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ENTERPRISE s2e5 “A Night In Sickbay”

Doc Phlox tends to an ailing Porthos in sickbay where he lives (or does he???)  while hassling Archer about his vibes with T'Pol for no reason other than Phlox loves to stir up trouble!  Matt and Andy puzzle their way through this super weird, Berman-Berman, Braga-Braga-ish sexy episode filled with dream sequences!

Welcome to your bonus Enterprise pod, Lieutenants!  Post your Enterprise-related comments/questions here for consideration for next month's Enterprise pod!

Comments

Inspired by the STNC pod, I have now finished all four seasons of ST: Enterprise. And I have to say, I feel like I really let Star Trek down by not watching this when it was in current run. Like Matt, I thought it was a bad idea to go backward. But seasons three and four of this show are pretty damned good, and I now wish I had supported it. Maybe DISCO has annoyed me enough that I'm seeing Enterprise in a new light. But I think this show had the potential to surpass Next Generation in quality if we Star Trek fans had gotten behind it. It took a while for them to figure out the characters, but I think they did it. I really liked these characters by the time the series wrapped up and I wanted more. So now that I've watched all of Enterprise, I find myself saddened. And all the more so because I think its failure is directly linked to the stuff they're doing now with DISCO that's just annoying and bad. It seems the people behind DISCO took a lesson from ENTERPRISE that people were tired of Star Trek tropes. And maybe we were. But we weren't tired of stories about the Federation trying to do good in the world. We weren't tired of an optimistic, humanistic future. We were maybe a little tired of shield technology not changing much over the course of a couple of hundred years, for instance. The stuff that made Star Trek fans tired of Star Trek had nothing to do with the overarching goal of the series, which was to depict an idealized future where technology and humanity work toward peaceful relations with other species. And all of this was accomplished in an equal society. The DISCO folks may not be wrong in believing that Star Trek needed some subversion, but they always seem to focus their efforts in the wrong places. Can't we just have a Star Trek show that's about starships trying to do good for all of humanity (and all life)?

I think one thing to remember about ST: Enterprise is that this is supposed to be a flawed representation of Humanity. It should be a bridge between where we are (Or were in early 2000's) and where we could see ourselves being, TNG era. I think lower decks really shines a light on how dumb a lot of diplomacy would be when it isn't planet or galaxy size problems. This is not even a Pakled level problem. It's equipment requisition, but that isn't the 'problem' of the episode. The problem is Archer is doing a job for the first time and the full scope of what he's enduring is finally hitting him. Think of Archer's resume to this point. He's got piloting, engineering, military and diplomacy training, but he never really did any of these. I imagine he's managed large teams to get the NX series of ships constructed, and that's more of an office manager position. A Boomer captain would have more experience dealing with other races, dealing with lack of supplies, and the little things affecting this crew. But the NX series captains need more book learning in various fields so it has to be someone new. They are making a new mold of what these warp 5 captains should be. They are literally in the middle of nowhere and so far from home they might as well be in the pacific with a paddle boat. Staying home this whole pandemic I got to say certain time milestones hit me harder than others. 9 months in I was thinking if I could have had a baby... I could have had a baby by now. At 18 months I could have had two. Archer is hitting the one year mark at this time. This isn't Kirk's five year mission with star fleet able to at least prepare him for what to expect. This is literally the unknown. He's so far in the deep end of what he's been training his whole life to do, but with little actual experience doing it. He can't act like he's been there before, because that is the point. Neither he personally or humanity in general has been here before, because we are going where no man has gone before. And that man is now going "What... the literal fuck... is this shit." But unlike real life where one person with power can just decide we are going to steer the whole ship into the nearest planet, both figuratively and literally. We can't because this is star trek, and we/they are star fleet. So this is an episode bridging where we, as humanity, are and where we want to end up. If someone put my dog in danger (she's named Lana btw, after the other show with a main character named Archer), that person would end up on the ground. If someone put livingston in danger, Picard would be indignant and say something snarky, but wouldn't let it affect the mission. Archer knows he should be more like a Picard, but doesn't want to do that because it's his dog and dear lord let me find out someone put my dog in danger cause i'll put him in the mother f-ing ground. Archer wants to do the right thing, and that includes how he interacts with his crew. Try to be funny, charming, affable, without losing the respect of the crew. But he grew up biased against vulcan's and he's trying to get over that because he respects T'Pol, but dear lord, do all Vulcan ships let their women walk around sexy as F all the time? I mean I know they control their emotions but do they have reverse viagra as well? (Of course if your anti viagra lasts for more than 7 years please consult a physician). I mean the Captain is such a manly man, i know this because the show tells me he is, with his... *Checks notes* water polo? Okay I am also confused, but I think this is the struggle Archer has in many episodes and why he seems inconsistant. Because he is inconsistant. He's making this up as he goes along, and he was selected because there is no manual on how to deal with the unexpected. And I think at this time Humanity would want the most "Human" person that is qualified. If we are going to make mistakes, we want them to be human mistakes, not what the Vulcan database says should or should not be done. There is what we should do (Like forgive someone for putting my dog in danger and treat everyone with respect) and the most natural human emotions we experience like revenge for my dog and dear lord woman what does Vulcan Command make you wear as a dress uniform, victoria's secret? I mean every Vulcan amabassador I've ever seen seems to wear terry cloth bath robe, but you have a full wardrobe of nothing but spandex!


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