“Dear Doctor”
Written by Maria Jacquemetton & André Jacquemetton
Directed by James A. Conter
Season 1, Episode 13
Production episode 013
Original air date: January 23, 2002
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. Phlox enters sickbay at the start of alpha shift and feeds his various animals. Sato comes in with a recorded letter from Denobula, but it’s from a human: Dr. Jeremy Lucas, who, like Phlox, is part of the Interspecies Medical Exchange, currently serving on Phlox’s homeworld.
The rest of the episode sees Phlox writing to Lucas. He talks about various human habits that he finds curious, including movie night and eating habits and other fun things. He watches For Whom the Bell Tolls with Cutler and various other folks, with the two of them discussing the movie as well as the dynamics of group watching. Phlox is concerned that Cutler might be flirting with him.
Enterprise rescues a ship that is adrift. It is crewed by two Valakians who are very ill. Phlox is able to treat them, though a full cure eludes him. While they do not have faster-than-light travel, they have encountered other species with warp drive, and they are out in space looking for help from someone more advanced. Archer agrees to assist them.
They travel to the Valakian homeworld. En route, Phlox continues to examine the Valakians in sickbay. He is also teaching Sato how to speak Denobulan, and they have an interesting conversation in the mess hall that bounces back and forth between Denobulan and English that discusses medicine, the Valakians, Lucas, and Cutler’s apparent flirting.
Phlox, aided by Cutler (for medical assistance) and Sato (for translation assistance), goes to the surface and examines several patients. There is a second sentient species, the Menk, on the world. The Valakians see them as less developed, and they also are immune to the disease.
After examining several Valakians, Phlox comes to the conclusion that they’re suffering from a genetic disorder—that’s why the Menk are unaffected—and that they’ll be extinct within two centuries at the current rate.
Phlox and Cutler have a frank conversation, where we find out that Denobulans are polygamous—Phlox has three wives, and each of those wives have other additional husbands. Cutler allows as how she’s not really interested in becoming wife #4, but she is definitely flirting, though whether or not its with intent of anything beyond friendship she’s not sure yet.
The Valakians want warp drive so they can travel further to find a possible cure. Enterprise is also contacted by people all over the world, some of whom think they have a cure. The Valakians have not yet developed the science necessary to create their own warp drive—helping them along would be a massive commitment of decades.
Phlox then reveals that the Valakians have reached an evolutionary dead end, hence the genetic difficulties. The Menk need to be untethered from the Valakians in order to survive and thrive. He therefore advocates letting nature take its course, as it were. Archer disagrees, and when Phlox reveals that he has a cure, Archer is appalled to realize that Phlox wants to deny the Valakians that cure.
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The next day, having mulled it over, Archer decides that it’s not their job to play god, and so agrees to only give the Valakians medicine that will aid their symptoms and to not give them warp drive.
Phlox finishes his letter to Lucas and gives it to Sato to send to Denobula, then asks Cutler out on a date. Enterprise leaves orbit, secure in the knowledge that they’re a bunch of murdering bastards who’ve condemned a species to death for absolutely no good reason.
The gazelle speech. Archer’s instinct from jump is to help the Valakians from the moment they come across their ship. He only backs off from that at the very end of the episode because he doesn’t want to play god, supposedly.
I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. When Archer talks about possibly helping the Valakians, T’Pol reminds him that the Vulcans decided to help humans ninety years earlier, and they’re still there because this is a major commitment.
Florida Man. Florida Man Cries During Old Movie, Tries To Cover It Up.
Optimism, Captain! Phlox gets to feed his menagerie, write a letter to a colleague, struggle with flirting, continue to teach Sato Denobulan, see a movie, treat an engineer and the captain’s dog, learn all about the Valakians’ genetic condition, and advocate genocide. It’s a busy episode for him.
Good boy, Porthos! Archer brings Porthos to sickbay with some gastrointenstinal distress because Archer keeps giving in and feeding him cheese even though it’s bad for the poor pooch.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Cutler has been flirting with Phlox. It’s actually kind of adorable.
Also, not only are Denobulans polygamous, but mating season is apparently quite a crazy time on that planet…
More on this later… Archer speaks clumsily about how maybe some day there’ll be a directive that will tell them what to do when dealing with less advanced civilizations. Maybe it’ll even be a prime one!
Also, the Valakians mention the Ferengi, whom neither T’Pol nor Archer have ever heard of.
I’ve got faith…
“The captain has committed all our resources to helping people he didn’t even know existed two days ago. Once again, I’m struck by your species’ desire to help others.”
–Phlox coming to understand the philosophical underpinning of Star Trek.
Welcome aboard. Kelly Waymire is back as Culter, last seen in “Strange New World,” establishing that character as recurring. She’ll next appear in “Two Days and Two Nights.”
Various Valakians are played by David A. Kimball, Christopher Rydell, and Alex Nevil, while the Menk orderly Larr is played by Karl Wiendergott (who previously appeared on Voyager’s “Warlord“).
Trivial matters: Lucas will be seen, played by Richard Riehle, in “Cold Station 12” and “The Augments.”
Christopher Rydell is the son of Joanne Linville, who played the Romulan commander in the original series’ “The Enterprise Incident.”
The M’klexa have never been seen or mentioned onscreen again, but they do appear in the novel The Romulan War: To Brave the Storm by Michael A. Martin. The Ferengi will be seen in “Acquisition.”
In the original draft of the script, Phlox withheld that he had a cure from Archer. The executives at UPN demanded that the ending be changed, to show that the crew was all on the same page and that everyone supported the captain. This change meant that Phlox now has conspirators in his genocide.
It’s been a long road… “My people are dying—will you allow him to help us?” I despise this episode with the fiery passion of a thousand white-hot suns. Twenty years ago, after watching this episode, I decided to stop watching Enterprise, I was so utterly disgusted by it.
It’s always nice, especially given that this episode aired during the early days of the “creation science” movement, to see Star Trek reiterating the reality of evolution, but it’s undermined by them so totally not understanding how evolution works. Evolution is not a predestined set of outcomes. Rick Berman-era Trek has been particularly inept in this regard—e.g., the otherwise-excellent Voyager episode “Distant Origin,” in which the EMH is able to extrapolate how one species of dinosaur would have evolved over millions of years. That is utterly impossible to properly extrapolate because evolution is not a set, predetermined process. And one of the major factors in how a species evolves is its external environment, which can change. (As an example, most dinosaurs were rendered extinct, not because they were an evolutionary dead end or anything like that, but because a big rock unexpectedly hit the planet.)
For all that Trek’s embrace of evolution is noble in the abstract, it winds up coming down way too much on the creation science side of things, embracing the ridiculous notion that every species has a predetermined plan on how it “should” evolve, which is utter total fucking nonsense. Living beings continue to live or die based on millions of factors, none of which are predetermined.
So for Phlox and Archer to withhold a cure for a disease that will wipe out an entire species is an act of genocide.
The original ending might have made this work better. Since Phlox is an alien, we could, for example, show that some Denobulans believe that evolution is a sacred thing, and that it should not be interfered with. But by having Archer go along with it, any chance of cultural relativism goes out the window.
Archer’s feeble “we shouldn’t play god” excuse is pathetic, because withholding the cure is also playing god. Except in this case, it’s being a cruel, heartless, murdering god.
In much the same way TNG’s “Homeward” disgusted me because it turned our theoretical heroes into murderers, so too with this episode. Just a morally repugnant, despicable, horrible, awful, revolting episode that’s a blight on the franchise.
I was going to give this a 0, but the 75% or so of the episode prior to Phlox making his reprehensible decision is actually a good, if slow-paced tale. Giving John Billingsley lots of screen time is always a good thing, and we really get a good feel for the doctor.
But that last 25% so totally ruins it I can only knock it up one point. Especially the very ending where the protagonists (they can no longer legitimately be called heroes) congratulate themselves on how enlightened they are for condemning an entire species to death and go off to have dates and things…
Warp factor rating: 1
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges folks to support the anthology The Fans are Buried Tales, edited by veteran Star Trek novelist Peter David and Kathleen O. David, to which Keith is one of the contributors. It features cosplayers telling stories in character for whoever they’re dressed as, and other contributors include fellow Trek prose stylists Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, Rigel Ailur, Robert T. Jeschonek, and John Peel, and tons more besides. Here’s the link to the anthology’s Kickstarter.
My warp factor would be higher, just because of the shipboard storylines. (I’m not sure if one should call them plotlines, they are just floating bits of characterization for now. T’Pol’s reaction to the dental issues was just great.)
Regarding the genocide, is there such a thing as a genocide by omission? Part of my wants to say “yes,” but then I’d have to ask myself about my carbon footprint. Many people will die from climate change, but I probably won’t be among them anytime soon. Does it make a moral difference how much sacrifice saving others involves?
And a minor matter, the Valakians have spacecraft with more than a year endurance. (Ours? Theirs? No matter.) And Archer doesn’t believe that they understand how dangerous antimatter can be? Surely their ship is nuclear-powered.
Wow. Literally the only thing I remember from this episode is Porthos getting sick from cheese. Keep the important stuff I guess.
I agree with the low grade on this one because of the ending. The only enjoyable thing I took away from this back when it was first broadcast was the interaction between Phlox and Cutler. Even “if only” as flirtatious friends, they had a wonderful dynamic.
Yep, and it seems to me a relatively easy fix in the script. Have Archer give the Valakians the cure and tell them that most of the data was anonymously given to him by the Menk and Phlox simply finished the work. That would be a lie and would also be playing God, but it would change their view of the Menk as less developed. Then have Archer give an inspirational speech about hope coming from unexpected places, and in the future the two species should boldly go into space together, yadda yadda.
Anyway, everybody lives. Life is improved and hopeful. Y’know, Star Trek stuff.
Random thought: would it break the system if the overview page was in reverse order, so that the latest one is at the top and not the bottom?
Wow. I can’t recall if I’ve seen this episode before but I will no doubt stream it today. My surprise is because I often hear this episode referred to as one of Enterprise‘s best and most thoughtful. I guess that’s not a universal opinion!
I generally tend to be much more fond of Enterprise than most, but I agree with KRAD on this one completely. The ending of this one is absolutely reprehensible. It’s the epitome of the absurd extremist interpretation far too many writers had of the whole “non interference” philosophy.
garreth: The love this one gets baffles me even more than the love that “The Drumhead” and The Undiscovered Country get……..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
One of the things this episode could have touched on but didn’t is Trek-universe humans’ aversion to genetic engineering applied to sentient species. Being the closest chronologically to the Eugenics Wars of any of the Star Trek series we’ve seen so far this taboo would probably be stronger among Archer’s crew than any other crew that’s starred in a televised series. Despite claiming a logical and rational reason for not wanting to “play god” by altering an alien species at a genetic level (or rather, giving the means to an alien species to voluntarily alter its own genome), a more deft writer could have given us the sense that this was a decision motivated in part by cultural factors.
Apparently the genetic disorder that the Valakians suffer from is a dominant gene and the essentially the entire population has it. There are numerous genetic disorders in humanity that ARE fatal before maturity. Sure, there’s genetic editing where the fatal gene can at least be deactivated (or replaced by the Menk gene), but that’s affecting the evolution of the Valakians (and playing God). I realize that I’m in the minority, but IMO, short of screening the bulk of the Valakians population, my guess is that Phlox feels that there is insufficient population without the gene causing the disorder for the Valakians to survive. Sure, you can treat the symptoms, and have children grow up and reproduce, but that only prolongs the problem.
Don’t forget that although we haven’t seen them on screen yet, the Augments DO exist and surely Archer is well acquainted with the Eugenics Wars. That knowledge has to play into his decision to NOT provide the cure that Phlox has discovered.
It’s a tough moral question, but both possibilities have their pros and cons. Remember also, that had it been a Vulcan ship that encountered the Valakians, aid would most likely not have been rendered (as the Valakians even with deep space capability don’t have Warp Drive), and so what Phlox feel would happen most likely would be the outcome, short of the Valakians finding someone willing to help them.
I won’t call this a strong episode by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it gets more than a 1 viewed in context of the series as a whole.
I liked this one (and The Undiscovered Country, KRAD). I don’t know about all this evolution talk, but it doesn’t seem right to intervene and choose which species gets to dominate a planet. Sure, it feels bad, but is intervening, which would result in keeping the Menk in a subservient and exploited position any more just? I don’t think so. So Archer had to choose between doing a bad thing or not doing a good thing, which is also bad. That’s a no-win scenario, and just the kind of circumstance that calls for a non-interference directive.
I really disagree with Keith about this one. Phlox didn’t advocate “genocide,” since the Valakians still had 200 years to find another option. Nothing prevented them from seeking help from somebody else or finding a solution on their own. Phlox just advocated letting nature take its course. In his mind, the outcome was already decided by evolution, and it was just a matter of accepting the inevitable.
The problem is that the episode used a clumsy science fiction premise that muddied the message. It was trying to be a metaphor for end-of-life issues, the principle in medicine that there comes a time when a patient’s death is inevitable and a doctor’s focus should be on helping guide them to acceptance and ease their final days, rather than fighting against it. Unfortunately, trying to apply that principle on a species level is scientifically absurd (though it’s hardly the dumbest idea in Trek biology) and clumsy as an analogy because of the difference between individuals and species. So what it was trying to do didn’t really come across clearly, and a lot of people unfortunately misunderstand what the episode posited or what Phlox was actually arguing for in the first place, because the flawed science of the premise confuses the issue. So they end up arguing against things that the episode didn’t actually say. It’s too bad, because it was trying to do something pretty interesting and thought-provoking, but didn’t quite get it right.
But there was a lot that the episode did get right. It was mostly quite an entertaining focus episode for Phlox, revealing a lot about his personality and his relationships. And it’s another example of how much the first season of ENT tries to emulate M*A*S*H, this time with the use of the letter-writing format. It’s almost a very good episode, but the SF premise is flawed in a way that makes it deeply misunderstood.
Offhand, I can’t really think of any work of science fiction that demonstrates that anyone writing it understands evolution.
I find it interesting how polarising the review of this episode can be. I’ll admit on first viewing I thought it was the best episode so far but after reading others thoughts regarding the bad science / rationale for not helping it put the episode in a different light.
I think what doesn’t help is that the episode goes out of its way to show the Valakian / Menk relationship as being rather harmonious. I wonder if it would work better if the planet was struggling from overpopulation or resources / pollution concerns leading to the realisation that the planet could not support the continuation of both species long term. That might add more weight to the question of whether or not to ‘interfere’ with a cure
It is certainly a very polarizing episode. In fact, it may be the most polarizing episode in Enterprise history. Some people absolutely hate it, and some people think it’s brilliant
I’m not generally inclined to go with the idea that ENTERPRISE is the ‘holodock version’ of history, but when it comes to this episode I’d dearly like to imagine that the version of this story as originally scripted is what actually happened and that Captain/Admiral Archer created this version of events when he refused to let Doctor Phlox shoulder some blame for this Crime against Sentience.
Despite having only just watched this episode for the first time (but having been forewarned by various allusions to it over the years) I can safely say that while I disagree with krad on THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (I can accept that it’s not to your taste, dahar master, but the film remains good on it’s own merits) I heartily agree with him on this episode – which tastes like the contents of the average digestive tract after they’ve hit the stomach acid.
The writing problems with this episode have already been pointed out, so let’s take some time to appreciate errors of production design – like making the secondary sapient species so very innocuous looking as to make it look like nakedly Imperialist arrogance to refer to them as though they were trained seals, rather than slightly less acute sapients (In all honesty a trained chimp would have better suited the demands of the role and I don’t mean this as a joke).
Arguably worse is the design for that cute, which makes it look as though Captain Archer has denied the very species that begged for his help an equivalent of the polio vaccine, rather than a tool with more than one purpose and genuinely dangerous potential.
Segueing into my complaints against the writers, even assuming that Captain Archer does not share the cure and does not wish to share warp engine specifics, the script never even hints that he could still have given his hosts a few pointers on how to improve their slower-than-light technology (Which would be a show of good faith, quite possibly a consolation prize, and at least allow them a fighting chance of finding a more helpful ally).
While this is probably the most annoying failure of imagination in the script, the complete failure to indicate that the only possible cure is extensive genetic engineering is the most bizarre – even a brief mention that this was the only real possibility for the host species survival would help explain why Archer runs screaming from the species he genuinely wanted to help (because handing out a vaccine is one thing, but handing a species the tools to remake themselves AND the species that might eventually supplant them runs a serious risk of charging in where Angels fear to tread).
Perhaps the saddest failure in this episode is that it not only fails to live up to the raison d’etre of STAR TREK, it not only fails to live up to the inherent dramatic potential of asking how far outside intervention can be taken before those who offer it become the source of new (and possibly far worse) problems, it even fails to live up to it’s own first half – which I would argue is quite above average for the show, given it’s focus on one of the most appealing members of the cast (as a character and as a performance).
Really, this episode may deserve unique recognition – I suggest giving it a ‘minus one’ (-1) rating, for having hit rock bottom AND STARTED TUNNELLING.
I’ve noted before the odd trend that the Federation seems to view evolution as a teleological process, and theorized that this plays into (and/or stems from) their attitudes towards genetic engineering. I think this episode marks the most severe consequences we’ve seen from it, though.
I remember a lot of parts of this episode, but did not remember the ending. Either I stepped out of the room for a moment, or my mind buried the last few minutes where I could never find them again.
It’s a Star Trek staple that the Enterprise crew gets stuck with the moral responsibility for a planet’s survival, but in this case, Archer et al. could’ve passed the buck: they’re within subspace comm range for Earth and Vulcan and they’ve got a supply of relays, so they could’ve given one to the Valakians and said, “we’re sympathetic and this isn’t an imminent disaster, so please appeal to our bosses.”
Otherwise, I certainly hope the reports by Archer and Phlox reach the appropriate authorities, who dispatch a follow-up mission. For that matter, once the UFP gets founded a few years later, this planet is presumably within its sphere of influence, so that April or Pike or Kirk or some other unheralded captain faces the problem again, this time with only 100 years to resolve the crisis. (And that circles back to the premise of, although not the century of, Lower Decks.)
@13/Travitt Hamilton: “Offhand, I can’t really think of any work of science fiction that demonstrates that anyone writing it understands evolution.”
Do you have experience of science fiction beyond film and television? If you want smart, plausible SF, you can find plenty in books. Off the top of my head, Joan Slonczewski is a microbiologist who writes biologically themed hard SF novels.
@14/sharev: “I think what doesn’t help is that the episode goes out of its way to show the Valakian / Menk relationship as being rather harmonious.”
Seriously? Maybe from the Valakian point of view, but it was pretty oppressive toward the Menk.
@16/ED: “Crime against Sentience”
There is no crime here. No action was taken to destroy the Valakians; the premise is that they were dying anyway of natural causes, and all Phlox advocated was accepting the inevitable. As I said, the analogy is for a patient dying of a terminal disease or old age, as clumsy as it is to try to apply that to an entire species. Accepting the inevitable and taking no extraordinary measures to prolong life is not the same thing as actively taking a life. My father had a Do Not Resuscitate order and thus ended his days in a hospice, where they simply eased his passage rather than trying to prevent it. They committed no crime by letting nature take its course.
Technically, it isn’t even a crime to stand by and do nothing when a death is preventable, unless you specifically have a duty of care over the person in question. It may be a callous thing to do, but it isn’t a criminal act.
And again, the Valakians still had 200 years left, plenty of time to seek other options. There was no urgency; the ultimate question didn’t have to be decided right then and there, and thus it didn’t have to be Jonathan Archer’s responsibility.
“The writing problems with this episode have already been pointed out, so let’s take some time to appreciate errors of production design – like making the secondary sapient species so very innocuous looking as to make it look like nakedly Imperialist arrogance to refer to them as though they were trained seals, rather than slightly less acute sapients”
How is that an error? That’s exactly the impression we were meant to take away, that the Menk had the potential to match or transcend the Valakians and had as much right to develop that potential as any other sophonts.
“(In all honesty a trained chimp would have better suited the demands of the role and I don’t mean this as a joke).”
If that wasn’t a joke, then it’s in very poor taste. Our understanding of primate intelligence has advanced a lot since the old days, and no modern production would abuse a chimpanzee by using one in a television production (especially since all screen chimpanzees in the past were babies or juveniles, as the adults are far too strong and aggressive).
It also makes no sense as a suggestion, since the Menk were supposed to be to the Valakians as early humans were to Neanderthals or other hominins. The fact that they’re only slightly “behind” the Valakians in evolving intelligence is the entire point of the dilemma.
The Enterprise handled this so badly; they didn’t just refuse to help the Valakians – they took active action to impede them, first by retrieving their ship (which might have found other species more willing to help) and taking it back to their planet, and then by lying to them, telling them that that the Enterprise could find no cure (when in fact they had). It’s not like walking past someone drowning and deciding that buoyancy wants him dead (“gravity” wanted Kirk dead in Star Trek 5, by the way) – it’s like blocking the view so that no one else can see the need for help, and taking away the life jacket as well.
@21/AndyLove: The intended analogy, again, was to death from old age, not drowning or falling. The idea was that the species was reaching the natural, inevitable end of its lifespan, so there was nothing to be cured. But the episode failed to sell that premise because the idea of a species having a preset expiration date is so implausible.
Although I find it odd and ironic that viewers can accept such utter biological nonsense as humanoid aliens and interspecies hybrids and ascension to incorporeality, but are unable or unwilling to suspend disbelief about this premise. I mean, the idea of genetically programmed death isn’t that far-fetched; it exists on a cellular level (apoptosis) and is the reason we have finite lifespans as individuals. So the idea that it could apply on a species-wide level as well, not on Earth but on some other planet, seems rather tame to me compared to a lot of the scientific nonsense we see in Trek. And if we do stipulate to the idea just for the sake of the story, that the biosphere of Valakis gives individual species a finite lifespan to clear the board for other species, then it’s fair to ask the question of whether it’s beneficial in the long run to disrupt that balance.
One of my regrets in not getting to continue the Rise of the Federation novels is that I would’ve liked to revisit the Valakian/Menk situation and address some of these issues.
@23: There are a fair number of SF stories that deal with species that have a natural lifespan, but generally, those species are shown as resting on previous laurels and not raging against the dying of their light. A better script could have made the basic premise work better – but as it is, it doesn’t work very well at all.
Well-acted, thought-provoking, and I completely disagree with krad that what occurred here was genocide by inaction. IMO that’s an oversimplistic and shrill reading of what actually happened in this episode. I’d give this in a 8. I loved watching it and thinking about it after it was over, and that’s why I watch television.
@20. ChristopherLBennett: Mr Bennett, crime or no crime, the crew of NX-01 were asked for their help, agreed to help, expressed themselves very willing to help … and then Captain Archer refused to deliver on the promised assistance when a cure was ready to Doctor Phlox’s hand.
If that isn’t technically criminal then it’s still crooked (Especially since Captain Archer doesn’t have either the courtesy or the guts to make his decision & the logic behind it known to his hosts – while you will undoubtedly advance perfectly correct practical reasons for him not to do so, given the Captain’s previously-displayed willingness to damn the odds in order to do what he feels to be right, it’s difficult to perceive the courage of his convictions in this particular act).
Mr Bennett, several of your other points merit an answer in their own right, but here it’s so late as to be rather early – I shall have to respond to them at another time.
@25/ED: Again, the intent was that there was no disease, merely a natural process, so “cure” was the wrong word. It’s similar in concept to the Voyager episode “Innocence,” another episode with a very fanciful approach to biology. There, Tuvok believed that the Drayan children were being preyed on by a monster and he had to protect them. But it ultimately turned out that the Drayans aged backward and the children had reached the natural end of their life cycle. Once he understood that, Tuvok stopped trying to prevent their death and instead helped them accept it and make the transition peacefully. “Dear Doctor” was supposed to be the same principle on a species-wide scale.
I want to make it clear that I’m not arguing in favor of Phlox’s position. I see this as an episode like “A Private Little War” or “Tuvix” where the moral ambiguity is the point — there’s not supposed to be a clear correct answer to the ethical dilemma, only a choice between two bad options, to prompt introspection and debate in the audience. Maybe this episode doesn’t construct that dilemma as well as the others, but that was the intention. So I’m not taking a side — I just feel that people tend to grossly misread and misstate what was actually meant to be happening in this episode, and I feel that a legitimate critique needs to be based on a clear understanding of what the text’s intent actually was. It’s a flawed intent, one that leads to misunderstanding, but that’s why it’s important to me to clarify it. Even if you disagree with something, it’s important to represent it accurately, so that disagreement is based on reality rather than a misunderstanding.
Although now that I think about it, I suppose I do disagree with Phlox’s position to let nature take its course — which seems to contradict what we later learn about Denobulans having chosen to genetically engineer themselves. I disagree with the Federation’s ban on genetic engineering for the same reason; there’s nothing wrong with improving the quality of life, and we’ve been altering our “natural” biology since we first domesticated livestock and started to evolve lactose tolerance, or since we first started cooking food, which led to changes in our jaw structure and digestive systems. The idea that there’s a pure, “correct” path for evolution to follow is ridiculous. But Phlox did have a point that, given the tricky situation with the Valakians and the Menk, intervening in the former species’s favor could have unfairly deprived the latter of the chance to advance.
I suppose the optimal outcome would be for the two species to colonize other worlds, so they’re no longer competing for only one planet. In my Arachne duology, I establish that galactic custom is for starfaring species to eventually migrate off their homeworlds to leave room for the next sapient civilization to evolve there. So if the Valakians colonized other worlds, they could live on without impeding the Menk’s evolution.
The reaction to this episode is definitely interesting to me. I particularly never thought of it as a metaphor for death by old age. Now that that’s been put into my head… yeah, I probably hate it more, but I spent four months of last year watching my dad die of a glioblastoma. I am horribly biased, and by proxy even more on the side of the dying species considering how my dad basically as close to literally punched Death in the throat as he dragged him away, as is possible.
I also have to say that the garbage science in this episode has bothered me since I first heard of it. Too many have already said that evolution doesn’t work that way, but I have to concur anyway. In a challenging environment, traits that detract from one’s ability to survive will be bred out of the gene pool, but I don’t think any culture in Star Trek can possibly be that challenging that an entire species is destined to die out. And that brings me to my objection to the text of the episode, having railed against the subtext.
I think it’s the duty of science to turn the inevitable into the impossible. If we let people born disadvantaged fall by the wayside, if we don’t fight for extension of and quality of life for people who, for example, are born blind, or deaf, or left-handed (tiny joke for Wil Wheaton and me, lefties both, though we do live about 5 years less than righties), then what even is the point of medical science? And it follows that this also applies to genetic diseases. It almost feels like eugenics gone mad to decide that a genetic disease is just fate or nature’s/God’s/The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s plan. This is why I’m firmly on Krad’s side on this one. I almost wanted him to declare this would have gotten an eight but for the conclusion, then go zero instead.
“What are you suggesting? We choose one species over the other?”
I’m surprised it took so many posts (with poor old The Undiscovered Country in the firing line first), for someone to mention that, in terms of plot and reputation, this is basically the Enterprise equivalent of “Tuvix”. It’s a shame, and it’s an even bigger shame that it’s deserved, because the first 35 minutes are brilliant. Phlox is one of the most colourful characters on the show but up until now, he’s basically just come on for his scenes, done his bit and faded into the background. It’s good to have an episode focusing on him at last, and indeed on the even more underused Cutler. We learn more about Denobulans and their culture here than we have in the previous 11 episodes. There are lots of nice little touches, like the idea of him teaching Hoshi Denobulan. And we get another brilliant scene between Archer and T’Pol: wisely, Scott Bakula has either chosen or been directed to play lines that in earlier episodes would have been caustic barbs in an introspective manner, as Archer suddenly finds the shoe’s on the other foot: Now he’s the representative of a more advanced culture being asked to give a people a technological shortcut that he knows they have to figure out at their own pace.
But unfortunately, it falls apart at the end, as it suddenly turns into a Prime Directive Episode with no Prime Directive and an episode that has all the controversial parts of “Tuvix” without any of that episode’s boldness. In a couple of scenes, Archer and Phlox decide to go against every instinct they’ve shown throughout the episode to make a rather dubious moral message. To be fair, the argument’s set out quite logically: This isn’t even a disease but a genetic defect that they’d need to correct, which does take them out of the realms of conventional medical treatment into playing god, and the Menk will likely always be treated as second class citizens if the Valakians are around. But this comes after Phlox praising humanity’s compassion and pointing out the system the planet’s population have developed works for them, and somehow convinces Archer to do a U-turn as well. Phlox says he’s both a doctor and a scientist, but I suspect neither of those would find his argument convincing: He seems to be acting as a philosopher instead. Phlox says near the end that if he’d denied Archer all the facts he’d be no better than the Vulcan diplomats who thought humans couldn’t make their own decisions. The problem is that’s exactly what he is doing, except instead of humans, he thinks he knows what’s best for the Valakians and the Menk.
Whatever your thoughts on “Tuvix”, at least it forced Janeway to look an innocent man in the eye as she sacrificed him to bring back two of her friends. The equivalent scene here is Archer hiding the fact he could have saved the Valakians and fobbing them off with some medicine that’ll make them live a bit longer and a vague suggestion that maybe they’ll find a cure themselves anyway. Sadly, this won’t be the last time he and the show will wash their hands of a situation and fly off when it gets too uncomfortable rather than facing the consequences.
For the first time, Phlox reveals he has three wives, who each have two husbands other than him. (Curiously, he doesn’t correct Cutler when she suggests he might have a wife number four some day, whereas three spouses is generally portrayed as the normal number.) We’re told Denobulans don’t like to be touched, which I’m not sure is ever mentioned again. We’re also told they require little rest normally but hibernate for six days a year, which does come up again in “Two Days and Two Nights”. Doctor Lucas will be mentioned several more times before eventually turning up in person.
I always found it strange that this episode presents itself as being anti-creationist but acts as if “science” or “evolution” or “the universe” has an evolutionary plan that it is working towards, as if evolution were deterministic. What is that if not God by another name? The horrible depiction of how evolution works is actually arguing for the case the episode purports to be against.
I’ve always thought that that, at some point, Berman-era Trek kind of “lost the plot” with regard to the Prime Directive. It seems like it went from initially being basically a principle of anthropological ethics (and, out of universe, a neat way to neuter the more imperialistic implications of the Wagon-Train-to-the-Stars concept) to being an almost-religious belief in not interfering with the “destinies” of other races.
Anyways, I’m definitely in the camp that hated both this episode and “Homeward.”
Looks like I’m a little late to the party this time. When I saw this episode for the first time right as this rewatch was beggining, I was absolutely appalled at Phlox, Archer, and the writers, and I began planning my response. I was plesently surprised that a significant number of others share my opinion of the crew’s descision. Plenty of said others have already commented on that aspect, so I won’t. I would like to talk briefely about what this episode iforshadows – the Prime Directive (and it succedes in that regard with as much sutblty as an angry Klingon).
The PD is a simple concept: don’t interfere with species that havn’t yet developed warp capabilities. Presumably this was the point chosen so as to eliminate any ambiguity on whether or not it was appropriet to invervene. The intention is to avoid corrupting the population with a false religion (when they are less advanced) and to keep them from destroying or seriously harming themselves from the persuit of higher technology (when they are more advanced). Very nice of the Federation/Starfleet (I’m not sure which one issues the directive). Unfortunately, in an effort to make an episode for the audiance to “think on”, the PD often gets reduced to the letter of the law, rather than the intent. It’d be great to have an episode, where, say, our heroes encounter another ship in the middle of a PD situation and they must debate the meaning of the rules and whether they should go with only what is written or what was intended by it when it was written. As it is, we have episodes like this, where the destruction of a species is condoned in the name of “science” and later “the PD”. A better example of what should happen more often are situations like the openings of Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek: Discovery, where the crews must quietly save the planet without being seen. Phlox would have told Cpt. Georgiou to let the natives die of thirst, for if evolution had meant for them to survive they wouldn’t need a well.
The other aspect is the line in the sand: warp capability. This situation is unique because the populace are well aware of warp, they just don’t have it yet. They do have more elementary forms of space travel, though. It would be interesting to do more stories with this kind of species, where they can’t be given higher technology but can still interact with the greater galaxy. But it makes one wonder: if the species were, say 60 years more advanced and had warp, would they have helped them? If so, then it’s saying that “advanced” species are simply worth more than those less so, and the lower species doesn’t matter as much as they claim. If no, then let’s through this scenario forward. If it was suddenly found that all Betazoids were going to die off, and a lower species was going to take their place, would the Federation condem them? It’s almost inconcievable, and if they did I can only see Picard getting very angry. So are lives of higher species just more sacred? If so, this is not a future I ever want to find myself in.
It comes down, IMO, to the order of regulations. PD is #1, above all others. Even #2, the regualtion against murder, comes after. Therefore, it would be within the scope of the rules to kill a sapient in cold blood if the options were discovery by a lower species or murder. C. S. Lewis said that nothing is more dangeourous than taking one idea or virtue and elevating it above all others so that it must be followed at all costs. That is what has happened with the PD. It’s intentions were good, but we all know with thus is the road to hell paved.
Wow, sorry that was so much longer than anticipated.
There’s actually a way to preserve most of the plot while improving its scientific plausibility. There’s a concept in evolutionary biology called “Muller’s ratchet”, which basically says that in a population of an organism without a means of genetic recombination (such as sexual reproduction), the number of negative mutations in the population can only increase. It is possible for such populations to mutate to the point that they cannot survive.
So, with that in mind, make the Valakians an asexually reproducing species who are in the process of accumulating enough harmful mutations to cause their extinction. The “cure” is not a particular substance or procedure, but rather genetic engineering technology, which we’ll say they don’t have. That makes the decision to help them a weightier one: it would involve giving them a revolutionary technology with a high potential for abuse and instructing them in its use.
@@@@@ 20 – “Technically, it isn’t even a crime to stand by and do nothing when a death is preventable, unless you specifically have a duty of care over the person in question. It may be a callous thing to do, but it isn’t a criminal act.”
That may be true in the US but bot in other jurisdictions.
Denmark:
“
Under the Danish penal code, all persons must provide aid to the best of their ability to any person who appears to be lifeless or in mortal danger (§ 253), must alert authorities or take similar steps to prevent impending disasters that could cause loss of life (§ 185), must comply with all reasonable requests of assistance by a public authority when a person’s life, health or well-being is at stake (§ 142), and must, if they learn of a planned crime against the state, human life or well-being, or significant public goods, do everything in their power to prevent or mitigate the crime, including but not limited to reporting it to authorities (§ 141), in all cases provided that acting would not incur particular danger or personal sacrifice.
Violations are punishable by up to three months (§ 142), two years (§ 185 and § 253) or three years (§ 141) in prison.[38] Before 2004, the maximum penalty for § 185 and § 253 was only 4 and 3 months, respectively.[39]
Outside hit-and-run incidents, § 253 is used only rarely, though a notable 2014 case saw a woman sentenced to a year in prison for abandoning another woman; the abandoned woman had become stuck in a bog and eventually died from exposure.”
France:
“
Anyone who fails to render assistance to a person in danger will be found liable before French Courts (civil and criminal liability). The penalty for this offence in criminal courts is imprisonment and a fine (under article 223–6 of the Criminal Code) while in civil courts judges will order payment of pecuniary compensation to the victims.[41]
The photographers at the scene of the fatal car collision of Diana, Princess of Wales, were investigated for violation of the French law of “non-assistance à personne en danger” (failing to provide assistance to a person in danger), which can be punished by up to 5 years of imprisonment and a fine of up to €75,000.”
For just two examples.
Duty to rescue.
I found Phlox’s position interesting as it showed an alien outlook. If Denobulans have an equivalent of a Hippocratic oath, it’s different from the human one, which is as it should be. Sure, he’s serving on a human ship but what if Doctor Lucas runs into a situation on Denobula where his oath is in conflict with how a Denobulan doctor would handle it. Which comes first, the law or their oath?
Archer, of course, could have simply handed over the cure and expressed to Phlox how disappointed he was in him. And Phlox, rightly, would point out that he’s holding him to a human standard, in effect, playing god himself.
Vulcans are allowed to have fights to the death over marriage customs. The Ardanans are allowed to treat the Troglytes as slaves with no intervention by the Federation (At no point were the Ardanans told to knock it off, just to get the zenith that they have promised to provide). How to handle differing moral codes is something that should come up pn Trek much more often than it does. Instead, it seems that the Human one is imposed on the other alien races serving in Starfleet. One of the few times we’ve seen it presented was when Word refused to save the life of the Roman and even then, everyone was really disappointed in him.
The bad science didn’t bother me as much as it did some because I’d long since given up on Trek getting the science, any science, right. I’m still amused when people hold Trek up as being so much more science literate than other shows.
Okay, I just finished it. I didn’t hate it. It’s actually mostly charming. But I didn’t agree with the ending because it seems like an artificial way to create conflict between Archer and Phlox and I didn’t buy into the dilemma. It seems the only reason Phlox denies the cure to the dying aliens is because there is another sentient humanoid species on the world that would then have a chance to become the dominant species. If this second species didn’t exist, then fine, no problem and he hands over the cure. But there isn’t any logical reasoning why the two humanoid species couldn’t continue to co-exist even if the one that’s dying comes across a cure to their illness. It seems like the way that dying species treated subservient species might be some kind of secondary reasoning for why Phlox doesn’t hand over the cure.
Anyway, let’s just say this is Phlox’s strong deep-seated belief and who are we to judge him because we’re biased in our cultural/moral beliefs and he as an alien has his own that should be respected. Still, drama and conflict can be maintained by Archer sticking to his guns – realizing that there are always exceptions to the rule (a directive which does not yet exist anyway) – and ordering Phlox to hand over the cure to the dying aliens. Then everyone is happy, including the TV audience. Well, everyone except Phlox.
This is Kelly Waymire’s second of third appearances as Cutler. I really liked her interaction with Phlox and could see it going somewhere. It really is a shame she wasn’t used in the second season and early third season when there was still an opportunity to do so. The actress herself stated in an interview that she would love to come back after the first season and see what would happen between her character and Phlox.
The mention of the Ferengi here seems like an explicit set-up for the Ferengi episode coming up shortly.
@28/cap-mjb: Acrually, I see Enterprise’s answer to Voyager’s “Tuvix” as “Similtude.” Just as in “Tuvix” we have in “Similtude” a character that we as an audience care about and is demanding for his continued existence when the respective captains both want to execute the title character in order to restore the more vital crew member(s). “Similtude” also seems like a companion piece in a way to this episode. Here, Phlox, and subsequently Archer, make a whole point about who are they to play god? And Phlox himself states that maybe it’s just the natural way of things for the dying alien species in “Dear Doctor” to just die out. But in “Similtude” Sim verbalizes how humans and Vulcans used to have shorter lifespans but have made great effort in extending their respective lifespans because they would just prefer to stick around longer. I’ve watched these episodes in reverse order but it’s like Sim would be taking up the position that the Valakians have of not wanting to die out if they can avoid it.
There’s no way the writers could have foreseen this, but this episode is possibly even more relevant now than it was then. What Phlox and then Archer do here is take the QALY approach to medical care and apply it to an entire species.
QALY for those unfamiliar with disability terms stands for “Quality Adjusted Life Years” and is used by hospitals and other medical providers to determine if a patient is “worthy” of taking up treatment resources that might be “better” given to another patient.
QALY treatment decisions are not equivalent to a DNR. A DNR is patient choice. QALYS are someone deciding for you what kind of life is worth living.
The Valakians being described as a species that has reached an evolutionary dead-end, as standing in the way of the Menk, as taking away resouces the Menk can use much better, the Menk being seen as more “deserving” with more “potential”… looked at through a disability lense this story is even more blatantly horrifying. Phlox et. al are willingly leaving the Valakians to die in favour of the Menk. And the decision is no using the same metrics as a doctor deciding that the bed and oxygen should go to a teenager with no criminal record versus the thirty-five year-old wheelchair user who has been arrested twice.
Again, the QALY metrics don’t ask the patient what they feel is a quality of life worth living, but what the medical providers feel is a life worth living. Phlox has decided on behalf of the Valakians, without consulting them, that they don’t have enough quality time left to bother treating them.
Also chilling is if you look at the terms Phlox uses to describe the Menk as having the potential to intellectually surpass the Valakians if they weren’t being “held back”. This, too, is eugenics-style thinking: that we need to clear out the intellectually “less capable” so that the true bright lights can reach their full potential unhindered.
Again, I am not sure that the writers were fully aware of any of this, as eugenics is so heavily baked in to a lot of our systems we don’t even notice. Especially since so much of it seems so reasonable on the surface.
Making a conscious decision about who lives and who dies especially without getting the subjects’ input on the matter is the very definition of “playing god”. It doesn’t matter if it’s an individual patient or an entire species.
When this originally aired, it made me uneasy (not enough to stop watching like KRAD, but definitely unsettled) but now it makes me want to hit the main characters with a two-by-four with a rusty nail in it, until they understand exactly what is wrong with their decision and that they are horrible people who should feel horrible. Especially since it isn’t a situation with finite resources. There is time and ways to come up with a solution that benefits everyone instead of pretending it’s a zero-sum game.
What makes me think the writers did know how horrible this was is the work they went to to convince the viewer it was a good choice and the Valakians had it coming. They’re racist! They want other species to solve their problems rather than bootstrapping it themselves! The poor, innocent Menk who don’t even know how bad they have it, because they’re being oppressed by these snotty, elitist, lazy Valakians! And look, the Menk are so good and pure, they hold the key. It’s not just a bad choice, it’s hackneyed writing. For a universe that tries to claim it’s pro-science, there’s an awful lot of “disease as divine punishment” thinking on display, that’s for sure.
@ChristopherLBennett in 20, where I live it would be a crime to do nothing during a preventable death. (Or even many unpreventable ones, amateurs cannot make that call.) Witnesses are not required to take risks to help if they feel uncomfortable about it, but at the very minimum they must call the emergency services from the nearest safe place.
Which goes to show that opinions about things like that differ even within the bland, homogenized Western civilization.
This actually brings up a problem with a fair number of Star Trek plots, namely: why is a ship’s captain making this decision? It’s not particularly time sensitive, so why not ask Earth-based authorities what to do? A problem that threatens an entire civilization deserves the full attention of a civilization, don’t you think?
@37/Vulpes: It’s just the nature of the 44 minute television episode beast.
@31: Whilst I agree with many of your points, I have to point out that you’re basing much of your argument around a frequent incorrect assumption. To whit, the Prime Directive doesn’t just apply to warp capable races. It applies to everyone. The warp drive line is when they can openly contact another race. (That’s briefly touched upon here, with it being noted that since the Valakians already know warp-capable species exist, they can make an exception.) It’s meant to preclude Starfleet from interfering in the internal affairs of any non-aligned planet, although it does vary wildly on how much intervention is allowed.
@34: That’s a very good point. I actually made the comparison in the rewatch of “Tuvix”, which I should have remembered. Without going into too much detail, I think the reason “Similitude” doesn’t have the same controversy surrounding it because it’s even further down the “cowardly cop-out” line. “Tuvix” ends with Janeway openly sacrificing someone against their will. “Dear Doctor” ends with Archer leaving a race to probably die out and pretending to them that he couldn’t have done anything. “Similitude” ends with the disposable character coming round to Archer’s way of thinking and meekly going to his death.
In general: I think this is an area where Enterprise badly falls down in its prequel status. It is something that CLB rescues in the Rise of the Federation novels by showing how this should go down, but as far as the series is concerned, instead of showing us the events that would logically have led to the creation of the Prime Directive, Berman and Braga basically act as though it’s already there. In this episode and others (notably Season 2’s “The Communicator”), they portray Archer as acting the same way that Picard would 200 years later, because after a decade and a half of writing Star Trek, they can’t seem to think of another way of writing these episodes and can’t see just how brainless they are. So, we get another “Homeward”, and this time they don’t even bother to include the maverick who insists on saving lives in spite of Starfleet dogma, because they’re so conditioned to the idea that this is what Starfleet do and they’re right to do so. You’d expect the Prime Directive to have been created because it was needed, because Starfleet officers made impulsive decisions based on a limited understanding of the situation and made things worse. Instead, Enterprise acts as though the Prime Directive was introduced because Starfleet captains were doing that already so they might as well put it in writing.
This episode has so many great bits of character work and it screws it all up at the end by having the Enterprise knowingly, wilfully condemn millions of people to death. Even if a cure is eventually found through some other means, what about all the people who died in the interim? That’s all on Phlox and Archer.
I’m still mad about it, twenty years later.
I agree with @ChristopherLBennett on this one and I think he made the points better that I could’ve.
I was actually remembering this as two different episodes: a rather charming slice-of-life one where we focused on Phlox and another with a moral dilemma concerning two sentient species. So I was rather surprised that this was all stuffed in the same episode. I also remember that when I first watched it and knew nothing about the Prime Directive (having never seen another Star Trek), Archer’s speech about it sounded a bit forced to me.
@29/scottyk: “I always found it strange that this episode presents itself as being anti-creationist but acts as if “science” or “evolution” or “the universe” has an evolutionary plan that it is working towards, as if evolution were deterministic. What is that if not God by another name?”
I see it as more reflective of the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that a planetary biosphere is a single interconnected organism working to maintain its balance, with individual species being parts of a larger whole. It’s not a divine plan deciding that one species needs to die off to make room for another, more just the overall balancing process of the biosphere, like apoptosis within the human body causing some cells to die so fresh ones can grow in their place.
@31/Echthelion: “The PD is a simple concept: don’t interfere with species that havn’t yet developed warp capabilities. Presumably this was the point chosen so as to eliminate any ambiguity on whether or not it was appropriet to invervene.”
Not exactly. The idea that the PD had anything to do with warp capability was never introduced until TNG: “First Contact,” 24 years after the PD was introduced and exactly halfway through TNG’s run. The PD as originally conceived was about respecting everyone’s right to self-determination, regardless of how advanced they are. In “The Magicks of Megas-tu,” it was defined as saying “No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society.” Contrary to popular belief, the PD applies to warp-capable civilizations too; it’s the reason Starfleet couldn’t intervene in the Klingon Civil War in “Redemption” or the Circle uprising on Bajor in the DS9 season 2 opening arc, at least until they were determined to be the result of outside intervention. It’s the reason Starfleet couldn’t intervene with the Tosk and Hunters in “Captive Pursuit,” and the reason Janeway didn’t want Torres helping the androids in “Prototype” learn to reproduce.
It’s missing the point to think that the PD is only meant to apply to “less advanced” civilizations. That’s the exact kind of paternalistic condescension that it’s supposed to warn us against. The idea is to accept that everyone else, regardless of their technological level, has the right and the ability to make their own decisions, that they understand their cultures better than you do and are better qualified to know what they need. The reason it’s stricter with pre-contact societies is to safeguard against our own temptation to think we know better, and to use our technological advantages to impose our will.
Although “First Contact”‘s choice of the invention of warp drive as the deciding point was really, really stupid, because there are many ways a civilization could learn about alien life before inventing warp drive, e.g. detecting their biosignatures or technosignatures with advanced telescopes. And it’s unfortunate that episode put forth the idea of the warp dividing line, because it’s led so many fans to make the mistaken and simplistic assumption that the PD is only about warp vs. not-warp.
@34/garreth: “But there isn’t any logical reasoning why the two humanoid species couldn’t continue to co-exist even if the one that’s dying comes across a cure to their illness.”
The reasoning is based on hominin evolution on Earth. We used to share the planet with numerous other near-human species and subspecies like Neanderthals and Denisovans, but now there’s just us. The belief for decades, and still at the time of this episode, was that humans had outcompeted the other hominins, either actively killing them off or just out-thriving them. It hadn’t yet been confirmed that we interbred with them and more or less merged with them rather than exterminating them. So there was reason at the time to believe that two humanoid species couldn’t share the same planet.
Although that premise is harder to justify when you have space travel, since both species could migrate elsewhere to ease evolutionary pressures, or import resources. It’s a premise that makes more sense in a closed environment.
@35/Malevolentpixy: Wow, you make some very compelling points. I’ve been trying to argue that the intent of the episode has been misunderstood, that it attempted to put forth a conceptually flawed premise that didn’t quite work as intended, but I hadn’t realized just how bad those unintended implications were. When you put it in those terms about patient choice and rating relative worthiness for treatment, it does sound much worse.
It’s too bad, really, because I see what they were trying for and I respect the intent, but they made a bad choice of how to craft the moral dilemma, and that ended up tainting the rest.
@39/cap: You pegged it. One of my big disappointments with ENT was that they didn’t really let the characters make the kind of well-intentioned mistakes that could’ve shown why a non-interference policy was needed, and I devoted a fair amount of Rise of the Federation to situations like that.
So many stories seem to get the concept of evolution wrong. I’m not sure this one does better than most. Evolution is change — it doesn’t always mean “improvement.” except possibly in terms of better adaptation to a changing environment through natural selection taking advantage of mutation.
So long as the Valakians are around, the Menk are not likely to advance. The Valakians’ presence might largely inhibit any environmental impetus that might stimulate such advancement. Or maybe not. All bets are off when you’ve got a species with technology capable of affecting their environment on a large scale (such as humans have, on Earth, for at least a couple of centuries).
The only live examples we have of two or more sapient species coexisting are in prehistory, that of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons (modern man) both inhabiting Europe for a period of time and possibly Denisovans and modern man similarly inhabiting parts of Eurasia (with the Neanderthal and Denisovan traces in our modern genome to prove it). We’re still not sure what led to the slow decline and disappearance of the Neanderthals — maladaptation to a changing climate or genocidal racial violence have been cited as possibilities.
The Valakians have 200 years. In that time, mightn’t they advance enough in genetic engineering technology to identify the problem in their genome, and perhaps correct it? Perhaps, even, by examining the Menk genome for clues as to their superior adaptation?
There’s a story idea for you: the Valakians do solve their problem. At the same time, they’ve researched and developed warp drive. The questions are:
– do they uplift the Menk as junior partners and ultimately peers, or do they subjugate them?
– having been invited to die off by one of the more significant interstellar contacts they’ve made are they resentful and likely to act accordingly?
Just in time for, say, the TNG/DS9/Voyager/Picard era …
Somehow I just knew this one was going to divide everyone. I’m of the mind that Dear Doctor was very much trying to be an episode that shows why the Prime Directive became a necessity. I think the approach of making the characters hold back the cure is very much supposed to be appalling. They’re still learning how to operate these kinds of missions and how to deal with unexpected circumstances. Of course they’re going to make mistakes, BIG ones. That’s part of the process. I don’t think this is a Homeward (1994) situation at all.
Phlox is very much a type of doctor we hadn’t seen before on Trek. Very alien, and very unusual. Whether through his space-faring experience or his Denobulan upbringing, he doesn’t quite fit the human-centric model prior Trek doctors had (EMH included). He’s not a humanistic curmudgeon like McCoy and the EMH, nor is he a preserve life above all else idealist like Bashir and Crusher. He might come across as almost aloof and uncaring at times, but that’s not quite true.
As @Christopher pointed out, he wasn’t arguing for genocide at all. And we don’t know whether the cure would truly rectify the situation or would merely delay an inevitable problem. Natural evolution is still a wild, unpredictable beast. Their bodies could end up rejecting the solution. Or another mutation could spring from this solution, complicating things even further. Phlox wasn’t about to get his hands dirty helping to complicate and deteriorate their situation even further than it already was.
Hell, Phlox’s approach here is still more sensible and caring when you compare his decision to the current real-life vaccine deniers on this COVID era. You want despicable genocide supporters? There are plenty of those in the real world right now.
Regarding the UPN-mandated rewrite: on one hand I can understand @krad’s preference with the original intended approach. Phlox withholding the cure from Archer would have been an interesting choice. But then again, we wouldn’t get that fiery conflict between them as Phlox very much defends his position to the captain. It’s one of Billingsley’s meatier scenes in the show as a whole.
Personally, I admire the episode for everything else it tries to accomplish. This is yet another character piece that flows remarkably well, playing very much to the strenghts of the Jacquemettons*. I adore the small bits, and especially scenes between Phlox and Cutler. It’s also the first Trek episode directed by James A. Contner, who at that point was knee-deep busy to no end producing/directing multiple episodes of Buffy and Angel every year, and who was very adept at crafting dynamic action/adventure set pieces on a tight budget and deadline.
*@12/Christopher: Having recently seen the Altman film myself, I concur. The M*A*S*H analogy is spot-on.
While the SFDebris reviews have been referenced in other reviews, he does offer a nice little “what if” that I’ve put into head cannon from this episode. Basically it’s what if someone else came to help the Valakians but the solution wasn’t as potentially as “clean” as Phlox’s and they have to wear specialized suits in order to survive along with the cure that within 2 centuries become the Breen. Along with that, the Menk end up taking technology but haven’t fully gotten to a stage to fully understand it and recreate it but just end up trading/stealing it where 2 centuries later they become the Pakleds.
Obviously not real cannon but an interesting thought. (the review btw hasn’t been re-uploaded to YouTube yet as he’s trying to re-edit and upload his reviews that have been on other services that no longer exist).
@45,
Chuck’s review is still uploaded on his main site (along with his analysis/deconstruction of the Prime Directive).
And if anyone’s wondering why I didn’t invoke SF Debris as usual, I was actually was going to originally.
But I also had a feeling how Keith was going to react to this episode and…well, after such fiery, passionate prosecution, heh, how could I (or Sonnenburg) compete with that?
@45
Yeah, I didn’t want to beat you to it and I remember Chuck’s reaction to the episode was quite strong, but it was that little bit at the end of the theory of what happened after the episode that really stuck with me.
@42 ChristopherLBennet Thanks for the clarification. Would you say that it is more “no interference in the development of other societies” or “no interference in other societies, period.” Because if it is the latter, then the entire premise of DS9 would seem to be a violation (Picard does mention the PD in the pilot, so there is that.)
@@@@@ 48 – The definition of the PD is all over the place. It’s a plot device and not a very well thought out one.
For example – “A star captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.” The Omega Glory
Yet, in A Taste of Armageddon, Kirk orders Scott to kill everyone on Eminiar VII in two hours if he, Spock and Fox aren’t released. This despite the fact that the Eminians had warned the ship off, as would be their right under the PD>
And this from Bread and Circuses –
SPOCK: Then the Prime Directive is in full force, Captain?
KIRK: No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet.
MCCOY: No references to space, or the fact that there are other worlds, or more advanced civilisations.
In A Piece of the Action, Kirk sets out to “correct” a “contamination” that occurred before the PD was in effect and that the Iotians willingly implemented themselves. And at the end, Kirk even says that he is forcing the Iotians to change.
“Despite themselves, they’ll be forced to accept conventional responsibilities.”
There’s simply no way to have all the various versions of the PD fit together as a cohesive whole. The above examples are just from TOS. It gets even harder to rationalize when things get to the TNG/DS9/VOY era.
@48/Ecthelion: The point is simply to respect other cultures’ right to make their own choices. That doesn’t mean you can’t help them out if they ask for help, as Bajor did. It just means you can’t force your help on them, or force them to do things your way. It’s basically the same as any other healthy relationship — you follow their lead rather than imposing your decisions on them. You give them the help they ask for, and you walk away if they want to handle it themselves. And you provide aid impartially — for instance, you can provide medical or humanitarian aid, but you don’t take sides in a political or military conflict within the society, because that’s a decision they have to make for themselves.
The problem with Prime Directive episodes and discussions is that there’s an unfortunate tendency to misinterpret “interference” as meaning any and all interaction. That’s not what it means. Interference means getting in the way. If somebody asks for your help and you provide it according to what they decide they want, that’s not interfering, it’s supporting. The key is to let them take the lead and decide for themselves what they need. The danger of technological superiority is the temptation it creates in the more advanced culture to bully the other one into submission, to assume that we know better than them and are entitled to boss them around, to interfere in their right to set their own course. The PD is meant to be a lesson in humility, a reminder that we can never know another culture’s needs better than its own members do, so the decisions have to be theirs.
I’m offended not just by the conclusion to the episode, but by the premise which allows for it to be possible. This is not late-stage Starfleet, with time travel. This is early-days Starfleet. They’re still developing basic technologies. And yet, somehow, their facilities and Phlox’s experience allow for a rapid diagnosis of a medical problem rooted in a genetic fault in an alien species? Even assuming that the species’ genetics are based upon the same basic principles, and even if that species somehow has primitive space travel but never developed the concept of genetics themselves, it seems like absolute nonsense that one doctor on a not-especially advanced spaceship can so quickly identify not only the problem, but also a possible solution.
The sheer degree of ignorance and arrogance on the part of writers and producers to assume that, of course Phlox can figure that out at once, and of course there can’t be the slightest bit of doubt that there’s an easy and 100% reliable treatment, completely precludes an entirely different sort of complexity they could have captured in the ending.
Because suppose Phlox has developed a theory about how to proceed, but he’s not certain. Suppose that even if the treatment works, it will involve a significant number of Valakian deaths (and maybe Menk deaths, too). Given that the harmful genetics are a dominant trait, maybe it also means that those who haven’t received treatment (or who opt out) can’t be allowed to reproduce? Then leave Archer with a tough decision: provide them the information, knowing that if Phlox is wrong or if the treatment kills most of the people receiving it, humanity as a whole will be blamed. You’d have to cut him off from communications with superiors.
It’s still not great–honestly, the show has very little understanding of how medical research actually works, and never has–but it would make a stark contrast with the “no drawbacks cure for one species with consequences for another” dilemma which makes little sense anyway. If Archer has a viable cure, surely he can use it to improve conditions for the Menk without ensuring Valakian deaths or extinction? As other commenters have suggested, that kind of well-meaning societal pressure could lead to consequences producing the Prime Directive.
Instead, we got stuck with the Temporal nonsense and these interesting formative matters get dropped or forgotten.
The ending of this episode left me more confused than anything else because the idea of an evolutionary dead end didn’t hit home with me. Thanks for you guys talking it out here. I don’t react to this with fiery hatred, but I do understand why. Part of Star Trek’s strength is the ability to find…alternative solutions, to take a third option, something between save one species that may oppress another and “Let them die”. The weakness of this episode is that they didn’t try to improve the situation at all, which while it may be pragmatic isn’t in the least bit satisfying, and as two decades of discussion have shown, cast our crew in a nigh villainous light.
@51/Narsham: “This is early-days Starfleet. They’re still developing basic technologies. And yet, somehow, their facilities and Phlox’s experience allow for a rapid diagnosis of a medical problem rooted in a genetic fault in an alien species?”
Well, Phlox is from a more advanced civilization with more experience with interspecies medicine. That’s the whole reason he’s an asset to Archer’s crew.
@52/Mr. D: “Part of Star Trek’s strength is the ability to find…alternative solutions, to take a third option, something between save one species that may oppress another and “Let them die”.”
I still feel this is ameliorated by the fact that they’re still 200 years away from the critical point. Phlox wasn’t saying “Kill them now” — his point was basically that they were the wrong people to make that decision for an entire species, that it was better to be humble about their limitations and just hold off on acting rather than rushing into a hasty decision. There’s still room for someone else to work out a solution.
And again, while the execution was fumbled, I do appreciate the intent. Yes, previous Trek series have been about finding solutions, but the point of ENT at this early stage is supposed to be that these guys don’t have the experience, power, or authority of their successors and just aren’t necessarily qualified to be the ones making these decisions for other people. It’s not like Kirk’s or Picard’s ship representing the local interstellar superpower and backed up by its full authority and might. It’s just a single isolated ship of novice explorers from an upstart planet with effectively zero interstellar cred. So we really shouldn’t expect them to be making the same kinds of high-stakes decisions that their 23rd- and 24th-century successors would make. They’re just not at that level yet.
“The weakness of this episode is that they didn’t try to improve the situation at all, which while it may be pragmatic isn’t in the least bit satisfying, and as two decades of discussion have shown, cast our crew in a nigh villainous light.”
It wouldn’t be as interesting if we always agreed with every choice the characters made. Trek has a long history of doing stories where the captains make morally ambiguous choices that many in the audience might feel are wrong, e.g. “A Private Little War,” “In the Pale Moonlight,” or “Tuvix.” They’re supposed to spark debate. It didn’t quite work in this case because of the flaws in how the premise was constructed, but it’s not intrinsically a bad thing to make us question the rightness of the characters’ choices.
It would have been interesting if this had been a prelude to a flexible Prime Directive. There’s a wide spectrum of what you could allow, from interfering with any civilization you want, regardless of their desires, technological status, or impact, to never interacting with another civilization ever. Clearly, we want something in the middle, remembering that like all laws, the Prime Directive exists for people, not people for the Prime Directive.
So this episode could have been a “reverse Prime Directive” episode, where it is realized that interaction is ethically required. That would still presage the Prime Directive, for it shouldn’t be seen as a negative commandment so much as a guideline about when interaction isn’t—or is—permissible.
#37
I think this is where Star Trek shows its roots in those old-fashioned sailing adventures where a ship is on the far side of the world, unable to communicate with command, and so the captain has to make the big decisions. But then, of course, subspace communications makes that notion obsolete.
Practically speaking, it would make more sense to see our captains in constant contact with their government, but, I dunno, then that might diminish the drama somewhat. I mean, it’s hard to “boldly go” when your commander is strictly by-the-book and asking permission for everything. Looking at you, J.T. Esteban.
@CLB:
“I still feel this is ameliorated by the fact that they’re still 200 years away from the critical point. “
No, it isn’t: People are sick [i]right now[/i]. What happens to their species in 200 years is a distraction from the main point: a species is composed of *people*, and those people are suffering, right there, right now. And Phlox goes “nope!”.
@56/foamy: I’m not disputing that. As I said before, I’m not taking a side on the moral dilemma itself; I just recognize it as a philosophical problem that the episode is trying to pose. What I object to is the false and histrionic use of terms like “genocide,” because the crew’s lack of action 200 years in advance cannot be realistically defined as the ultimate or exclusive decision point determining the species’s fate. One can certainly debate the ethics of the decision, but that debate should begin with a correct definition of the situation and the stakes. The choice to do nothing is not without cost, but it’s ridiculous to call it “genocide,” because there’s still plenty of time for someone else to find a solution. It’s not like “Homeward” where the life-or-death decision was immediate for the whole species. I presume that the writers included that two-century buffer on purpose, to ameliorate Archer’s choice by leaving the option open for other solutions.
I agree with the people who’ve said this episode might have been better if Phlox’s objection to giving the Valaxians the cure had been due to Denobulans having a different ethical system than humans. This is meant to be a show about the genesis of the Federation, and deep differences in the ethical/legal systems of member species could be a major challenge to deal with when building a multispecies society.
We’ve seen aliens in Star Trek having cultural or legal customs that are at odds with human ethics. Someone upthread mentioned the Vulcans’ koon-ut-kal-i-fee, and the example that came to my mind was Worf and Duras’s duel in “Reunion.” (Yes, we as the audience know that Duras really did murder K’Ehlyr and frame Mogh, but there’s a reason why trial by combat is generally not considered a viable method of reaching a just outcome.) “Dear Doctor” could have ended with Archer ordering Phlox to give the Valaxians the cure, but then musing about what such a deep difference in ethical principles means for future interspecies cooperation. At its core, Star Trek is an optimistic franchise in which people usually learn to coexist despite their differences, but that doesn’t mean the process has to be easy.
I’ll allow for the fact that the Star Trek universe doesn’t follow the same rules as our own. The TNG episode the Chase indicated that worlds with humanoid species were actually seeded with DNA meant to evolve along some roadmap that leads to humanoid sentient species on them. It’s a hackneyed excuse for why there’s this similar form appearing on unrelated planets and they can even interbreed (really an excuse as to why all the humans acting out the alien roles look pretty human) But if that’s the case, then at least in this universe’s rules, there’s some direction to evolution and scientists have seen that in their studies of the subject, even if they didn’t know why until TNG’s time.
@58: Hell, you could even have Archer and Phlox actually *help these people out* despite, say, bringing up the possibilities of unintended consequences. That’s much more in line with their ethos otherwise, *and* it sets up the potential for a ‘this backfired’ storyline later that helps show how & why the Prime Directive came about.
One thing I will give this episode credit for is that, regardless of how you felt about the ending, the writers avoided the usual nonsense that were hallmarks of Voyager: technobabble either solving the problem or taking away the crew’s choice, surly aliens starting a battle sequence, one of the races turning out to be eeeeevil, and so on.
Ah, ‘Dear Doctor.’ When the writing room looked in the bucket of ‘Trek origin stories we’re convinced the fans need to see,’ pulled out the Prime Directive, and went ‘I dunno…eugenics?’ My friends, cargo cults were sitting *right there.*
Somewhere in here (at least until Discovery) , it seemed that the PD primarily existed to make our heroes complicit in perverse, letter-of-the-law outcomes. There are pretty clear ethically intuitive grounds for, say, diverting the comet away from the unknowing civilization and also not openly supplanting their system of government. But some gear in the creative works jammed and stories kept getting produced where the captains, the bearers of the balanced, low-BS pragmatic torch, ended up rooting for the comet in a way that crosses from ‘sensitive to unforeseen outcomes and aware of one’s limitations to bend the universe to the good’ to ‘rooting for chaos and death.’
Even an invocation of a Gaian hypothesis doesn’t save this- Gaia is the notion that interactions of creatures stabilize planetary conditions, not that ecosystems make choices about how long a run a species has had. And the invocation of the disease showing dominant heredity doesn’t save it either- Huntington’s disease is dominant, but a) that means it has limited penetrance in the population and you wouldn’t see this problem in a large population and b) you just manage this with 20th century genetic counseling- and if we had other cures, those would not be morally complicated to apply.
Which leads us to the Menk. Phlox is seeing some kind of trajectory in their genome- but a) what? and b) so? The natural world is full of social creatures that might evolve to a cultural, tool-using being like ourselves, but viewing our existence as an affront to their theoretical potential is just a mess. Did Denobulans allow a plague to run rampant for the benefit of Denobulans crows? There’s a lot to be said for granting moral consideration to both non-human organisms and future beings, but this is the genocide of the absolutely deserving of moral consideration, for those that merely potential have that full spectrum of rights, when other circle-squaring options like an off-world Menk colony are sitting there.
It’s right up there with ‘For the Uniform’ in being a case where some human rights snafu of planetary scale is used as the end point of a much smaller and better character study, and you’re left wondering what to feel. They gestured towards a story about old age, they gestured to a story about ancient hominids, they gestured towards a story about deep time, *but they didn’t pull any of them off*, and instead told a story about otherwise humane and thoughtful people doing bad science in a way resembling some of Bad Science’s Greatest Genocidal Hits because no one bothered to workshop this with a biologist or a philosopher.
Like, c’mon. Starfleet ain’t supposed to be on the side of the folks saying ‘this race is doomed by their blood and must shuffle off the wheel of history to make room.’ We have names for those people, and no Prime Directive stopped Captain Kirk when he found a planet of them.
Kirk’s, Picard’s, and Janeway’s impassioned speeches to the contrary, it seems a lot of times that the Prime Directive is … convenient. And sometimes conveniently (semi-)disregarded when it gets in the way.
I mean, in the TOS episode “A Private Little War”, why is the Enterprise even near Neural, a planet that can’t be at more than an early iron age level (and the Hill People are damned near Neolithic by all appearances)? Why would Kirk have even visited the planet years before, much less formed a friendship with a native? By PD standards they should have observed, noted, catalogued … and stayed far away. Much as the Vulcans did with Earth until we had warp drive.
Oh yeah, Klingons — who might not have even noticed such a primitive world if the Federation hadn’t already touched down there.
At least in TNG, some of the ways in which the PD is compromised are due to failure of the measures taken for Federation scientists to observe without being noticed.
@ChristopherLBennett “The intended analogy, again, was to death from old age”
I get that ChristopherLBennett is an author of the Rise of the Federation books and very knowledgeable about Star Trek and this time period in particular but how can we know the intent of the writers? Did the Jacquemetton’s state their intention in an interview or DVD commentary that I’m not familiar with or is ChristopherLBennett giving his (admittedly expert opinion) own interpretation. I ask because if the Jacquemetton’s talked about this episode from their perspective I’d be interested to read it.
@63/markvolund: “Kirk’s, Picard’s, and Janeway’s impassioned speeches to the contrary, it seems a lot of times that the Prime Directive is … convenient. And sometimes conveniently (semi-)disregarded when it gets in the way.”
Contrary to the idiocy of TNG: “Homeward,” the Prime Directive was never meant to be a rigid absolute. It takes no intelligence or judgment to follow a law blindly and thoughtlessly. What gives it value as a basis for storytelling is that the characters have to think about it, to question and debate how it does or doesn’t apply to a given situation. Stories are about people making choices. If their hands are tied by an inflexible absolute, there is no choice. And in-story, every situation would be different, so a rational and wise policy would be an adaptable one shaped by informed judgment, not just an absolutist doctrine enforced by unthinking drones.
“I mean, in the TOS episode “A Private Little War”, why is the Enterprise even near Neural, a planet that can’t be at more than an early iron age level (and the Hill People are damned near Neolithic by all appearances)? Why would Kirk have even visited the planet years before, much less formed a friendship with a native? By PD standards they should have observed, noted, catalogued … and stayed far away.”
That’s because TOS hadn’t yet gone to TNG’s extreme of equating all interaction with interference. It’s important not to back-project TNG-era assumptions about the PD onto TOS, because its definition of the Directive was much less extreme. It was normal in TOS to go down in person and observe cultures at any level through direct interaction; the PD just meant you didn’t blab about being from the stars, give one group phasers to slaughter their enemies, try to turn the natives into Nazis, or whatever. TOS’s writers understood what TNG’s writers didn’t — that the reason for the PD is because we can be tempted to play god and need to keep ourselves in check, not because the natives are such fragile creatures that their societies will collapse the first time they see a communicator. Societies are robust and can reject any outside influences they don’t want, as long as you don’t force those influences on them or manipulate them into doing things your way.
“A Private Little War” actually got that right. Tyree had found out 13 years before that Kirk was from the stars, but the simple fact of that knowledge didn’t change the way he or his people lived, because Kirk had put no pressure on them to change. (Yes, he swore Tyree to secrecy, but Tyree himself just went on with his life normally despite that knowledge.) The change didn’t start until the Klingons exploited a local conflict to gain a foothold, forcing Starfleet to counteract their manipulation.
“Oh yeah, Klingons — who might not have even noticed such a primitive world if the Federation hadn’t already touched down there.”
There’s absolutely no basis for that assumption, given that there were 13 years between Starfleet’s previous visit and the Klingons’ intervention. Indeed, the episode established that the Klingons had no idea the Enterprise was there, so they weren’t expecting a Starfleet presence. Presumably they picked Neural for its strategic location or its resources.
“Will somebody please think about the children!”
I think what this episode could have also used is an annoyingly cute kid actor playing a Valakian that kind of ingratiates him or herself with Archer and Phlox – someone in the Naomi Wildman vein. So much so that when Archer and Phlox decide to withhold the cure that they are at least racked with guilt for the fate that they’re presumably leaving for this adorable alien kid to face.
@@@@@ 65 – If Kirk was right in telling Tyree he came from the stars (contradicted by Bread and Circuses), why bother to swear him to secrecy at all? More likely, Tyree found out accidentally and that’s why Kirk swore him to secrecy.
Saying TNG got it wrong and TOS got it right ingress the fact that a) There never was any definition written down for writers to follow other than what had been written in prior episodes and a very brief message about non-interference in the series bible/writers guide and b) The episodes are contradicting themselves all over the place from “Planets have the right to decide how to live their lives” to “It’s perfectly OK to threaten to kill millions of people if you’re being held hostage even when you’ve been told you’re not welcome”.
You can’t seriously believe that if a giant alien ship appeared and told present day Earth “Everything you know about life in the universe is wrong” that the reaction of humanity would be to go “OK, cool, tell us more”, There would be riots and wars started over it. Religions would become even more “us vs them” as they scramble to figure out how if will affect the doctrine. And, as the pandemic has shown us, a sizeable group would claim it’s all a hoax and turn on the people that accept it’s happening.
And if the only thing you have to consider in a PD situation is wether or not you’re forcing someone to accept your will, why not give them phasers if they ask for them? They’re not being coerced to do so, are they?
The problem with the PD is not that it’s too complicated, it’s that it’s not complicated enough. Contact should not be made by the first ship that discovers a new inhabited planet. Starfleet has no idea how the beings would react. There should be years of remote study before the Federation sets foot on such a planet. But that’s hard to show in a 45 minute TV show which is why the plot device of the PD was introduced. To give our heroes something to Fert about for a minute or two before coming up with a contrivance as to why they should go ahead and do what they were going to do anyway.
@26. ChristopherLBennett: Mr Bennett, before I really get started on my thoughts, one wanted to reassure you that I do not imagine your arguments to be grounded in any sinister philosophy or mindset – for what it’s worth I definitely agree that the sad state of the Valakian-Menk homeworld (hereinafter ‘ValMenk’ for brevity) and the sorry events of this episode most definitely merit (and may actually need) a follow up, also that you would do the scenario credit (whether I agree with your take on things or not).
I would, however, take issue with your notion that the Valakians had “plenty of time to seek other options”; that applies only to the SPECIES, not to the individuals whom we see dying en mass and condemned to their individual fates by a Captain who repeatedly expressed a willingness to help, then refused them care despite being repeatedly begged for his help by individuals whom he had come to like and admire (without even offering them the courtesy of an honest refusal).
Again, if this isn’t technically a Crime against Sentience (I agree that the Captain is not attempting to commit genocide) it’s a disgrace to Starfleet; while it should not be Captain Archer’s responsibility to help a whole planetary population, Captain John most certainly took an unconscionably long time to refuse that responsibility (and he made his refusal under circumstances & in a way that that reflect no credit on him).
Also, it bears pointing out that the Valakians BEGGED ENTERPRISE FOR HELP; ValMenk is not a hospice where the patients are resigned to death, it’s a hospital where foreign aid workers have left laudanum in place of penicillin and toddled off on their merry way.
… it just struck me that I sound like ‘Bones’ McCoy arguing with Mr Spock and wouldn’t their opinion on the events of ‘Dear Doctor’ make for some interesting reading?
Watch the scene where Hoshi Sato has a chat with the Menk on their reservation, without watching the rest of the episode; uncomfortable viewing, isn’t it? That’s because there’s no readily apparent reason for Hoshi Sato, of all people, to be so surprised that a sapient being can pick up the language of another species at short acquaintance – yet they all act as if a chimp had started to speak the Queen’s English! (A condescending attitude that makes even less sense because as noted previously, the production design of the Menk says ‘Preindustrial’ or even ‘Third World’ rather than ‘Prehistoric’).
This point ties into my suggestion that, from the perspective of what the Menk need to be seen as, a Live Action chimp would work better than the make-up design they went with; basically the attitudes shown toward the Menk would have made much, much more sense if the physical differences between that species & the Valakians were as obvious as that between modern man and a chimpanzee.
Unfortunately there is no such visible (and visceral) difference, so the episode suffers for that failure in production design (Making it easier to see the Menk as more ‘Third World’ than ‘Prehistoric’ which seriously distorts the story they were trying to tell).
@22. ChristopherLBennett: I would also add that not the least of this episode’s failures was showing Doctor Phlox handling a test tube, with the strong suggestion that this is the cure to what ailed the Valakians (soon to be withheld from them), making it seem less as though Captain Archer were declining to put a terminal cancer patient through another bout of chemotherapy and more as though Our Heroes have deliberately chosen to deny their painfully ill new friends a vaccine.
It’s one thing to show Doctor Phlox & Captain Archer deciding not to go any further with a cure that’s still on the drawing board, but showing them refuse to hand over a medicine that’s ready to hand AFTER BEING BEGGED FOR HELP BY PEOPLE FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIVES makes them look downright callous.
Also, I would definitely love to see your take on the ValMenk situation; it occurs to me that, even if they don’t give you a free hand with the RISE OF THE FEDERATION novels, you could do worse than to suggest a novel (or short story) showing a later Starfleet crew grapple with the consequences of Jonathan Archer’s decision over that particular world, both for the planet itself and for history’s opinion of Captain Archer.
I doubt it did any favours to either party.
@24. fullyfunctional: I disagree with your opinion, on the simple grounds that Captain Archer had a real chance to end the suffering of this particular species and refused to do so on no very solid grounds; I agree that Captain Archers intent was not genocidal, but given he might well have condemned this species to death (and since the Valakians were never heard from again it’s not disingenuous to suggest that his actions had exactly that consequence) it’s difficult to call krad’s opinion on the subject “shrill.”
@26. ChristopherLBennett: Personally I’m on the other side of the equation when it comes to transhumanism – if only because eugenic theories have done horrible damage to Humankind even when implemented over a timescale that gives one ample time to think again.
As the average pedigree dog shows, human ideas of ‘Better’ are not necessarily to be trusted; I agree that there’s no one, ‘Perfect’ path for Evolution, but I am also more than well enough acquainted with the difference between plastic surgery & cosmetic surgery to be extremely uncomfortable with the thought of what Humanity could & would do with ability to tailor it’s very building-blocks like a designer suit!
Also, for my money the optimal outcome would be for the two species to cooperate, rather than compete against one another á outrance or decide they simply cannot live together, surrender all hopes of mutual coexistence and quit their mutual home-world.
@28. cap-mjb: Being 50% wit and 50% mischief, I can only wonder if the Denobulan dislike of random physical contact is grounded in the ongoing cultural headache of remembering who’s ‘sleeping’ with whom in a culture where not only is everybody related to everybody else, they’re quite possibly married & having children with them as well…
Ha! Perhaps Denobulans prefer their public displays of affection to be carefully scheduled (all the better to make sure everyone gets their fair share of tender loving care) and dislike people who ignore the little black book!
@35. Malevolentpixy: Oh good grief, this QALY metric looks fit to give medical triage a bad name …
@37. vulpes & @38. garreth: It’s also the nature of a show that takes it’s protagonists a very, very long way from the hub of their civilisation, quite probably at a remove far too great for Home to actually do anything, even if they were willing to take as much of an interest as Our Heroes (who are very often in a position where they have to at least express an interest).
Thought I do agree that if Captain Archer’s decision had been framed more as “This question is too big for me” it would have been far more sympathetic.
@31. Ecthelion & @42. ChristopherLBennett: My own (somewhat simplistic) interpretation of the Prime Directive is that it ought to read “Do not play God, for YOU ARE NOT A GOD” (to which I am tempted to add “Especially not you, Q”).
@44. Eduardo S H Jencarelli: I am inclined to agree with your points, with the small caveat that the execution of the episode was bungled on several levels even where one regards the fundamental concept as sound.
@45. navibc31: Hmmm … ‘Menk to Pakleds’ is an intriguing hook, if nothing else!
@51. Narsham: Your point is, quite frankly, the sharpest made throughout this discussion section – I suppose that forgetting your lead characters are NOT streets ahead of the competition technologically is something of a hazard of the profession when it comes to writing STAR TREK (Given the show’s core philosophy sometimes seems to be “We can do anything, if we put our mind to it”).
…
Oh good grief, is that the time? Anyway, to sum up – I definitely agree that this episode has some good bits (perhaps even more than the average for ENTERPRISE), but that those good bits are overwhelmed by the spectacularly poor execution of the finale; the faults in this episode are also undoubtedly exacerbated by the fact there has never yet been a sequel to it (because quite frankly that downright infuriating finale ought to have visible consequences, preferably over the course of a short story arc, at the very least).
Hopefully next episode will be a bit less raw to think over!
@68/ED: “I would, however, take issue with your notion that the Valakians had “plenty of time to seek other options”; that applies only to the SPECIES, not to the individuals”
I already addressed this, and I hate repeating myself. I am NOT defending Phlox’s stance. I am not taking a side on that. I am merely pointing out that it is ridiculous to mischaracterize what happens in this episode as “genocide,” because the extinction of the species is not imminent. Anything else is a different subject and I am not addressing it, as I already explained.
“This point ties into my suggestion that, from the perspective of what the Menk need to be seen as, a Live Action chimp would work better than the make-up design they went with; basically the attitudes shown toward the Menk would have made much, much more sense if the physical differences between that species & the Valakians were as obvious as that between modern man and a chimpanzee.”
That’s putting far too much weight on appearance. Why in the world should external physical differences be a determinant of mental differences? That makes no sense.
Plus, again, what you’re proposing is animal cruelty and would never be done in this day and age. Not to mention that it would never work on a logistical level since there were multiple Menk in the episode and they had to deliver dialogue. Even if you did have a point about their appearance, surely they could’ve made them up as something like, say, Caveman Riker in “Genesis,” rather than setting animal rights back 30 years for no good reason.
“and since the Valakians were never heard from again it’s not disingenuous to suggest that his actions had exactly that consequence”
Umm, the Denobulans were never heard from again either. Do you think they went extinct too?
It’s an uncomfortable episode but does show the beginnings of the Prime Directive and the Vulcan’s influence on it.
@CLB: I might give you the ‘it isn’t genocide’ argument just for the sake of not having to have an argument over what is or is not genocide, something that in my experience *rarely* ends well, but it is inarguably an atrocity and *that* is what people are mad about.
@71/foamy: Having to repeat myself yet again: I have never said that people can’t disagree with the conclusions of this episode. I just want it to be clear what the episode actually is and isn’t saying, so that disagreements can be based on the actual facts rather than a kneejerk misinterpretation of them. My only agenda here is to be clear about the facts. I’m not taking sides myself, because I don’t think the episode constructs its premise well enough for it to be meaningful to debate on on its own terms.
@69. ChristopherLBennett: Firstly, please be assured that I do not – and never have – believed that you are advocating genocide; my impression was not that you were enthusiastic about the choice to deny the Valakians their cure, but that your attempts to be even-handed came across as … well, a little too antiseptic for comfort (Probably because you’re very sensibly treating the matter as storytelling choice, while the rest of us are getting perhaps a little too caught up in the passions & fictional tragedies of an equally-fictional collection of individuals).
As suggested in one of my previous posts, you really do seem born to play the part of ‘Spock’ in any discussion and seem doomed to attract would-be McCoys in consequence!
Secondly, I would like to clarify that my point about a live action chimp being better suited to the role demanded of the Menk in this particular episode than the actors actually cast was not intended to advocate the use of chimpanzees in modern film-making, but WAS intended to convey the point that in a visual medium a ‘done-in-one’ species can only make the right impression if either the character design or the acting is very strong; in the case of the Menk neither happens to be the case, meaning that a crucially important element of the dilemma facing Our Heroes (or at least Captain Archer & Doctor Phlox) simply doesn’t work the way it should.
Thirdly, it bears pointing out that (technically-speaking) the Denobulans have been heard from again – a pair of individuals from that species appear in the cold open to that episode of LOWER DECKS where the Mugato make their triumphant return to the STAR TREK galaxy – but more to the point the Denobulans were never placed under a sentence of death in their debut episode & sole appearance in the canon, which the Valakians most certainly were.
Please note: I do not say that Doctor Phlox & Captain Archer inflicted that sentence, but I do believe they denied the Valakians a stay of execution.
Please note, Mr Bennett, that I do not wish to cause you distress or condemn you; if I have caused you any such trouble then please allow me to apologise for having done so.
@73/ED: “Please note: I do not say that Doctor Phlox & Captain Archer inflicted that sentence, but I do believe they denied the Valakians a stay of execution.”
And my problem with that interpretation, again, is that it assumes that nobody else except Archer’s crew will have any involvement with the problem over the next 200 years, which makes no sense to me given how much happens in this part of the galaxy within the next 200 years of the Trek franchise. Really, that was kind of Phlox’s point — that it wasn’t their decision either way. The Valakians could find help somewhere else, or the Federation could decide to overrule Archer’s decision and give them the cure, perhaps transplanting the Menk to a colony planet where they’d be free to develop. Like I said, I’m convinced the writers left that wiggle room on purpose so the outcome wouldn’t seem so heartless.
Quoth Christopher: “Like I said, I’m convinced the writers left that wiggle room on purpose so the outcome wouldn’t seem so heartless.”
IMO, they failed in that. But I really think you’re giving the writers more credit than they deserve, though, of course, we have no way of knowing which of us (if either of us) is right without telepathy and a time machine. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@75/krad: It’s right there in the dialogue. “Phlox tells me this medicine will help ease the symptoms for a decade, maybe more. A lot can happen in that time. I wouldn’t be surprised if you developed a cure on your own.“
Which also counters the objections about all the Valakians who would die in the meantime. They did provide a medicine that would help save lives in the short term, giving the Valakians time to find another solution. It’s not as much as they could’ve done, no, but it wasn’t as completely heartless as people are claiming.
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So I hadn’t actually rewatched the episode when I first read the review and commentary regarding the genocide argument, though I recall also having been very disturbed about it when I first viewed it way back when. Having just finished rewatching it, I have to come down on “genocide” being exactly the right term to use. To start, the Valakian astronauts note that 12 million of their people had died in the year before they left, let alone how many may have died in the year they were travelling. When asking for warp technology, they noted an additional million would die before their next ship would even leave their system. Phlox mentions as part of his letter that he is now facing responsibility for fifty million people. Now maybe that isn’t the total Valakian population, but it is pretty clear that they are, at a minimum, dying by the tens of thousands daily, and that it is accelerating, and that their time as a viable species is limited. (Less than two centuries to be extinct doesn’t mean they wouldn’t hit the effective point of no return well before that.) And all the Enterprise ultimately offers is something to ease the symptoms for a decade, which may prolong some lives, but does nothing to stop the disease from ultimately still being fatal.
But the big one, and the one I cannot unsee after this review and discussion primed me, is to note that the stated reason in the episode for denying the cure to the Valakians is that Phlox has determined that the Valakians are at a dead end and that if the Menk, who he has determined have great potential, are to flourish, the Valakians need to be removed from the picture. Get rid of the “decaying race” to make space for the “healthy budding elements” of the more deserving species. How the hell did they not see this?
According to IMDb, Alex Nevil also played the role of “Shuttle Officer” in Star Trek 2009.
I was appalled by this episode for all the reasons krad said, but something else bugged me that I haven’t seen addressed in the comments up to now. Phlox wants to get T’Pol’s advice about Cutler, so instead of just stopping her in the mess hall and asking her, like a reasonable person, he has to use the pretext of dental surgery of questionable necessity to get her into Sickbay so he can ask her there.
This, the same guy who apparently blithely asks crew members about their sexual predilections.
The most outrageous facet of this story is that the Ferengi apparently turned a blind eye to the potential profit to be made from a species in desperate need of a “cure” for extinction.
Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the metaphor was supposed to look like something (palliative care) and instead looks like something else (eugenics). Oddly, it looked to me more like The Black Death. The Black Death brought about massive social changes to Europe and effectively ended serfdom because the labor shortage resulted in a transition of rights from tenet farming to an active paid laborer class.
What would have happened if that disease had been cured by spacemen?
That is NOT what this episode is about but could have been.
There’s a lot of places this story could have gone but I’m not sure what the episode could be commenting on except the Prime Directive itself. You COULD do the argument that this would be an interesting hypothetical on the driving power of disease and disaster in social progress. The Black Death changed the face of Europe and helped bring an end to serfdom. However, if you wanted to argue that aliens shouldn’t have cured it if they passed by, I’d still argue they should have.
@85/C.T. Phipps: The difference is that this wasn’t a disease, it was (supposedly) a natural evolutionary stage. Otherwise Phlox would’ve had no objection to curing it. We can say that’s an implausible premise, but it’s the premise that was “real” within the episode.
So the analogous question isn’t “Should aliens have cured the Black Death?” but more like, “Should aliens have cured death?” What if aliens came along with the power to make a fundamental change in our biology and life processes and render us immortal? What would be the long-term consequences to that? What would stop us from overrunning the planet with overpopulation and wiping out the rest of the biosphere? What would stop immortal political leaders from installing themselves as perpetual rulers and never giving anyone else a chance at power? Would it be responsible for the aliens to grant us such a profoundly disruptive transformation in our very nature after only a few days, without taking the time to really consider the ramifications? Would they have the right to rush into a decision that could have such a drastic impact on another species?
See, that’s another thing people misunderstand about the episode. Phlox was NOT saying “It’s wrong to save them from extinction.” He was saying “We’re not qualified to decide whether it’s right or wrong to save them, at least not right here and now.”
Anyway, I’m not a fan of the idea that suffering is necessary for growth and progress. Yes, trauma can force you to advance or to toughen yourself, but it also leaves scars that can screw you up for life. I feel the hardships of my childhood made me weaker rather than stronger; the only times I’ve felt strong were when I had loving, supporting relationships to heal my pain and loneliness. So I think that real strength comes from being raised in a healthy, positive environment with minimal suffering, and I think that’s true for societies as well as individuals.
Just because a traumatic event like the Black Death undermined a toxic institution like serfdom, that doesn’t mean it was a good thing. It was just trading one source of harm for another. There are better ways to bring about social change, like new philosophies and reform movements.
The failures of “Dear Doctor” can be summarized as, “The episode argues it is wrong to play God and you should never involve yourself in subverting the natural order. It does so by Phlox and Archer deciding that they have the right to withhold medical treatment because of their belief it might give birth to the Master Race.”
@87/C.T. Phipps: But there’s no contradiction between those positions. Phlox didn’t argue that nobody should help them, just that Phlox and the Enterprise crew didn’t have the knowledge or wisdom to make the decision right then and there. Everyone seems to want to ignore the fact that Phlox did give the Valakians a treatment that would ease the symptoms and save lives in the near term, while giving the Valakians time to find their own solution.
The mistake people make is in assuming that the Enterprise crew were the only ones with agency and the Valakians were just passive objects being acted upon. That is exactly the solipsistic assumption that Phlox was arguing against. His position was simply that it wasn’t their place to decide. Sometimes the responsible thing to do is to decline to take responsibility, because you’re just not qualified to do so.
What a morally repugnant episode.”Genocide is GOOD actually”
With regard to the “Prime Directive”, is anyone really suggesting that saying “I was only obeying orders” – or Directives – absolves them of all moral responsibility for their actions?
@91/Peter William Davey: The idea behind the Prime Directive is that trying to impose your morals on others usually does more harm than good. It’s a response to how much suffering in history was caused by well-intentioned cultural imperialists assuming they were morally superior and forcing their “correct” values on others, with devastating consequences. Sometimes the way to be morally responsible is to respect others’ responsibility for their own lives rather than trying to take it away from them. Yes, sometimes that means bad things happen when you could’ve stopped them, but the point is that it wasn’t your responsibility in the first place, because it was someone else’s life and someone else’s right to decide, and assuming you have the right to take their responsibility and choice away from them would be more harmful in the long run.
Of course, some Trek episodes understand that point better than others. “Dear Doctor” was trying to make a point about recognizing when it’s better not to intervene, by analogy with end-of-life decisions for terminal patients, but it did so clumsily and thus didn’t quite succeed at what it was going for.
Huh. I always thought the point of this episode was that a society built on racial slavery cannot help but eventually collapse under the weight of its own sins, and should be allowed to die.
This episode is not THAT bad. :) First, i like that it’s a letter – reminds me Data’s Day. Second, most of the story was OK and the development of the relationships across the characters was also not bad, things were moving forward with that.
Last, the decision IS a valid ethical/moral dilemma and I don’t think it’s that straightforward. However not because it’s “playing god” or not, but because of the lack of having enough information to even guess/estimate the impact of either decisions. You don’t know enough to assess the situation, you don’t have enough data and if you can’t know which decision is “better” in the future, not actively intervening is a valid strategy…
I think there was some Voyager episode that was telling exactly that that they tried to help immediately and then the people asking for help turned out to be the bad guys…
So while i understand and also disagree with the decision, this wasn’t as horrible as TNG’s Homeward was.
The ethical question of the episode certainly made me an uneasy, but I found it thought provoking. Would I have made the same choice Archer and company did? I don’t know. While I agree with KRad that Trek may have bungled evolution here, if the question is asked, “do you further enable the subjugation of another species by helping their oppressors?” Here I’d have to say no. Anyway, If I recall correctly, Phlox doesn’t say the Menk’s acension is preordained.
Sure, the show could have made the oppression more cruelly overt, but that would have made the ethical question too easy. They probably should have just gone with Phlox going rogue, which would have made the epistolary nature of the episode more apt (and rather 19th century too) in that only one other person knows what was done.
I was actually more bothered by the cliché of “cute younger female falls for older and less attractive male.” Though the actual actors’ age differences wasn’t great, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and Phlox has a nice personality, it happens way too often in media and only in that direction. Never is it a good-looking younger dude and a less attractive older woman, unless there’s some pathology involved.