A Night in Sickbay
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| Star Trek: Enterprise episode | |
| "A Night in Sickbay" | |
 Captain Archer has an uncomfortable night tending to Porthos |
|
| Episode no. | 30 |
|---|---|
| Prod. code | 205 |
| Airdate | October 16, 2002 |
| Writer(s) | Rick Berman Brannon Braga |
| Director | David Straiton |
| Guest star(s) | Vaughn Armstrong |
| Year | 2152 |
| Stardate | unknown |
| Episode chronology | |
| Previous | "Dead Stop" |
| Next | "Marauders" |
"A Night in Sickbay" is the title of the 30th episode (production #205) of the television series Star Trek: Enterprise which originally aired on October 16, 2002 in the United States.
This episode was nominated for a Hugo Award and received the highest number of viewers in season 2: 6.2 million according to TrekToday.[1]
[edit] Plot summary
A light-weight, dramedy episode, "A Night in Sickbay" sees Captain Jonathan Archer dealing with the Kreetassans — a race of grouchy, officious aliens whom Archer and his crew originally met in the episode "Vox Sola". This time, the Kreetassans are insulted and negotiations for a badly needed plasma injector break down when Archer's dog, Porthos, urinates on one of the aliens' sacred trees. A secondary subplot sees Archer and Dr. Phlox tending to Porthos after the dog contracts a potentially deadly virus on the planet, and Archer is so consumed with worry that he ends up spending the night in Sick Bay to look after his ailing pet. A tertiary subplot has Archer dealing with unbidden sexual dreams about his first officer, T'Pol. Through it all, Archer struggles to reach an emotional understanding with Phlox and T'Pol, as the two alien crew members have little grasp of just how important pets are to humans and Phlox keeps offering Archer unwanted advice about dealing with his new feelings for T'Pol. T'Pol also keeps urging Archer to apologize to the Kreetassans for Porthos' behavior, but Archer resists doing this because he blames them for Porthos' life-threatening illness.
In the end, Porthos recovers from his illness. Swallowing his pride, the captain goes down to the Kreetassan capital city and delivers an intricate ritual apology which involves cutting off slices of a tree trunk with a chainsaw, arranging the pieces of wood in a complex pattern on the ground, and intoning ceremonial phrases in the Kreetassan language. Having mollified the high-strung aliens, the Enterprise crew finally manage to procure a plasma injector from the Kretassans (and actually got two spare injectors also from them).
