“A Night in Sickbay” is episode five of season two of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Captain Archer, T’Pol, Hoshi and Porthos are in decontamination. The captain is complaining about the Kreetassans. They apologised for eating lunch in front of them in “Vox Sola”. T’Pol reminds him that the Kreetassans manufacture warp injectors and they need one. It seems the Kreetassans waited 12 hours then sent them away. T’Pol says they obviously offended them again. Phlox contacts them; everyone but Porthos can go. He’s picked up a pathogen and decon has been ineffective.
In engineering, Trip tells the captain it’s only a matter of time before the injector gives up the ghost. The captain says they can run on four. Yes, but they can’t run on three and Trip wants five. Archer suggests going elsewhere. Apparently, these injectors are very compatible. Trip tells Archer he’s a diplomat; have T’Pol figure out what they did.
The captain then ends up in sickbay, after finding out Porthos was not in decon. Instead, he’s in an isolation box in sickbay. Phlox tells the captain that Porthos’s autoimmune system is collapsing. It’s too early to tell if this is life-threatening. Phlox confirms that they sent Porthos’ genome to the Kreetassans. The captain asks why they didn’t notice there was something in the atmosphere that Porthos couldn’t handle. By the sounds of it, Phlox doubts they checked.
On the bridge, T’Pol has found out what they did. She wants to discuss it in the captain’s ready room. Apparently, Porthos urinated on some trees. Very special ones. The Kreetassans are discussing an act of contrition. Archer thinks they should be sorry. Some things are more important than plasma injectors. Does the captain mean his pride? If anything happens to Porthos, he will water the trees.
Unable to sleep in his quarters, the captain heads to sleep in sickbay. Phlox doubts Porthos is in any condition to notice. Well, maybe the captain will feel better. Phlox believes he has eliminated the pathogen, but there could be problems. The captain should get some sleep. The alarms are quite loud should anything go wrong. As is Phlox’s toenail clipping and tongue cleaning, as well as feeding the animals. It seems they are more demanding when Phlox is in sickbay overnight.
Archer leaves sickbay for the moment and heads to the gym where T’Pol is on a treadmill. He speeds up every time she does, but is clearly struggling. T’Pol tells the captain he shouldn’t have taken Porthos on a diplomatic mission, especially to a species they’d already offended once. She says she doesn’t understand human beings when it comes to dogs. Hoshi contacts T’Pol; the Kreetassans have given their list of reconciliation demands. The captain isn’t going to believe them. She didn’t know the captain was there. Both head to the bridge and Archer looks through them, before heading to sickbay again. Hoshi wonders if they have a chainsaw. He later gets woken up by alarms when Porthos goes into anaphylactic shock. The first treatment Phlox tried didn’t work. He has to try a different one.
Sickbay isn’t a great place to try and relax, or sleep, and Phlox, who amongst his numerous degrees (though an actual medical degree is never mentioned) has one on psychology, thinks the captain’s reaction towards T’Pol is based on something else. Sexual attraction. This is not a great episode. Captain Archer did something foolish, endangered Porthos by doing it, then refused to admit responsibility. It’s one of the episodes considered to be responsible for eventually killing the series; what probably killed the series was there were too many episodes in that category.