Quote:
Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability
Is there such a thing as "lousy Star Trek?" There are lousy episodes, lousy books, lousy scripts, lousy acting, etc, but if it's worthy of being called Trek, then by it's very nature it ain't lousy.
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Putting aside "episodes I hate so much they should be stricken from canon," because that's not the argument, yes, you can have "lousy Trek." "Dear Doctor" and "Similitude" are the first two which spring to mind.
"Dear Doctor" was a good exploration of a difficult decision... until the decision was made. Archer and Phlox decided that because they were observing that, given the current state of Valakian medicine and the evolution of the Menk, left unchecked, the Valakians
might die off and the Menk would succeed them. Therefore, this was the correct answer, and Phlox withheld the cure for their genetic plague. He and Archer doomed them to extinction. Trek has
never been about that. Trek has celebrated that each race had something to contribute, and that we should preserve life whenever possible. who knows what they could have accomplished if Phlox and Archer hadn't allowed them to die?
But Phlox showed his amoral streak more than once, and Archer got sucked in by it more than once. In "Similitude," Phlox and Archer could not decide how to treat Trip's clone. Was he a photocopy of Trip? was he an individual? Was he a walking bag of parts? And
because the two of them, Phlox especially, vacillated in their treatment of him, they bullied a
man into volunteering for suicide. Again, Trek does not do this. Sim should have been reared, if he was to be awake at all, as Trip's twin brother who had the only means of saving him, and everyone would be proud of him for being the only way to help keep Trip alive. Sim would have been much easier about volunteering, even if it meant his death, because he would have been valued as a person first and throughout. And even if Phlox and Archer had both treated Sim consistently as a bag of parts, that too would have been a lesson, because the ep would have ended with Sim proving and proclaiming his individuality and personhood, and then nobly choosing to die for Trip's sake. What we had was a man being forced to die as parts. That is not good Trek.