me, it was too early. The good news is finding out more about Dr. Phlox, the only problem being we're served up a torrent of facts, released rather dryly in a single conversation about his three wives and various children. It's not a strong creative choice to info-dump like that, but at least the Denobulan is a little less of a mystery. More enjoyable are the continuation of his physical quirks that had begun in the pilot with the "Optimism, Captain!" ear-to-ear grin. Here we see him clipping his claw-like toenails, appearing to shave his tongue, and grinning all over again!

Mostly, the episode features the Captain getting ever more tired and bemused by the oddness he finds himself in - chasing a bat around sickbay (which, by the way, is excellently animated in what must be some of the best creature CGI seen on the series), engaging in a test of speed against T'Pol on the treadmills in the ship's gym, or dreaming of Porthos' funeral - every modern American series must have a traditional funeral scene, it seems. The scene with T'Pol ably demonstrates the superior stamina of Vulcans in a way that hasn't often been touched upon in this series. For one thing she's exercising late into the night; Vulcans don't need as much sleep as humans, and while Archer is huffing and puffing as he tries to keep up, she has no trouble talking normally despite the exertion. Such alien differences are important to show they are alien, not humans in fancy dress.

The Kreetassens are one of the most alien species poor Archer has encountered, being extremely easy to offend. Their look was as interesting as ever, and Vaughn Armstrong is back again as one of their number, though it's unclear whether he's the same character as seen last season, or simply the makeup people wanting to use his head again and save on making a new mask! I didn't buy Archer's humiliating display of forestry, one of many slightly hard to swallow scenes. Others being the stuff about T'Pol and Archer - such blatant discussion of intimate details may be common in modern TV, but the same kind of thing worked so much better with Chakotay and Janeway's forever unspoken connection.

The joke about Archer's hair parting being on the wrong side may be a sneaky reference to the discussions early on in the making of the series when Archer's hair was supposed to be quite different (as seen in early photos). It's also rare to get a reference to 'Star Wars' in 'Star Trek', but it makes me wonder, when some creature was designated Calrissian. It was only a matter of time before Porthos became the main attraction for an episode (there's a fun line in Archer's dream when reverend Phlox says how the dog was 'all for one and one for all'), but he's not awake much, and the intentions of the episode might not have made it fully to the screen. The device of showing various times over the course of the night was a different approach, but, like Archer, it feels like a long night without much sleep.

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