The crew encounters an alien race in desperate need of medical and scientific assistance. Phlox declines to assist them because of his ethical beliefs leaving Archer to decide whether to help them find their own solutions.
“Dear Doctor” marks not just the most recent Enterprise episode, but in my opinion, the strongest I’ve seen yet. After the on-again, off-again nature of last week’s episode, this weeks was a real treat, with a well-written and structured blend of of drama and character development, with subplots that actually worked well with the main plot, rather than distracting from it.
A solid 4 and a half out of 5 this week.
I was extremely pleasantly surprised with “Dear Doctor” as I watched it last night. The episode focuses primarily on the ships Doctor Phlox, a Denobulan serving on board the Enterprise as part of a medical exchange program (the script ties in nicely with this backstory by using a letter from Dr. Phlox to a human friend and fellow doctor who is practicing on Phlox’s home planet of Denobula as a framing and narrative device). The good doctor find himself in the unenviable position of having to reconcile his loyalty to Cpt. Archer with his medical and scientific ethics as the Captain pressures Phlox to find a cure for an ailment affecting a pre-warp civilization that the Enterprise encounters.
At the same time, the secondary plotline does a nice job of presenting some of the difficulties that can present themselves when dealing with very different cultures — and in a stark change from last week, does so quite smoothly, integrating the two threads together so that they reinforce each other. Being able to use Phlox’s bemusement at the behaviour of the humans around him to contrast the humans discomfort when dealing with the unfamaliar social situations of the society they visit worked to both to move the story along and to help the characters along, without either being overly preachy or completely jarring the audience away from the main thrust of the episode.
Moments of humor were nicely scattered here and there, too — Hoshi Sato again getting some good moments, especially in her conversation with Phlox as he’s helping her learn Denobulan. Getting to see poor T’Pol subjected to a garrulous dentist trying to carry on a conversation while poking instruments into her mouth was a cute touch, also.
The tension between Phlox and Archer towards the end of the episode played out quite well, I thought. Never having watched Quantum Leap very often, I’m not overly familiar with Scott Bakula’s acting, and this was one of the first times I really thought I got to see more than a variation of the “excited kid out playing in the universe” that Archer has been so far (something I chalk up a bit more to the writers than to Bakula’s performances as yet). John Billingsly (as Dr. Phlox) also did an admirable job thoughout the episode — up until now, we’ve seen little of Dr. Phlox beyond his somewhat giddy excitment at being able to live with and learn about the humans that he works with, and this helped to flesh out his character a bit. Considering that he’s much more of a secondary character, I’m very happy he got this strong of an episode this early in the run of the show.
I think my only complaint with the episode this week was a bit of what felt to me like slightly ham-fisted writing towards the end. As Archer talks about how “…someday my people will create some rules…some directive…to tell me what to do in this situation…but until then, I’ll just do the best I can,” it seemed overly clumsy, especially given how strong the rest of the show had been. It was almost as if the ‘powers that be’ came in at the last minute and wanted to drive home the fact that situations like this week’s are why the Prime Directive came into use in the Star Trek universe, and they wanted to see how close they could come to that without actually saying the phrase “Prime Directive.”
4.5 out of 5, however — the best I’ve seen from the show yet.