Phlox puts the crew in comas and then runs around the ship naked.

Dude, I was KIDDING when I wrote that but now I've seen a headline that makes it true.

T'Pol as a hallucination? Obvious the entire time. Even though they tried to pass her off as really being there, she (1) didn't touch the soup Phlox made for her, (2) operate any controls on the ship, or (3) touch anything except for non-moveable objects or Phlox.

Also - they ripped off the Voyager episode so completely that the "dangerous nebula" was PINK: just like on Voyager!

Yeah, T'Pol as hallucination was totally obvious. I liked it anyway. Billingsley made me.

Wasn't there a Voyager episode with this EXACT SAME PLOT?

Now that's a rhetorical question, because I know for a fact that there was. Everything from the dangerous area of space, the whole crew getting put under for a nice slow ride through space, one poor crew member having to watch over everyone, and that crew member slowly going crazy. Over on Voyage it was 7 of 9, who is both a better actor than Phlox and is also more fun to look at.

The real question is Why on earth would they recycle such an incredibally mediocre episode of a horrible television show? If you're going to bite off old Trek instead of thinking up some original material, remake some TNG, you can't go wrong!

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court? I'm sure there's a reason they never use more modern movies but at leat The Exorcist got a shout-out. I don't know why, but I laughed all the way through it and enjoyed it anyway. I love Phlox, but I think Porthos should have had more lines.

I want that hour of my life back. It was so obvious T'Pol was a hallucination. Honestly! He didn't see her for 2 days? She was meditating in her quarters? And why would Malcolm and Trip and Mayweather go to so much trouble teaching Phlox everything if T'Pol was going to be awake? And is there any chance that there's someone out there who didn't know that T'Pol would be fast asleep in her quarters when Phlox walked in?

I guess I'm just not a big fan of the "soliloquy episode."

At least next week looks more promising.

This was okay as filler episodes go. I never saw the Voyager episode so can't compare it to that, but I do think Billingsley is a better actor than Ryan and Phlox is a better character than Seven.

Yes, it was kind of obvious, at least toward the end, that T'Pol was a figment of Phlox's imagination, or rather, his logical brain trying to get through to his hallucinogenic side.

Poor Porthos, fed a leech and then nearly shot. I love Phlox, but he is definitely not a dog person.

Next week looks pretty good.

That was actually THE COURT JESTER with Danny Kaye, one of my mom's very favorite films. She and my dad once had a huge argument over an overtaped copy of that film. Porthos was adorable following Phlox around. It didn't really matter what the rest of the episode was like. There was more Porthos here than there was all season!

I never saw Voyager so I didn't notice the rip off. And apparently I'm slow tonight because I didn't get that T'Pol was a hallucination, although looking back I should have picked up on the hints.

I really enjoyed this episode, I was surprised to come here and find that the first couple of posts were negative.

Porthos was cute, as always.

Thank you Divaah46! I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the movie, but I knew it wasn't "A Connecticut Yankee." That was the best scene in the episode! The Court Jester is a hysterical movie, and that was the best scene in it.

Well, I must admit, I liked it too. But then again, give me Phlox any day and I'll like the show. Loved the watering can in the nude scene.

Never saw the Voyager episode, but now I'm going over the ep like I did after watching the Sixth Sense. (I'm a little slow, though I did notice the clues, just didn't put them together...)

And Phlox has a medical staff? Where?

And finally, we got the answer to that question in Starfleet 101--80 crewmembers. Wonder if that includes MACO's?

I.Want.Hoshi's.Bathroom.

I didn't figure that T'Pol was a hallucination, either- I actually thought the whole buisness about "we're still in the anomaly" was going to be the hallucination. That's one for the writers, I guess.

Does anyone remember what episode it was where Phlox told Hoshi about the hallucinations? I was thinking it was "Vanishing Point," but if it was, then it means it was all in Hoshi's head, so how would he know about it?

Phlox told her about the hallucinations in Hoshi and the Beast, I mean Exile. From Keckler's recap:

I thought T'Pol was a hallucination when she first appeared, and then I thought she was real, then I finally figured out she was a hallucination when she couldn't help Phlox do anything. It was an OK, obviously filler episode. Odd choice to air during sweeps.

I can't be too mad at the ep b/c of my favorite scene from "The Court Jester". My rommate in college had that I watched it all the time. Who knew Angela Lansbury was ever that young? Also, loved the little bit of continuity regarding the Denobulans and hallucinating.

I saw the virtually identical Voyager ep, but I don't remember much of it. Much like this ep, it was forgettable.

First, I never saw the "Voyager" episode so can't compare the two; second, I -love- both Phlox and Porthos -- so, I found this episode enjoyable and entertaining! :) Phlox has some ... interesting feet (although we'd already seen the long toenails in an earlier episode), and we got a fairly good view of the Denobulan physique, woo hoo!

Maybe I'm short on the uptake (and yeah, that happens more frequently since I turned 50 ... LOL), but I was totally taken in by T'Pol until Phlox had to go to warp. The helpless, hopeless T'Pol was just too far OOC to be believed by me. The story was good for me, though; guess you could call it "filler" because the next episode looks like it's going to be very arc-central and serious at that. Ah well, I enjoyed it muchly.

This was a kinda bad episode but I liked it anyway. Phlox and Porthos, yay! I don't think I'll ever watch it again but it was an OK hour.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't realize T'Pol wasn't real. Altough I got a little suspicious a couple of times - when T'Pol was ranging around wildly for excuses not to be left in charge and then again in the warp scene when T'Pol was all of the sudden really, really dumb and making bizarre facial expression. But I was suspicious that it was bad writing, not that her limitations were a result of her being all in Phlox's head. So, in the end the fake T'Pol twist was a relief for me.

Putting the whole crew to sleep for 4 days seems like a really, really, really bad idea. Even if they weren't in the expanse, even if they didn't have enemies. This is a ship that find itself in a pickle on a weekly basis. But a silly episode is fine once in a while. I liked the little driving lesson scene. And the whole scene where Phlox was trying ot figure out how to get to warp cracked me up. Trek relies so often on having engineers technobabbling and difficulties with warps and so forth, but they so rarely make it look genuinely complicated. So that was fun.

I kind of wish we didn't have the fake scenes with Archer, Trip and Hoshi. OK, so the Hoshi one was a little creepy, and the Trip one made sense contextually. But the Archer one was really, really pointless. They should have used that time to show more of Porthos!

Anyone else catch the shout-out to Bones? "(Dammit, T'Pol) I'm a physician, not an engineer!"

I can often be pretty dense about such things, but even I called the "twist" when T'Pol refused to even help him restart the warp core. However, given how weak and helpless they've been writing her lately, I then spent the rest of the episode terrified that she would turn out to be the real T'Pol after all and then I'd have to throw something and ruin a perfectly good TV. Whew.

On the whole, interesting but a waste of John Billingsly, I think.

I was relieved when it turned out that T'Pol was a hallucination because we kept watching and saying,"why the hell isn't T'Pol in charge if she's awake. This doesn't make any sense." Duh. Oh yeah Divaah, I had the wrong Danny Kaye flick. Brain working very slowly.

That was exactly my thinking during the episode.

I did see the Voyager episode, and I liked this one better because I really like Phlox more than I ever liked Seven of Nine, and I loved all the stuff with Porthos.

Phlox seeing a creature crawling on the outside of the ship, seemed like a Twilight Zone reference.

I was pretty sure something was off when she wanted Phlox to wake up Trip even though it would kill him since he is, after all, her love slave.

I thought I was hallucinating when T'Pol showed up. I'm thinking "wait a minute, isn't she asleep too?"

You should see her in "Samson and Delilah" with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr(I think).

Milicochrans-Heh :P

I was thinking that too! The one where the guy (ironically played by William Shatner) sees the gremlin on the wing of the airplane, and no one believes him. They all think he's crazy. Of course being the Twighlight Zone, there really was a gremlin and he ended up saving the plane. Phlox on the other hand was hallucinating, but still ended up saving the ship.

I showed up late (20 minutes in) so I had no clue that it wasn't supposed to be two of them.

I was puzzling over how much T'Pol was into the conversation that she didn't touch her soup; her very ghostly presence during his hunt with the phaser just had me confused over what, indeed, was happening; and her complete dive into loonyhood down in engineering was certainly getting me grumpy.

Then the ending happens along, and I'm all, 'okay...'

One question: Why was Phlox still hallucinating T'Pol well after they left the Big Pink Cloud?

Does anybody know the name of that Voyager episode? It's been driving me crazy ever since I saw the previews for this Enterprise ep. Thanks.

"One". (not to be confused with "Drone", starring a Borg drone called One)

In the Voyager episode "One", 7 of 9 was alone with only the Doctor for company for almost a month. She hallucinated an alien who came aboard the ship and seemed to stalk her.

Phlox starts losing it after only 2 days. With an unpredictably changing section of space, I find it hard to believe they couldn't go around this section of space faster at warp speeds vs. impulse engines
.

Yaaawwnnn...it seems like the audience were the ones who needed to be put to sleep and lo and behold, it happened.

Not only the plot was so obvious, and ripped from VOY, but the whole 'hallucinating-the-crew' stuff is so old!! I would've rather see some other denobulans in the Doc's hallucinations.

I don't want to piss off keckler... but this was one episode where they deserve to be cancelled...

Given that we have already seen this episode on Voyager, would have been a teensy more interesting had the enemies actually been real and phlox only thinking he was halucinating.

Or possibly there was no saving this dog. I actually didn't realize T'Pol was a halucination, but I am going to blame that on bad previous writing where they took other characters way out of character. Otherwise I feel stupid :)

Actually, Connecticut Yankee stars Bing Crosby, not Danny Kaye...

My god, who got paid all that money to recycle an already bland Voyager episode? I barely remember One because it was forgettable.

This goes in the boring pile with Exile, The Shipment and Carpenter Street. Way to blow their slowly building quality momentum.

I never saw the Voyager episode, so I was amused by the Phlox and Porthos show, until it turned into the Phlox and T'Pol show.

I kinda liked this episode, but more for the small things, not the slow moving plot. T'pol's behavior made me wonder at first, but as usual I forgot about my initial misgivings and just went along with it. Her decent into uselessness I found amusing (who hasn't at one time or another wished the high-and-mighty Vulcans a little stumble?) and semi-believable as it seemed like a more intense version of the way I felt after pulling an all-nighter in grad school. Wanking? Perhaps.
Billingsley did a good job as Phlox, as usual. Porthos was brilliant.
I loved seeing Danny Kaye and I love that scene in Court Jester. (Let's watch that instead of the rest of the episode!) I also appreciated the Exorcist reference. If I had just seen that the week before, I'd be skittish too!
I also got the creature on the outside as a Twilight Zone reference.

All these feeble pros aside, the big con on the other side is that it was (and I hate to say this about a Phlox-centric episode) pretty bland.

Meh. Filler.
Keeping people both asleep and healthy is not that easy: the crew should all be very dehydrated, if not in renal failure, with bedsores and nerve damage after being immobile for four days. Not to mention the smell.

Do the numbers in this episode mesh with what we know about Enterprise? My back-of-the-business card calculation makes full impulse out to be about lightspeed, with warp 4 about 96c...

The promos made it look like T'Pol would turn out to be a hallucination, at the beginning of the episode when Phlox first ran into T'Pol I was suspcious, but as they went on I was convinced that she was real. I wasn't tipped off by her not eating the soup (we rarely see her eating anyway, much less gobbling down food in an obvious fashion). Her apparent inability to help Phlox was explained away well enough to me by her being disoriented by the anomaly. The bit about sacrificing Trip did send a red flag up (and made me feel at once extremely sad and a little deviously amused at the idea), but at the same time I thought it fit in well with her logical line of thinking (wake him up and he can save the ship in those last several minutes he's alive, it's better than all of them dying). Good thing Phlox's doctor ethics, and possibly his belief in himself/perseverance, kept him from listening to the hallucination. So yeah, the comatose T'Pol at the end was a decent little surprise for me, even though it instantly reminded me of the surprise about Cordelia in Angel's 100th episode.

They also had me going with the whole "there's something on the ship bit", at least until deformed-Hoshi showed up. Because they basically hyped up this episode as Phlox-loses-his-mind, I was expecting a twist of some sort. I guess it's enough that they fooled me into entertaining the possibility that he wasn't losing his mind, but even so, I was a little disappointed that this amounted to nothing more than building up Phlox's self-confidence and our respect for him (as if most viewers, at least in these forums it seems, didn't already love him enough).

I spared myself from pretty much the entirety of the Voyager series, so I didn't recognize any glaring similarities of this plot to another episode of a different series. Overall I felt it was pretty above average, but nothing to write home about. Enjoyed "Dear Doctor" much more as far as Phlox-focused eps go.

I did feel that it was kinda the wrong time for what amounts to filler though. They had such great momentum going and it's sweeps time. They can screw around a bit when they come back from the break before they head into the final stretch. Actually now that I think about it, since this is potentially Enterprise's last season, and possibly Trek's (for a good long while), maybe it should be all-arc-all-the-time until the finale.

Rats...as with every show gaining momentum, you have a least one setback. I kind of felt like the bridge crew last week when Trip shoved the ship into full reverse. I think I had the same irritated look as Captain Furrow as I picked myself up off the floor and wondered "Are they really serious?" (more like silly)

As the old saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I was a little slow, but when Phlox didn't check T'Pol out in sick bay, I knew something was up. It was confirmed when T'Pol went into that rant about waking up Trip.


Hee! Excellent observation emdroberts! You totally ROCK! I kept hoping we'd find T'Pol all curled up next to comatose Trip. Aww....

In my best Florida accent: Stupid Bimbo Vulcan...Thet jest ain't raht! "Nasty Trip" warn't right eifer but he sho'nuff was fun t'watch. They sh'd haf had his haid start spinnin' aroun'!

A little advice to Captain Archer: My sister says you might want to take a handi-wipe to that Captain's chair. I suggest a big ol' bucket of bleach. EWWWWWW! Now that it's out of my system....does Phlox have a twin over there on CBS? They look remarkably similar. We've seen T'Pol and Phlox all nekkid, who gets to go next? My vote is Trip! or Mayweather! or even Hayes! (Similitude doesn't count for Trip because he was all covered up with a sheet.)

After 4 days of sleep, wouldn't the crew be a little ripe? Did Phlox distribute Depends before the big SleepFest?

In my best visual simile it was like "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" at Disneyworld. It begins kind of lame, and you wonder why you wasted all that time in line. Then when that big train light appears and you hear the whistle, you hit the floor of car you are riding in. It's disgusting and dirty down there, but you wait for safety. As you pass under the simple, mounted light and realize how foolish you've been, you look around and wonder if any monitors captured your "foolish personal moment" for all to see. As you emerge into daylight, you put your cool persona back on and swear never to ride it again. That must be why the Xindi attacked Florida. Get rid of the silly ride and there will be no more silly stories. A girl can wish, can't she?

One positive side...I loved the moment where T'Pol quoted Trip. It was cool to hear T'Pol say the exact words Trip said. It shows respect for both Trip and Phlox.

Wait, why...?



Who?

As far as taking care of the crew...wouldn't it have been a little more practical to have just had them sleep in their blue Tick underwear? I guess the writers didn't think we could handle seeing the outline of diapers or a small bedpan underneath each crew member (actually I doubt the writers even thought about what 4 days in the coma would mean as far as care-taking of the human body is concerned). I mean, you really don't need to see that on TV, but the alternative that they went with (at least what I was imagining while watching, unfortunately) was gross--extremly soiled uniforms? What's usually the procedure for keeping a comatose patient hydrated? Is it the same way they're fed, with a tube stuck down their throats? I guess the senior officers agreed that it'd take too much time for Phlox to set that up for every crew member (or they don't have enough supplies in sickbay to cover everyone)...so he just went around and poured a glass of water down each throat a few times a day?

Eh, it was a filler episode, but it had Porthos and Phlox, so all is forgiven. The hallucination thing has been done before, so it was all so cliche to me. I was fooled by T'Pol a bit, until I started thinking why she couldn't be more helpful. One of the funniest moments was when the warp core was starting to go kaput, and T'Pol just crouched there with a totally bemused look.


Yup, I caught that.

A total ripoff, but in that Voyager episode Seven doesn't walk around nekkid.
(Of course, then, that would have made it The Best Star Trek Episode Ever.)

Yeah. From the beginning of the episode, when we realized that it was going to be solo Phlox running around the ship hallucinating, we knew the episode was doomed. I generally like Phlox a lot, but when you're working with such seemingly recycled material (haven't they done something like this in ever ST series??)... well, it feels stale.

At least they added T'Pol as the "twist". Did anyone find it somewhat amusing that Phlox was fantasizing about having T'Pol around, of all people? Maybe, after last week's episode, he's hoping that T'Pol would like to explore Denobulan sexuality?? (I know, I know... He imagined her because she's Vulcan and would be the most likely of the crew members to NOT go into hybernation for the week. But, still. Amusing.)

I don't know if he wants to get it on with T'Pol or not, but his comments about how he misses the 'intimate' living conditions on Denobula make it clear that keckler may be on to something when she wrote this in her latest recap:

Sums it up for me.

I liked this episode. In defense of the whole "recycled plot line" argument, they're all recycled plot lines. There are only so many truly original storylines in the world, and everything else is just a different version of it.

I did watch the Voyager episode but I enjoyed this one more.

Porthos, Porthos, Porthos. I want that puppy. When Phlox threw him the popcorn, I giggled. Archer's gonna wonder why Porthos won't eat his regular doggy food after this. Heh.

Phlox's ongoing dictation to his friend reminded me of The Stackhouse Filibuster - for all you WW fans out there - so that helped differentiate it from the Voy. ep.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that one of the reasons they made this episode was budget constraints. They're coming close to the end of the season. All of the big special-effects-with-lots-of-guest-stars are gonna cost more. If the network or studio said to the producers, "Look, you're coming in low on budget. You need at least one episode that doesn't require a lot of effects or guest stars," then this is the perfect episode. They don't have to build new sets, or pay for extras. Filler, sure? Cheaper and therefore letting them do the really big episodes in the future, yup.

I didn't enjoy the story so much as the "JBs" in action. My favorite thing about this ep? Hallucination T'Pol channeling Chianna. She had me on the floor with her stance and jerky movements.

I also think it's noteworthy (and sort of cute) that T'Pol is quoting Trip.

I liked it, and I can't figure out why. It's definately not the best episode this year, but it made me laugh. I loved the "I'm a physician, not an engineer" line - great shout out to McCoy. I loved hallucegenic T'Pols suggestion to wake up Trip - harkened back to Spock's "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Now, if only we could get Trip to pull a Scotty in some episode....
I have a feeling the next few weeks are going to be a big angst fest, so this light piece of fluff was fun.

My thoughts exactly. Almost. I figured T'Pol wasn't real. Why would there have been all this talk about leaving Phlox in charge (like when he was putting the Captain asleep) if he wasn't really in charge?

T'Pol's reactions to the whole crisis had me in stitches. When she was crouched at the top of the stairs, looking lost, pointing back at the control panel...hee

Did anyone notice that T'Pol looked different? Softer makeup or lighting maybe. Maybe it was my imagination, but she looked prettier, maybe like the doctor wished she looked?

I thought this episode rocked. Many times, it had me on the edge of my seat, covering my eyes, everything.

And I knew T'Pol wasn't real from the beginning. There were all sorts of clues- Trip and Mayweather teaching Phlox how to do things (and T'Pol implying they hadn't), T'Pol asking Phlox if he slept (Denobulians don't need sleep, but I could have written it off to bad continuity) and so on. I thought the expanding anomaly may have been an illusion, but then they showed the ship from the outside, which someone pointed out a few episodes back they wouldn't otherwise do.

So despite knowing, it was still good- solid writing and acting. And yet, I was still guessing. Throughout, I was trying to explain the little problems, and still was wondering when they finally showed the real T'Pol. And that got me thinking even more, about Phlox's mind creating an illusion he needed- a logical figure to keep him grounded? There was a lovely point when Phlox says goodbye to T'Pol and her eyes move very slightly to tell him to look down. I saw that as Phlox's fictional T'Pol finally saying, "Glad I could be of help, if only in your mind."

And great job by Blalock, especially the bewildered childlike looks in engineering.

A few hits:

-The Voyager episode had them asleep just to keep them from going nuts with boredom. So the whole dynamic (Can we wake them? Would one walking around be real?) was much different.

-I noticed the McCoy shout-out- but I also liked how Phlox's patrician accent comes out with the use of "physician," not "doctor."

-Also wondered about dehydration and excretion issues, and thought of the Twilight Zone (Disbelieving tone: "Outside the hull.").

-The Court Jester? A Paramount picture. So when will we see Ferris Bueller, or Indiana Jones?

I'm with nelamm. Very nice, creepy atmosphere. I figured T'Pol was a hallucination (I paid close attention-- she would touch things, but never manipulate anything-- for example, she was holding onto the handrail in engineering.), but I still got a kick out of it, especially her being a freak in engineering. Great stuff from Blalock.

It was roughly the same plot as Voyager's "One", but that didn't bother me, because I found it far more engaging. In no small part to the fact that Seven and Phlox are radically different characters. For example, Seven can Do Anything, so the idea of her running the ship alone (especially one whose interface is so damn user friendly as Voyager's in) creates none of the tension that Phlox-- smart, but not trained outside of his field-- trying to start up the Warp Engine had.

If Phlox is comfortable walking around the ship naked, then who's to say he didn't sit on the bridge that way too. Whee!

Phlox and Richard Hatch (Survivor) are very similar in their antics and body structure. Phlox just didn't have that ugly blurred circle attached to him.

But there was that one horrible shot of him in sickbay with the kettle in the foreground covering his nakedness.