Day 281: Enterprise, Dear Doctor

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it! Unfortunately, the entry for today isn't exactly the cheeriest or most festive of episodes...

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S1EP12, “Dear Doctor”

 Summary: After receiving a letter from one of his fellow doctors in the Interspecies Medical Exchange, Phlox returns the favor, letting his colleague know what’s been going on in his life. In addition to detailing his experiences on Enterprise and the flirtations he’s sensing from Crewman Cutler, he talks about a curious medical situation he’s found himself in the middle of. The Enterprise came across a pre-warp spaceship containing some Valakians, who went out into space to look for other races that could help cure a disease ravaging their people. Since they’ve already been exposed to warp based cultures, T’Pol agreed that the Enterprise could help. Upon arriving on the planet, the crew discovers that there’s a second humanoid species, the Menk, who co-exist peacefully if not equally with the Valakians and have a somewhat separate culture. Phlox finds both of them interesting…but what he finds out about them medically leads to a bit of a problem.

Standalone Thoughts: I’m not entirely sure where I come down on this episode. I know that SFDebris despises it, and I can at least see why; it’s a more complex issue that can actually be applied to the real world (and can therefore hit close to home), instead of being brushed off as sci-fi technobabble. Furthermore, it’s a moral dilemma that cannot reach a happy medium, because whichever option was chosen, someone was going to be hurt. This may in fact be the biggest moral dilemma in a Star Trek episode I’ve covered. Deep Space Nine had its moments, but none of them left me feeling as unsettled as this one does. Unfortunately, it’s hard to talk obliquely about this issue, so I’ll have to resort to SPOILERS.

*One more line…*

The dilemma revolves around which group the Enterprise should give an evolutionary advantage to. Phlox determines that the Valakian disease is genetic, and will drive the species to extinction in about two hundred years. At the same time, the Menk show great evolutionary promise, but they’re probably not going to get much of a chance for growth if they keep being coddled (or, as it’s kind of implied, enslaved) by the Valakians. All of this is heavy material…and then you throw in the fact that Phlox does in fact find a cure for the disease, but wants to withhold it because he feels like nature should take its course. Which means that the average member of the audience is now torn between wanting the Menk to have more freedom and not wanting thousands if not millions of Valakians to die when there’s an available cure. Throw in a discussion about whether or not to give a pre-warp civilization warp drive when they’re not technologically capable of building it themselves and you’ve got an episode that is practically begging to be debated about.

Like I said, I don’t know whose side I come down on. I’m horrified by the thought of knowingly letting the Valakians gradually die out (though there’s at least a chance that they could find the cure themselves in those two hundred years), but the slavery overtones of the Menk’s existence don’t sit well with me either. It’s messy and challenging, and while I applaud the show on one level for tackling a tough issue, this isn’t the sort of thing we expect or want in most of our entertainment. If they were going to do this, I think they needed to soften the blow a little.

I don’t think it helps that the show once again reveals pacing problems by dumping the majority of the dilemma on us in the last ten minutes of the episode, which means we’ve barely had time to process it before Archer is forced to make a decision thanks to out-of-universe time constraints. This might have worked better if we’d began in media res, maybe even using the same technique of “In the Pale Moonlight” where Phlox is writing to his colleague about this after the fact. That way, we could get the pros and cons of both sides, instead of dedicating at least ten minutes of the episode to Phlox and Cutler’s potential romance. Sure, that subplot lightens the mood a bit, but I think the serious stuff was more important in this case.

I’d say this is a memorable Enterprise episode, though not necessarily for the best reasons. I don’t hate it, nor do I think it’s a bad episode just because it left me feeling uncomfortable, but the material is such that it’s not an episode I care to revisit on my own time. As for whether or not you should watch it, I’d say it’s worth examining…but you should probably be in a more serious mindset when you do.

How it Relates to the Whole: The conflict that drives this episode never comes up again, but we learn a lot about Phlox and his race that will come into play in later episodes. Also, we get a mention of the Ferengi and some heavy foreshadowing of the Prime Directive, one of which is more important than the other but are both interesting to see.

Other: *As I said in “Cold Front”, this episode would have been a much better time to establish Movie Night. Not only do we actually see it in action, but there’s a discussion afterwards that would have been the perfect time to explain that this was a weekly thing. Not everything needs setup, after all.

*I don’t know why I find it odd that Star Trek seems to be supporting the idea of “friends with benefits” in this episode. Maybe it’s because it generally comes down on the side of either serious relationships or quick flings (a la Kirk’s reputation), so seeing them go for the middle ground is a bit jarring. But if they handle it decently and the studio lets them do it, I won’t judge.

Badass Malcolm Moment: Malcolm has almost no presence in this episode, so by default I have to go with the fact that he’s so devoted to his work that he’ll hurry back to the armory to make sure he’s not late. At least, I hope that’s what’s happening and not that he’s trying to avoid Phlox. Admittedly, the scene could be interpreted either way, but I choose to think the best of people.