User Reviews

Ever have a long, long night when you couldn't sleep, just waited for dawn to come. Now imagine that sort of night on a star ship, imagine it for the various crew members who happen to be up at 2 am, 4 am, etc.

That's what we have here, an interesting, slice of life on a star ship, and something that, strange noses and ears aside, is a bit like life today in the 21st century.

However, I do think that a long night on a star ship is a little less boring than it is around my house. I don't get to chase bats, take a stroll in the local gym, or dream about sexy aliens. I do have a sick pet to worry about though so that's another realistic touch to this episode.

One other interesting element is the music which accompanies this episode. There's a lot of it, much in scenes without any dialog, but the music conveys emotions, even moves the plot along at times.

What in the world are we doing here? Lots of other reviews on here have covered but I just couldn't go by this without putting in my two cents.

Archer's behavior in this episode is extremely out of character and cringe-worthy. He's already had a bad interaction with the Kreetassans and knows how finicky they can be on customs and behaviors. Do not bring your dog to their home world, especially when you need something important from them!

To make matters worse, he puts all the blame on them and is super testy to everyone the entire episode. The reason? Sexual tension with T'Pol. Where did this come from? We've seen no evidence of this ever and it is extremely out of character and unprofessional from Archer's standpoint. He's a very prim and proper captain that would not entertain these emotions with T'Pol. If anything the sexual tension has been between Trip and T'Pol, not Archer.

This entire plot and episode are silly and I don't even want to waste anymore time on it. I don't think I'll ever revisit this one. The only saving grace is that we get amble time with the excellent John Billingsley.

You can tell this is Season 2 and the ratings from S1 weren't what the show runners wanted them to be. So how to fix it in the mind of old, creepy male Hollywood execs? Sex it up of course! S2 has already had Hoshi 'accidentally' losing her shirt, now we get more of these ridiculous decontamination scenes where the crew are giving each other lubed up erotic massages. Finally, we get 'sexual tension' between Capt Archer and T'Pol where we've seen absolutely zero sign of it before, and it comes across so creepily I could barely stand to watch it. In between the creep shows Capt Archer is just running around being a total jerk to everyone because his dog is sick. Who acts like this? It's just not a normal reaction to a loved one in medical jeopardy. It's definitely not appropriate behavior for someone in a leadership position as important as his. Its merely plot drama that could have been done in many better ways. If we're to believe this is a good Capt and leader then don't do this to his character. In summary not the worst Trek episode I've ever seen but it's on my 10 worst list for sure.

In watching Enterprise for the first time, as we all no doubt do with all shows, I went into it with an open mind, enjoying about half of the past Star Trek efforts and disliking the other half.

Enterprise has fallen short, but this episode "A Night In Sickbay" made me seriously question why I bother tivoing the shows from Monday night on Sci Fi.

Masking some idea that it is one of those 'A Day In The Life' episodes, in which we learn about what makes certain characters operate as humanoids, the writers seemed to forget that this was supposed to be a starship vessel, not the Ricardoes and the Mertzes.

A planet, especially one whose people had been offended previously by the Enterprise crew (for eating in public), was no place for a dog. As an animal lover myself, I would have never taken one of my pets into an environment that had proved in the past to be tense.

But what made this episode even more ridiculous was the endless problem with all of these ST shows, constantly depicting things that are sacred and insulting to other cultures, as tho they are offering some insight into American religious zealots.

The aliens were now offended when the dog urinated on a sacred tree, yet the aliens were quite capable of taking the dog urinating as an insult.

Strange how the dog's urinating wasn't regarded as some form of worship. I wonder how that one got by the show's writers.

From there, we are subjected to a captain who was misguided by his duties. In watching the episode, I found it very easy to forget that Bakula was supposed to be the ship's captain.

He chose to sleep in sickbay and from there we are given more inanities of behavior (sigh) that we aren't supposed to understand and that causes us to furrow brows.

The doctor non-chalantly clips long, hairy toenails and feeds them to hungry caged animals. Ewwwwww! Then a white bat creature escapes.

Oh, how is anyone supposed to sleep with all of this going on! Toenail clipping, for crying out loud! I was waiting for something that feeds on vomit to be presented.

Then we were inexplicably given some idea that the captain was in love with T'pol, and that perhaps he was masking those feelings with his concern over the dog.

Endless amounts of rubbish.

"your dog is ill, so go have sex. You'll feel better." And of course, the captain had to apologize and we humans had to regard his apology as completely ridiculous, because we are so (everyone smile very sarcastically) narrow-minded! Saw depictions such as this endlessly droned out on TNG.

Oddly enough, the only thing missing from this awful episode was that Trip person offering his smirks and downhome boyisms, tho Bakula seemed to be covering all of that with the silly dog.

Oh, the dog survived, so now go play fetch.