“Doctor’s Orders”
Page 1 of 6Story by: Chris Black
Teleplay by: Chris Black
Directed by: Roxann Dawson
SYNOPSIS FOLLOWED BY REVIEW ON PAGE 4:
The episode opens with the camera panning what appears to be an empty Enterprise. No one is around. We then see Porthos running down a corridor. Phlox is chasing him. Porthos scratches at a door. It leads to Archer’s quarters. Phlox lets him in and Porthos jumps on a sleeping Archer but doesn’t wake him. He licks the Captain’s face. Phlox picks him up and tells him he can see Archer again tomorrow.
We see that the Enterprise is in what appears to be a nebula of sorts. Phlox is in his quarters talking to Porthos. Phlox decides he’d like to take a walk. As he walks, he dictates a letter to Dr. Lucas (last mentioned in “Dear Doctor”), his friend and colleague. While Phlox was on Earth, Lucas was on Denobula. They were/are part of the Interspecies Medical Exchange Program. He tells him that the crew and he are very busy. Dr. Lucas lost family and friends when the Xindi attacked Earth so had returned home. Phlox tells him he will see him in San Franscisco when the Enterprise completes its mission and returns to Earth. As he dictates, he takes a covered bowl marked “Dr. Phlox – Do not eat” and goes on to take something out of it. It is a leech and Porthos wants one. The doctor gives him one. He dictates to Lucas that he is in “somewhat unsettling circumstances” but that “they’ve allowed me to catch up on my correspondence” and he eats one of the leeches.
He continues to dictate and we get a flashback to two days earlier. On the Bridge, T’Pol is informing Archer that they are approaching a trans-dimensional disturbance much like the one in last week’s “Harbinger”. It will take two weeks to go around it. Reed complains that it is “another detour”. T’Pol suggests that they may be able to go through it in less time. Trip replies: “You said nothing from our universe could survive inside these things.” T’Pol asks Phlox to explain. Phlox tells him: That’s true…unless we take the appropriate precautions.” Phlox goes on to say that as the disturbance affects the neo-cortex of the brain, he can counteract the effects of the disturbance by putting the crew into a comatose state. T’Pol says it would “take less than an hour at warp 4” to get through the anomaly. Trip doesn’t want the ship’s warp engines used in the disturbance. He thinks it would be dangerous. He wants them to travel through it at impulse speed but that would take four days. Phlox sees no problem with keeping them in a coma for that long.
Back in the present, Phlox is doing his rounds checking on the crew now in comas. He dictates to Dr. Lucas that as he is immune to the effects of the disturbance, he was put in charge of watching over the crew and the ship. Porthos is with him. They go into Mayweather’s quarters where he checks on him. We see more flashbacks and Phlox continues that the computer was in control of the ship’s systems, he was shown how to helm the ship “just in case.” Trip tells him to check the “impulse manifolds” every two hours. Trip goes on that if he needs to that he should wake him up regardless of the dangers to his health. Later, Phlox is in Archer’s