Archer discovers the risks of letting dogs go on away missions.
Wow. I have never been this tense through an episode before. Normally when one of the main cast is sick, it’d be easy to believe that they’ll pull through without any problems. But Porthos is not ‘main crew’, and I was genuinely worried that the writers had decided to write him out of the show.
So that bit was, in retrospect now I know that Porthos is going to be perfectly safe, really well done. But the rest could have used some work. The ‘sexual tension between T’Pol and Archer’ really comes out of nowhere. The overly picky aliens are a bit silly. And Phlox’s various annoying habits are far too overplayed. Archer as ‘cranky and annoyed because of his dog’ worked for me, though, and that saves the episode.
Callbacks: Phlox as the first ships counsellor.
668 down, 69 to go.