I agree with all of the above. Disappointing. Going off half-cocked because he was stupid enough to take his dog. Jeez. And the pandering. Enough with the decon chamber crap. I enjoy the beefcake as much as you guys enough the cheesecake, but really…(at least they have cut back on T’Pol’s makeup – without the lip gloss, those fish lips don’t seem quite so big.) By the way - a question for you guys: if you went without sex for a couple of years would you get all cranky and bitch at everyone, or would you…well, you know.
Why the hell don’t they carry spare warp plasma injectors? They can’t be all that expensive, or the picky aliens wouldn’t have just given them a bunch. They’re not terribly large - and they had no problem carrying the extra spares they got at the end of the episode. Yet they carry no spares, other than the one sort-of-spare that they can survive losing. Feh. More wonderful Starfleet engineering.
Written by a dog person who is not an engineer.
Not Spock’s Brain, but it did fellate with great allacrity.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d be venting my plasma drive all over Enterprise’s corridors.
I agree with featherlou though. This was a poor excuse for an epsiode. If I were serving on that ship, the fact that the duties of my superior officer came grinding to a halt whenever his puppy got the sniffles wouldn’t engender loyalty from me. That his loyalty was entirely selfishly placed would, frankly, bring into question whether mutiny would be the best option for the good of the mission.
And I can also do without the pandering. I can download badly photoshopped images of T’Pol’s head on Claudia Shiffer’s body. I don’t need to see goo rubbed on her during the episode.
They kept calling it the Autoimmune system. <sigh>
It’s the immune system, which can result in autoimmune disorders, when it attacks its own body.
Stupid, stupid episode, but anything Phlox heavy can’t be all bad. Just 84.6% bad.
Thanks, Menocchio, now I hate this ep even more. Seriously, who is writing this crap? They do know that Star Trek has a fairly avid fanbase that pays attention to little details like characters acting - well, out of character, and having little or no motivation for the interactions, right? And what was that business with T’Pol at the end there? What basement-dweller decided that if Archer has big boners for T’Pol that she automatically returns the “favour”? How could she possibly see him as anything but a spoiled little brat who has tantrums and can’t seem to think his way out of a paper bag? What seems to go on in Archer’s head every time they run into something new; “Oooh, shiny. Must grab.” Good grief. I’m losing patience with this show fast.
Where is Ziggy when you need him?
Has anyone explained the doggy doo question? Litterbox? Transporter testing? Maybe it Quantum Leaps elsewhere… like to the writers!
I like the Suliban. What happened to them in the future, like TOS or TNG?
Drat. This episode blows my “robot dog” theory right out of the water. And it explained so much, too…
What the heck was going through Archer’s mind? If you bring a small animal and it pisses on what appears to be a thing of great cultural significance, expect them to be angry!
I was really expecting to have a quick cut to Phlox sitting in sickbay, watching Archer have his wet dream about T’Pol on the bed in front of him. And making notes.
Let’s retitle this one:
“A Night on Enterprise featuring Sickbay after dark, the gym in the middle of the morning, graveyard bridge shifts, and such earthy and carnal matters as toenail clipping, colorful bats, tongue-scraping, sex, a decon three-way (twice), breasts, lips, a cabbage joke, sweat, doggie pee, and umiliating apology rituals.”
So Phlox got that pituitary gland from a “Calrissian” chameleon? Won’t Lando be wondering where it is?
Oops, I just **umiliated ** myself.
I missed the very first part of the episode when I wrote the above.
Are you saying that Pathos peed on a cultural icon of some sort at the begining? He peed on it and Archer’s reaction was “what’s the big deal? I’m not apologizing.”?
Wow. That takes my disappointment for this episode to a level previously unknown to mankind.
Damnit, even Bush apologized to the Japanese immediately afterwards.
MY biggest disapointment with this series is that it the “law and order” of the universe is much greater than the original Star Trek Series. IMHO, everything should be even more frontier and gunslinger like than the Original StarTrek.
AndrewL: For one very importantant reason called Creative License.
That’s exactly it. He whizzed on a tree (the one Archer was carving up at the end) and they were unhappy about it. (Personally, I think that Porthos got the disease as a reaction from the plant, or the aliens did it on purpose as punishment.) His response was: “We sent them his genetic specs, they should have asked us not to bring him!” Way to play the diplomat, Archie.
This is your captain.
This is your captain with a big ol’ stick up his ass because his dog’s sick.
This is your captain all better with no shirt singing the Lumberjack Song for spare parts.
What’s not to like?
Why, oh why did he bring Porthos along? It’s not like the dog even does tricks. (Except that one thing if you feed him cheese. And that’s not so much a trick per se.)
The Super Space Gym of the Future was nice. Two treadmills and a spinny thing. (We’re outfitting a gym for our most advanced Star Ship. Let’s scour those garage sales!) But it did get T’Pol jogging. Yeah.
And let’s see… in the Decon Chamber… Hoshi oiled up T’Pol who oiled up Archer, who oiled up… Porthos? I don’t think his only problem is the hots for T’Pol. And Porthos is such a little doggy.
In all fairness the ship has not yet been back to earth since its test cruise, and was damaged by a mine, chances are the injectors were in that section 
or that mean old Killer Car Wash stole them during its repairs.
OK I’ll say I liked the episode. Yes Archer was a complete and utter uber Goober, but I think I like that. This Captain is seriously flawed, which makes more interesting problems then the always politicaly correct Picard. He will do dumb things and he will screw up first contacts, and mostly he will sometimes, like all of us, be a grumpy prick in a bad mood.
Notice everyone on the ship thought he was being a chowderhead so its not necessarily that bad.
Imagine if you are trucking around from planet to planet and each one has a new set of rules that you not only must recognize but know ever law and custom backward and forward. Eventually if your first job is not diplomacy you get a wee bit pissy. This was the Captain blowing a space gasket, nothing more.
These are the frontier days for Starfleet, the Captains are going to be jerks once and a while. And will be intolerant ever so often.
Plox was great and finally did what my wife and I have been whining about for a while. “How come he only did that funky stretched smile in only the pilot?” And there he goes.
Some great character moments with Phlox, and no Mayweather… guess he is still recovering from his brain damage.
ifty operation scene, but How does drowning the dog prevent brain damage after death? Was it a special fluid?
Well yeah, it was a special fluid king. It was all golden yellow, so it must have been… beer!
Everyone knows drowening in beer keeps those ol’ brain cells sharp and active.
-Rue.
The first half of the episode was ever worse then I feared, a combination of Old Yeller and Cinamax After Dark. But the Doctor saved the second half. “Subservient Quadro-ped” heh.
And the bat was a bit cheesy- but Hoshi catching it so matter-of-factly was funny.
Overall, there were many large, huge gaping logic holes in the plot, and the first half was begging for a re-write, but the second half, and the Doctor’s lines were a redeeming factor.
And, regarding the previews-- a repeat already?
LOL Rue! But for the most part, I agree with kingpengvin.
I liked it. I mean, the way they actually showed the hours going by was great. Archer is annoyed with these aliens to begin with, he’s been stuck on this ship memorizing weird rituals for more than a year, and his first officer is an amazingly gorgeous prig.
This was just one looooong, bad night fer tha cap’n.
The “autoimmune system” thin bugged me, too.
Overall - this episode sucked my ass. The decon three-way (four-way??) was not worth all the male PMS that followed.
I’m done bitching about it, though, because the rest of you have done so well at that, that there’s really nothing for me to add.
So I’ll say what I DID like:
–The Pandering - hey, I’ve got no morals. I’m happy to watch a little vaseline action. Would have liked it better if there was a little less dog involved, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
–I get a kick out of Phlox - I was a little afraid he’d be the next Neelix, which is a fate devoutly to be avoided. Fortunately, he is actually a pretty amusing character. I like that he has fifty million professional degrees.
–Hoshi plucking the bat out of the air. She may be high-strung, but the girl’s coordinated.
That’s about it. This one gets a D+. D because it sucked. + Because I like pandering.
Kn(Having been previously reprimanded and fined for exceeding the allotted number of intra-parenthetical characters - Clause 999-B of the Asterist Replacement Act - I have learned my lesson, and will in future only include large intra-parenthetical passages when I am too poor to care whether I am fined. Like now, for instance. Hahahahaha.)ckers
Jeez can’t the Captain have a bad day?
Maybe he’ll be replaced with a Pontificating bald man who never screws up and is totally understanding, at least until he hits the big screen that is.