Hugo Award-Nominated Episode: A Night in Sickbay

[Deledrius]

'Best' does not mean 'good'.

How bad was the other choices if they decided A night in Sickbay was more deserving than them?

That's an excellent question. TBH I can't think of what else of any note was going on in TV Sci-Fi in 2002, so that might be the core issue here. I have a vague recollection of it feeling pretty thin.

Firefly's the closest thing that comes to mind, but it was struggling to even be seen thanks to the network...

Farscape had a good season that year.

Possibly true, and as much as later seasons of that show went off the rails it was still probably Hugo-worthy, at least if A Night in Sickbay is. I wasn't thinking of cable sci-fi since I didn't get a chance to see those until they became available much later. Was there anything else notable going on behind that paywall in 2002?

[McAvoy]

How? Why?

That's a question you might want to ask yourself one of these days.

Well when Mommy and Daddy are happy and in love... And drunk. They make babies.

That's my How and Why.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

How? Why?

That's a question you might want to ask yourself one of these days.

Well when Mommy and Daddy are happy and in love... And drunk. They make babies.

That's my How and Why.

Do they have to be happy?

[Lazerlike42]

I always liked A Night in Sickbay. I guess I can see why some people don't, but to me it's a good episode precisely *because* not much happens in it.

I've always said - and I don't think that this is that controversial an opinion - that one of the biggest weaknesses of the Harry Potter films over and against the novels is that a major part of what made the novels good was all of the nothing that happens in them. Reading those books you don't just go through the action and the mystery and the major ploy points, but you spend a lot of time reading about mundane, everyday experiences of the characters like sitting around doing homework, being bored when there's nothing to do, getting a midnight snack or eating breakfast, etc. Some of these things were put at the service of the plot, but a lot of the time it really was just everyday life. I always enjoyed that a great deal. The films, of course, can't do this in the same way just by the nature of the medium.

Yet I think a Night in Sickbay is... if not exactly doing what the Harry Potter books did, it does something similar or related. It's almost like another version of Data's Day except that I think it works better in Enterprise because, even if the execution was uneven, a big part of what makes that series tick in a way that's different from the other Star Trek series is that it tries to show us the characters' humanity in a way that makes them feel a little closer to our own experience. Even after Roddenberry's control waned and Ronald Moore and others started to have greater influence over TNG and later series, there's still something distinctly "different" about the characters as compared to 20th century man, but Enterprise gives us characters who still remind us of ourselves to a greater degree, and so an episode like A Night in Sickbay just really works for me.

[McAvoy]

I always liked A Night in Sickbay. I guess I can see why some people don't, but to me it's a good episode precisely *because* not much happens in it.

I've always said - and I don't think that this is that controversial an opinion - that one of the biggest weaknesses of the Harry Potter films over and against the novels is that a major part of what made the novels good was all of the nothing that happens in them. Reading those books you don't just go through the action and the mystery and the major ploy points, but you spend a lot of time reading about mundane, everyday experiences of the characters like sitting around doing homework, being bored when there's nothing to do, getting a midnight snack or eating breakfast, etc. Some of these things were put at the service of the plot, but a lot of the time it really was just everyday life. I always enjoyed that a great deal. The films, of course, can't do this in the same way just by the nature of the medium.

Yet I think a Night in Sickbay is... if not exactly doing what the Harry Potter books did, it does something similar or related. It's almost like another version of Data's Day except that I think it works better in Enterprise because, even if the execution was uneven, a big part of what makes that series tick in a way that's different from the other Star Trek series is that it tries to show us the characters' humanity in a way that makes them feel a little closer to our own experience. Even after Roddenberry's control waned and Ronald Moore and others started to have greater influence over TNG and later series, there's still something distinctly "different" about the characters as compared to 20th century man, but Enterprise gives us characters who still remind us of ourselves to a greater degree, and so an episode like A Night in Sickbay just really works for me.

I think the concept of A Night in Sickbay would have worked better if it didn't really depect Archer as crazy. The episode really makes him look like some crazy 'fur baby' lady who wakes up her vet in the middle of the night because her small dog or cat has a stomach ache or something.

I think it would have worked better if it was done from the perspective of Phlox and sickbay only. Archer comes in because he fed his foreign cheese but goes out six hours later. Random crewmen come in for other stuff. Make it all linked.

Make it to show that going to a Alien planet may not be as safe as other Trek shows portray it. So even with 22nd century meds, local alien food gives the crew the shits.

Like a episode of where no one is really in peril, but the everyone is just having a bad night due alien food not agreeing with them.