Doctor's Orders

DVD, Enterprise S3 (Doctor's Orders)

Character was one example of something 'Enterprise' often didn't do as well as the other series', but with this 'haunted house' episode, as Phlox calls it, they made you care about him and feel so bad for him when he crumbles, everything seemingly failing in his mission to keep the crew alive. He has to look after the running of the NX-01 as the ship traverses a gigantic anomaly cloud, while everyone else has to be kept comatose to protect their brains. Many times you find that episodes of Trek reflect a previous story on another series, but their lineage isn't usually so direct as this story, which is very much a remake of 'One' on 'Voyager' in which Seven of Nine goes through the same circumstances, even down to having a companion who may not be all they seem. This is not a complaint, as it's often entertaining to see new characters put through similar experiences to their predecessors to see how they react comparatively. I believe I actually saw this one before 'One,' which I missed on transmission, eventually getting to on my first DVD run through, so I probably have slightly more allegiance to this version, even though 'Voyager' was the superior series over all.

Dr. Lucas, Phlox' human colleague whom he's kept up a correspondence with over the course of the series (and I believe is seen in the Augments trilogy of Season 4), though I'm not sure he's been mentioned since Season 1, is part of the story again. It makes me wish there was more time for scenes like the ones where Phlox narrates a letter to him, because after the first season many of those unique character moments were not bothered with, losing some of the essential ingredients that endear us to a cast. This episode doesn't make up for all the missing time we could have spent in Phlox' company, but it does a good job of reminding us why he was such fun in the first season - we see him interacting with Porthos (almost phasering him, no less!); having the film night alone; jogging round the empty decks; even enjoying the freedom of nakedness since there was no one else around to be offended. Did he trim his toenails to fit what appeared to be standard slippers, as early on we see his usual scraggly growths which might not fit a shoe so neatly?

The naked scene takes on a new tone when we find T'Pol is up and about too, though I can imagine the doctor being perfectly happy in his 'natural' state even with a Vulcan around, as long as she was off somewhere making diagnostics or staying in her quarters. But the clues are all there: when he invites her to dinner in the desolate galley (they chat about good old Chef and his culinary deficiencies, so it's good to know he came on the mission into the Expanse!), she never touches the food. When he's using the Tricorder she never takes it from him to check if it's working properly; and in the most critical moment with the warp engines having problems, she appears ignorant of the controls, leading Phlox to do every physical adjustment himself. Having seen the episode before, I knew the twist, but it is fascinating (as T'Pol would say), to see how delicately they use her without ever giving away that she, like everyone else who appears, is a figment of his imagination.

The only real jumpy moment is when he peers out of the porthole - my idea to make this episode much creepier would be to have made the anomaly a dark brown and black rather than the bright and beautiful blues and purples. That way when Phlox passed a window it would feel like anything could be looking in at any time. But still, it was a scare, and actually much better than the later 'encounters' with Xindi-Insectoids, or zombie Hoshi. Phlox hasn't had a lot of good experiences with the girl, has he! In 'The Crossing' she was taken over by an alien consciousness and kicked him in the face when he came into her room, and now he imagines her as a hideous monster that blames him for her scars. I think they lingered too long on her face, or the Xindi, it should have been half-second scares where you don't have time for the look to sink in to your mind, just enough to jolt you. At least we had some clear shots of the NX-01's empty corridors and bridge so that in twenty-five years they'll be able to use the footage for a 'Relics'-style revisitation!

I wouldn't say Roxann Dawson did a bad job, though, and I would say it was one of her better recent 'Enterprise' episodes full of a variety of shots we wouldn't normally see - the Porthos point of view, the camera low down and looking up at the looming shape of the Doctor when we first see Phlox running after him (he does more running in this than all his other episodes combined, I'll bet!), or the odd angle looking down from the engine room's balcony as a worried Phlox and unhelpful T'Pol converse on what must be done, the enormity of the situation bearing down on a tiny, insignificant Denobulan. I also had the strongest impression of the ship's submarine-like structure than I've ever had before, probably because those vessels tend to be fairly empty, except for certain areas. I wonder why Phlox imagines people the way he does? Does he have such strong self-doubt that he thinks Archer would come along and say he isn't up to the job? Or that Trip thinks so badly of him that he would warn him away from interfering with the engines.

That leads me to a couple of the most satisfying character moments, and though they're in a Phlox episode they're as much about his companion as himself: when Archer shows confidence in him it's a warm moment, but even more so was Trip's encouragement that if he ever got in a jam and couldn't do anything about it, he must wake Trip, even though it would cost the engineer his life. It was such a self-sacrificial moment for Trip, and an understanding between him and Phlox that he would entrust this with him as a last resort to save the ship, that it ranks up there as one of the best scenes of the episode! T'Pol's loss of control isn't as overt as might have been attempted, and though I would normally complain about her overly emotional version of a Vulcan there were extenuating circumstances in this case - it wasn't really her, and if it had been, she'd have been affected by the anomaly. She actually played a bit of comedy when she shows herself so incompetent and so helpless during the crisis, yet also so apologetic, that it evoked a smile from me. All that was missing was for her to do some completely un-Vulcan act at the end, such as a peck on Phlox' cheek just before he finds out that T'Pol's actually been asleep the whole time. That would have made the episode.

Even as it stands I consider this one of the better examples of the season (Phlox even learns to appreciate Mayweather's efforts at helm!), with the tension level just turned up enough to rattle the doc, but not enough for him to turn into a gibbering idiot. As he works out how to solve the problem with the engine and the warp speed increases we're totally rooting for him, an achievement on its own, considering there isn't always such a strong level of attachment reached on this series. It was about time Phlox got a proper episode to himself, just like Hoshi with 'Exile,' and it's only Travis who's yet to headline a story. But don't go into a coma waiting for that one… Phlox is the hero of this story, and while I would have liked more congratulations for him at the end, I also felt the lighter way they did it with the Mess Hall scene between him and T'Pol worked well. The story touches on the Xindi as this threat at the back of everyone's mind, as much as they are a real, physical enemy, and the need to get to Azati Prime as quickly as possible was the motivator for the predicament, but it was a personal battle for a member of the crew to overcome, and we don't see enough of that on the series, so this was a successful and creepy pleasure.

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