Characters / SF Debris - Star Trek: Enterprise

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Captain Jonathan "Duchess" Archer

"No, Porthos! We cannot reduce troop presence in South Korea! BAD DOG! BAD DOG!"

An emotionally unstable human with a serious grudge against the Vulcans, although he apparently has no problem trying to sleep with one. His diplomatic and Temporal Cold War missions take backseats to spreading his haterade around the galaxy. Lacks any training in diplomacy, leadership, and all things military, but manages to bluff his way through obstacles with tantrums and a war crime or two. Becomes President in 2151 AD and is shortly expunged from history.

• All Just a Dream: Chuck jokes that an unfilmed series finale would have shown Archer in a padded room, hugging his knees while babbling to his dog, revealing ENT is all taking place inside his delusional mind. ("Fortunate Son")
• "Ass" in Ambassador: Archer is obsessed with demanding people's respect, to a degree where even Neelix would say, "Dude, it's not all about you." Every sentient being he encounters must worship the ground he walks on or eat crow. ("A Night in Sickbay")
  Chuck: I can just see a shuttle flying slowly overhead, Archer standing in the doorway, peeing all over the diplomatic corps as Wagner plays in the background.
• The Caligula: One shudders to imagine what ensued after Archer became the first Federation President.
• Caligula's Horse: Lt. Commander Porthos ("Fight or Flight"). When the pooch catches a sniffle on Kreetassa, Archer considers it to be an act of war. Not only this, but he's willing to completely give up negotiations for a spare vital component of the warp core, putting the welfare of his dog above potentially stranding his crew over a hundred light-years from Earth ("A Night In Sickbay").
• The Call Has Bad Reception: Archer's entire involvement in the Temporal Cold War was really because Janeway — experienced meddler in the fourth dimension — told Daniels to buzz off and find someone else.
• Casting Couch: Chuck thinks that, given his incompetence, he probably had to put "essence of male in his mouth" in order to get his job ("Desert Crossing").
• Commander Contrarian: Archer tends to do the opposite of everything T'Pol tells him to do, even in situations when his own crew are at risk of being killed ("Sleeping Dogs").
• Conspiracy Theorist: Part of Archer's schtick from the beginning was his habit of exaggerating the threat posed by Vulcan and seeing their nefarious hand in virtually everything.
• Crazy Homeless Person: Archer (or "Duchess") is a wino living in a box whom Starfleet abducted and put in charge of a starship. ("Strange New World")
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: He insists to everyone that he's seen a scantily-clad woman in the forest - in reality, a telepathic giant slug - and becomes offended when they don't believe him... only to admit that he really did think he was seeing things when he finally confronts said alien.("Rogue Planet").
  Chuck: You're such a dick.
• Delusions of Eloquence:
  • Instead of using a standardized greeting when encountering an alien ship, Archer seems to always insist on winging it, despite repeatedly having demonstrated that he couldn't improvise his way out of a paper bag. The results ranges from being either boring, meandering drivel where Archer goes on rambling tangents about whatever subject happens to pop into his head or potentially very dangerous as Archer doesn't seem to understand that casually giving away Earth's location to compete strangers with unknown intends might be ill-advised. ("Fight or Flight", "Silent Enemy")
  • Archer's seeming obsession with delivering a pep talk which finally rallies the crew, despite being "about as inspirational as a baby bird's head sticking out from under a car tire." We never see his Inaugural speech (Riker doesn't quote it), and Archer is seen suffering flop-sweat backstage, so it probably went over like lead balloon just as the others did. ("These Are the Voyages...")
    Archer: Time heals all wounds. (seems genuinely confused) But absence makes the heart grow fonder?
    Picard: I've done a better job when half-sedated and possessed by an alien lifeform, twit.
  • Archer actually averting this in "Borderland" with a short and concise message to the crew before takeoff is taken as a sign by Chuck that Season 4 Enterprise truly is a different show than the one from before.
• Designated Hero: Even worse than before. Chuck can't even find any major features to redeem him like he sometimes could with Janeway. A review of the episode "The Xindi" expanded on this with Chuck calling Janeway Crazy Is Cool while considering Archer just plain crazy. He also compare their situation in the episode "A Night In Sickbay", Janeway stranded her crew because she was in a tense situation and under time pressure, Archer would have stranded his crew because of his hate of Kreetassans and his own ego.
• The Ditherer: Archer is perfectly content to play cowboys and indians when the situation doesn't call for it. But when the crew looks to him to take an actual, moral stand on something — do we condone using clones as transplant farms, or do we let them live? — the Captain is climbing the walls in no time at all, leaving behind an Archer-shaped puff of Wile E. Coyote smoke. ("Dear Doctor", "Similitude")
• Enemy Mine: Despite the Andorians repeatedly beating the living snot out of him during their first meeting, Archer will still always tend to side with them over the Vulcans, simply because he hates the Vulcans even more than they do ("The Andorian Incident", "Shadows of P'Jem").
• Engineered Heroics: He will destroy the NX-01 before he lets anyone else save it.
  • Fake Ultimate Hero: Archer can't tolerate crewman stealing his thunder, and constantly deserts his post on the Bridge to rush headlong into danger — even shoving Reed aside while he's attempting to defuse a ship-destroying bomb. ("Minefield")
• Fame Through Infamy: He's mostly remembered for his many, many failures and catastrophies.
  Riker: Johnathan Archer? Of the Klingon Disaster, The Time War Kerfuffle, and the cause of what historians refer to as, "The Great Clusterfuck?" ("Tin Man")
• General Ripper: Contrary to what the show claims, this goes well beyond antagonizing the Vulcans, Earth's ONLY real allies in a Manichean universe. Archer proudly commits genocide in "Dear Doctor," and, in "The Andorian Incident," he eagerly betrays the military secrets of humanity's closest ally (Vulcan) to the Andorians, who had previously beaten him up and threatened to rape his science officer. All because the Vulcans are after his bodily fluids!
• Hypocrite: His only really consistent trait is his tendency to criticize others for doing exactly what he would do (and does do) in identical circumstances.
• In the Blood: Archer may be dead, but the malady lingers: His descendant, Cmr. Valerie Archer, continues to make Duchess proud by exposing the Grand Unified Vulcan Conspiracy Theory. ("In the Flesh")
• Informed Ability: Archer's track-record as a "skilled diplomat" includes spewing venom at any Vulcan in range ("Broken Bow" et al.), giving Vulcan military secrets to the Andorians that could lead to interstellar war ("The Andorian Incident"), being unable to give a simple apology to the Kreetassans ("Vox Sola") and causing a diplomatic nightmare on their next encounter ("A Night in Sickbay"). And yet this complete putz is the sole individual responsible for the creation of the Federation, according to Daniels ("Azati Prime").
• Iron Butt Monkey: "Azati Prime" suggests that Archer's ability to take extensive beatings without breaking is his one redeeming skill.
  "That face has seen more punishment than a Los Angeles sex dungeon."
• It's All About Me: As Chuck notes in his "Desert Crossing" review, whenever Archer is confronted with the repercussions of his acts of altruism, his first thought is that he wouldn't be dealing with them if he hadn't acted in the first place.
• Jerkass: Archer frequently indulges in this behaviour, as per his idiom.
  • Skewed Priorities: His hatred of the Vulcans causes him to side with the Andorians, even after the latter took him hostage and mercilessly beat the living shit out of him. Furthermore, his reaction to T'Pol getting recalled by the Vulcan High Command after the destruction of P'Jem. ("Shadows of P'Jem").
    Archer: Stupid old Vulcans, I go and give away one key hidden fortification and cause them to lose it, provoke and interstellar incident and cause the destruction of a shrine that's thousand of years old... they take away my science officer!
• Karma Houdini: He's the only crewman aboard the NX-01 who receives any commendations or praise from Starfleet, simply by virtue of being the loudest and most visible.
• Leeroy Jenkins: In his mad rush to get out into space and make Pa proud, Archer neglected to fully supply his ship or undergo training for anything they might face, setting the stage for practically every non-Temporal Cold War plot. ("Fight or Flight") You can't be afraid of the wind!
• Manchild: Has the emotional maturity of a whiny, spoiled 5-year-old with delusions of grandeur and abandonment issues.
  • Psychopathic Man Child: Look at any other trope on this list.
• The Millstone: When Archer was finally let go from Starfleet, Earth civilization underwent a century's worth of advancement overnight. ("A Matter of Time")
• Name McAdjective: Fists Hugejaw. ("Carpenter Street")
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His decision to leave the Valakians to die led to them undergoing gene therapy to survive and turning into the Breen, who would become a powerful ally of the Dominion.
• Obliviously Evil: Whereas Janeway is at least self-aware enough to recognize that she is doing something evil (even if realization doesn't stop her from actually doing it), Archer tends to favor avoidance and denial when confronted by immoral acts he is committing, instead trying to emotionally distance himself as a coping mechanism.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Essentially what would happen if you gave Neelix a command. Archer is pig-headed, territorial, insists on performing every task by himself with no assistance (like dismantling high-yield explosives!), and insinuates that he's 'earned' his position through connections, bureaucratic error, and petulant whining rather than merit. In fairness to Neelix, he does not share the Hedgehog's sense of self-preservation.
• Racist Grandpa: Archer quotes him in "Dead Stop", including such pearls as the belief that any problem is an invitation to buy more guns! Archer also mistakes a dead clone of Mayweather on Phlox's slab for a different black man, since they all look alike anyway. Erm...
• Revenge Before Reason: His unresolved Daddy Issues and desire to get even with the Vulcans for hampering his father's work, are more important than his actions potentially inciting Interstellar War. ("Shadows of P'Jem"). Likewise, he would rather let members of his crew die than accept Vulcan help. ("Breaking the Ice")
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Everything about Archer suggests a guy promoted far beyond his field of competence, and is only in charge because dad called in a favor. Chuck is not the first to draw that conclusion; The Agony Booth came away with the same impression during their "Worst of Trek" recaps.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: He actually has the chutzpa to take credit for shaping the Federation Charter, despite it mostly being tweaked to repair his crew's numerous own-goaling, genocidal, treasonous bunglings across time and space.
  "I annihilated a whole species on purpose! Lucky thing they made up that rule later on to fully justify what I did!"
• Stockholm Syndrome: In "The Andorian Incident", Shran's crew is beating Archer like a cheap hooker and not being all that gentle with Trip and T'Pol either. So what does Archer do? Help them expose a Vulcan listening post hidden in the monastery they are in, which they would later destroy. Chuck notes that this act on Archer's part was technically a complete betrayal of Earth's alliance with the Vulcans, especially since this had been their planet for about 3,000 years or so. He even cites real world history about how space-based espionage actually helped lower Cold War tensions by allowing the U.S. to more accurately assess the Soviet potential threat, rather than run on wild speculation. But Archer hates Vulcans, thinks that them spying on a rival power is wrong and apparently feels camaraderie with anyone that hits him with the butt of a rifle.
• Talkative Loon: Played straight in "The Adversary".
  "i told them i told them I TOLD THEM the vulcans you can't trust the vulcans they run up the flat to the back of the dragon and hold their tails so you can't fly no more and then you can't know your thoughts no more because they've already STOLEN THE WRENCH TO YOUR MIND"
• Taught by Television: Archer's behavior suggests that he learned everything he "knows" about statecraft from Chris Farley movies and Pick-Up Artist manual. ("These Are the Voyages...," "Worst of the Worst")
• Tautological Templar: Very rarely does he ever see himself as wrong. This isn't Chuck exaggerating, in "Shadows of P'Jem", he refuses to admit he did something that warrants any punishment when he allowed the Andorians to get away with information an area where the Vulcans were spying on them, which led to the Andorians destroying the Vulcan historical site it was hidden in. He even complains that the Vulcans even temporarily broke some relations with Earth, even though his actions in Real Life would be possible grounds for war and lead to his immediate court-martial for aiding the enemy. Likewise, in "Fortunate Son", he essentially chews the crew of a ship that was trying to commit violent actions against pirates that were trying to kill them, because Starfleet wasn't doing its job of providing them any protection. He also ignores the fact that on Earth, crews are legally allowed to defend themselves by any means, as Pirates are by their very definition "enemies of humanity".
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Archer has never learned from a single mistake, and still struggles to grasp even the simplest Trek tropes. ("Dead Stop")
    Phlox: I'm going to need the puppets to explain this again, aren't I...
  • Kirk (the guy who got into a fistfight with a dinosaur! ["Arena"]) knows that ion storms are deadly phenomena meant to be avoided. ("Court Martial") So of course Archer decides to fly right into one. ("Fight or Flight")
• Took a Level in Badass: Once Manny Coto took over as the main writer in Season 4, Archer actually became somewhat competent.
  • Took a Level in Dumbass: Only to lose it all again when Berman and Braga returned to pen the finale ("These Are The Voyages").
    Chuck: Season 4 Archer I could believe helping move Earth towards forming the Federation, Season 1 Archer could not get people to come together to give him an intervention.
• Unperson: Archer is such an embarrassment to Starfleet, Earth, and the rest of humankind, that centuries after his death, there's been a blanket order issued preventing anyone from talking about him. The mere mention of his name to Picard even earns a Spiteful Spit. (Star Trek The Motion Picture, TNG: "First Contact", DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations", ENT "Shadows of P'Jem")
  Decker: (showing Ilia pictures) All those vessels were called "Enterprise".
  Ilia: And what of the ship captained by Archer?
  Decker: (with barely restrained hostility) He's dead to us.
  • This also apparently extends to the Klingon Empire. The reason why Worf refuses to explain TOS-era Klingons' lack of forehead ridges is because the explanation involves Archer. It's unclear whether both governments declared him an Unperson for the same incident, or if Archer affronted each nation separately.
• Urine Trouble: Archer apparently has a tendency to randomly urinate at highly inappropriate times on all sorts of highly inappropriate things. Possibly to establish dominance, or maybe he is just picking up bad habits from his dog. ("Fortunate Son")
• Wimp Fight: Archer gets his ass kicked so often, he makes Picard look like Bruce Lee.
  • Predictably, "Glass Jaw Archer" does not do well on a Wild West themed planet that they discover in "North Star". Eventually he develops some sense and brings down Reed and some MACO's.
  • In a Bad Future, Archer would apparently teach self-defense to Starfleet cadets including a considerably more annoying version of James T Kirk. Lessons included: "How to curl up in a ball while protecting your kidneys".
• You Are What You Hate: The Vulcans' refusal to help his father build his engine was unforgivable, but has no problem refusing to help the Valakians save their race.
  • Ironically, when the Organians were dispassionately observing his crewmembers infected with a similarly lethal plague, he lectured them on their callous disregard for life. He also lectures freighter captains for fighting back against hostile pirates, but does the exact same thing when hostile aliens attack his own crew.
  • In keeping with his Manchild and Hypocrite attributes, his version of "diplomacy" makes the Vulcans seem positively charming in comparison.

Subcommander Hemp Von Weiner née T'Pol

"Why do I have a sudden craving for milkshakes?"

The most quarrelsome, asinine "ambassador" they could find on Planet Vulcan, sent to make Archer's life miserable. Ha ha, joke's on them! The pair actually work well in tandem, with T'Pol's black heart rubbing up nicely against Archer's lunatic machismo. Shows an utter lack of concern for the well-being of non-Vulcans, making her, according to Starfleet standards, the ideal attaché.

• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Claims that Humans are "Carnivores" due to them eating steak, ignoring the fact that Humans have always been Omnivores (Trip eats a breadstick right in front of her) and many Humans choose to adopt a Vegetarian lifestyle, just like the Vulcans. Either she does this out of genuine ignorance or is intentionally trying to irritate them ("Broken Bow").
• Moral Myopia: Later, she showed a massive lack of concern for sentient life when she raided minerals intended to help shield the ship to get high. ("The Forgotten")
• Ms. Fanservice: Chuck notes half-jokingly in his review of Broken Bow that T'Pol's breasts will go on to get more screen time than Travis and Hoshi put together.
• Skewed Priorities: Rails at humans over the cruelty of eating McDonald's, threatens to cap smokers in the head with phase pistol... but advocates letting a Klingon with treatable wounds die to avoid the diplomatic inconvenience of saving him. Hmmmm. ("Broken Bow", "Carpenter Street")
• Straw Vulcan: Whenever she takes a stance on an issue—which she frequently does—she's usually advocating the least moral course of action, while touting her superior Vulcan ethics.
• Token Evil Teammate: Insofar as she's a Vulcan (the horror!), and the only times she agrees with Archer is when he suggests Jack Bauer interrogations.
• Villainous Lineage: The plomeek doesn't fall from the tree, if you catch our drift. During an extended stay on 1950's Earth, her ancestor T'Mir's highhandedness and brazen disregard for some trapped miners was beyond the pale even for her Vulcan cohorts ("Carbon Creek")
• Wretched Hive: Tuvok later fathers a daughter in a city called T'Pol. Just as Archer is detested on Earth, T'Pol was apparently none too popular among her race, as the other suggested name was "New Crapville." Even then, "T'Pol" only won out by one vote. ("Unimatrix Zero")

Lt. Commander Hoshi Sato

Once a promising academic, things began to go wrong for Hoshi when she was hired to put a respectable face on Starfleet's latest boondoggle. Possesses the speed of an Olympian and the linguistic genius of Noam Chomsky, yet she remains shackled to a console and effectively does nothing. She shares a kinship with Reed, with whom she spent the remainder of her career in President Archer's shadow.

• Almighty Janitor: Hoshi casually snatching the Doctor's pet bat out of the air (and one-handed, no less) after Phlox and Archer have been chasing it for an hour , thus proving she is about 1000x overqualified for her tasks on the ship. ("A Night in Sickbay"}
• The Drag-Along: Hoshi is the resident Cowardly Sidekick for the NX-01, with most of her character time being devoted to her conquering her fear of Enterprise and all it's contents.
  Chuck: She's no longer afraid of everything, just most things...
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Hoshi and Reed's last moments of screentime are spent sitting in the back bleachers while Archer soaks up all the credit for the fledgling Federation.
• Falling into the Cockpit: Despite being utterly terrified of the ship and it's contents, Hoshi is frequently left in charge of Enterprise, due to Archer's boneheaded decisions stranding every single trained officer elsewhere.
• Hoshi Sato Does Everything: Jokes that since Archer never lets her do her actual job, Hoshi usually ends up being the one sent to handle every single thankless task on the ship, like she's the ship's intern. ("Silent Enemy" et al).
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: Frequent mention is made of Hoshi leaving a university professorship in "Broken Bow" to spend her life as T'Pol thankless underling and Phlox's waiter.
• Medal of Dishonor: Captain Kirk once bestowed the Hoshi Sato Cowering Chicken Medal, with clusters. ("Space Seed")

Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker III, aka "Cooter"

"I'm gonna need thirty minutes, a bran muffin, and a magazine."

The Red Green of space, an ex-airboat mechanic from the Bayou whose knowledge of science and basic arithmetic "can fit in a gnat's asshole." Trip's bright ideas are mysteriously heralded with banjo music. Keeps the NX-01 flying though the power of duct tape and Jesus. Arguably the luckiest man in Starfleet, though cruel fortune reversed itself in the series finale when Trip's Plot Armor finally failed him.

• Achievements in Ignorance: If your major repairs all involve duct tape and your own bodily waste, you might be a redneck. ("Breaking the Ice", "Fortunate Son") The results are surprisingly successful.
• Anti-Advice: Archer's habitual disagreement with T'Pol is so well known that, whenever she's put in command, Tucker's immediate reaction is to suggest things that would either break the ship or possibly kill them all, knowing that his Captain would rather sacrifice himself and the entire crew if it meant spiting her ("Civilization").
• Better than Sex: In "Damage", a sulking Trip listens to his "favorite thing in the world" in an effort to cheer up.... to no avail. Later, when T'Pol accosts him in the shower, Trip imagines the one thing that could make this moment perfect: Chuck inserts the song again.
• Drinking on Duty: Jokes that Trip more than likely hides a secret stash of beer in the Warp Reactor.
• Drives Like Crazy: After Trip scrapes the hull of the Enterprise while piloting a pod around it, Chuck makes fun of the fact that he is often the one called upon to pilot things. In "North Star", he says that Trip could probably manage to self-destruct a horse.
• Genius Ditz: Notes that Tucker was often written this way and how it's at odds with the fact that a man who is supposedly a talented engineer in charge of maintaining a Warp Reactor, seemingly can't figure out simple high-school level algebraic equations, the sort of things that he'd had to have grasped in order to know how an engine actually works. This is later 'addressed' in the series finale by Hoshi, who spills the secret of Trip being a college dropout whose only engineering experience was on boats. This triggered a Big "WHAT?!" from Chuck himself.
  Chuck: Well, unless that boat was the Bebop, this is just... whaaaaat???
• Lethally Stupid / Leeroy Jenkins: How he's presented early on, to the point where he's fully prepared to break the warp coils and possibly destroy the entire ship, simply to spite T'Pol for being made second in command over him ("Civilization").
• Meaningful Name / The Stoner: As he's spacing out from an alien acclimatization procedure, Chuck notes that he was also high the episode before, so they must call him "Trip" for a reason.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Trip, along with engineering ignorance, does not seem able to grasp the idea that space is really big. He instructs Lieutenant Reed to set course at sub-FTL speed for an object about the size of a mini-van without the benefit of star charts or navigating equipment, and when Reed starts to protest this plan claims that he's got a good memory and comes from a long line of navy men. So just... look at the stars, remember what they looked like when we dropped that thing several days ago (when we did have navigation and were not reliant on looking out the window to find stuff), and guide us to that miniscule object in the vastness of space.

Lieutenant Malcolm Reed

"Tell Phlox he can go suck my English cock!"

The other half of the NX-01's D-list. Conceived by Rick Berman after he watched First Contact and decided that Ensign Nobody deserved to be an on-screen character. Spends the first two seasons valiantly keeping morale up and trying to save the day, but he sort of realizes he's wasting his time, so he stops. Detested by his family, which would seem to make him this century's Picard (his father makes Robert Picard look like Bob Ross), but the same could be said for virtually everyone in Starfleet.

• Camp Straight: In an aversion of fanon, Reed isn't so much a closet gay—like Harry—as he is a gun fetishist, to the point where Chuck quips that he must dream of being sodomized by his own torpedoes. ("Fight Or Flight")
• Girlfriend On Earth: Invoked when Reed attempted to namedrop several former girlfriends in Shuttlepod One.
• Gun Nut: Reed is, perhaps, a bit too fond of explosives, as illustrated in the "Regeneration" review as he attaches at least six large explosive devices to a man-sized piece of equipment:
  Archer: You, uh, think you got enough there, Reed?
  Reed: Just a few crates more, Sah!
  • His reaction to the discovery of something called "Photon Torpedos" on a Klingon ship is to run over sporting an erection you could hang a flag off of ("Sleeping Dogs").
  • In "Fortunate Son," when asked what he thought about upgrading merchant freighters to have more substantial weapons and engines, Chuck's response was that Reed would cobble together something using tactical nuclear missiles and Centauri Mass Drivers.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Not unlike Tom Paris. Amongst his many accomplishments, Reed apparently invented the Deflector Shield ("Vox Sola") and successfully employed it to save his Damsel Scrappy Captain and Chief Engineer from a mass of sentient semen! Yet he doesn't even get to eat at the Captain's table!
• Only Sane Man: Perhaps the most competent member of Enterprise's crew — and hence, clinically depressed ("Shuttlepod One"). When the trio are taken hostage in "The Andorian Incident", the crew of the Enterprise is hopelessly confused because they suddenly find themselves under the command of a rational officer who does things like scan nearby space for possible hostile alien ships and then proceeds to assess what information they have on said hostiles so as to actually form a tactical response plan, all without repeated digressions about how much Vulcans suck.
• Suicide as Comedy: Reed continually tries offing himself as a Heroic Sacrifice to save the ship, only to be confounded by his incompetent crewmates at every turn. ("Shuttlepod One", "Minefield")
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Jokingly suggests that the reason Dominic Keating is the only member of the cast with nothing bad to say about "These Are The Voyages" is because at that point, there was little they could do to screw Reed's character over further than they already had.

"Doctor" Phlox

"Let me prescribe you a dose of maximum strength fuck off."

Seems everyone got their casting sheets mixed up: Whereas Hoshi/Reed inherited Tom's role as polymath and Archer wound up with Neelix's personality, the warped brain of Captain Janeway passes to Phlox. Credited with discovering two of the Federation's most implacable enemies, birthing one and misplacing a vaccine for the other. Actually, it's not entirely clear what, if anything, Phlox contributes to the ship other than indulging his own morbid curiosity of the flesh.

• Dr. Jerk: During a ship-wide emergency, you'll see him seen answering pages and strolling down the halls with all the urgency of a sloth. In fact, Phlox will bend over backwards to find reasons not to treat people. ("Dear Doctor", "Vox Sola")
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: has been dubbed "Dr. Zoidberg" as of the "Vox Sola" review, because of his long string of inaccurate judgment calls ("Curing these aliens would interfere with their evolutionary path.", "Oh yeah, yeah, alien probe, just send that on through.", "These assimilated people are harmless!").
• Laser-Guided Karma: He was later assassinated by the Breen, whom Chuck speculates are descendants of the Valakians - after they found out that he lied about not having a cure for their plague. Hence why he never wrote anything down about the Borg! ("Resurrection")
• Mad Doctor: "Dead Stop" tacks "sadism" onto Phlox's field of expertise.
  "Whoops, must be some turbulence shaking the hospital bed!"
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: Archer, on his way out the door, actually has to instruct Phlox not to dissect his beagle or use its organs for his creepy experiments. This led Chuck to remark that "Medical Ethics" is Phlox's middle name! ("Azati Prime")
  "Unfortunately, his first name is, "What".
• The Millstone: Phlox's sickbay is a revolving door of unsterilized patients, he leaves canisters of medical waste lying open, and will hand over a patient's entire medical history to anyone who asks for it. ("Regeneration", "A Night in Sickbay", "Fight Or Flight")
  Chuck: Patient confidentiality, what's that?!
  • Further compounded when one of the few times he does respect patient confidentiality, he decides to endanger the entire mission to save all of humanity from the Xindi, by not telling Archer that his First Officer is detoxing after a major battle with drug addiction. ("Damage")
• Moral Sociopathy: If you step back and look at his actions across the series, he is actually even scarier than on a per-episode basis. Which is not to say he cannot be truly creepy in a single episode. In "Similitude", Trip has managed to get himself critically wounded through his usual boating-based engineering skills. Never one to pass on performing illegal and unethical medical procedures, Phlox grows a clone of trip that will only live long enough for Phlox to do a little tissue-harvesting. That the clone is fully-sentient and even possesses all of Trip's memories is a minor detail, as is the fact that it might be possible to halt the clone's accelerated aging. But Phlox cannot be bothered to even consider that because it is as much fringe science as, for example, growing a human clone from an alien grub. Plus he was busy, what with having one whole patient in sickbay, and it's not as if he might form any emotional attachments having raised the clone from infancy (and even bottle-feeding it)!
• Never Live It Down: Chuck claims that what Phlox did in "Dear Doctor" is this for Chuck ("Affliction").
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His actions result in the creation of the Breen (who were one of the very few alien races able to successfully attack Earth and nearly turned the tide in the Dominion War), the Pakleds (who can charitably be described as morons), and by not writing it down misplaced a vaccine for assimilation by the Borg. And on a per-episode basis it gets worse.
• Phony Degree: He keeps getting complaint letters from the the Denobulan Science Academy because he claims to be a physician, despite his only "degree" being a "doctorate in surgery-ology" from the Acme Diploma Company of Ferenginar ("The Breach").
• The Social Darwinist: He also operates under the dogmatic belief that "evolution" has slated various races to die, which further alleviates his workload. This attitude eventually leads to the creation of the Breen- which sided with the Dominion later on, causing many casualties- and the Pakleds, who suffered major cranial shrinkage as the result of Phlox's and Archer's playing god.

Ensign Travis Mayweather

...Who? Oh, yeah, right, that guy who has been in space.

• Advertised Extra: Despite being a main character (according to the opening credits), Travis has fewer subplots than some of the recurring guest stars... or even some of the one-off guest stars.
• Flat Character: It's just possible that he may have spent some time in space.
  • Made even more obvious in "Dead Stop" when Hoshi lists several fond memories of him and her prank war with him, all of which happened offscreen, leading Chuck to wonder why the writers had to pretend to kill him in order to give him some actual development?
• Phrase Catcher: Did you know that Travis has been in space?
• The Pollyanna: Nothing, nothing shakes Mayweather of his good mood. Even the ship getting seven kinds of shit kicked out of it just nudges him down to unflinching optimism. ("Damage")

Crewman Daniels

• The Chooser of the One: Wanted Janeway to solve the Temporal Cold War for him, but was forced to settle for Archer instead ("Fury").
• Living MacGuffin: Sums up his entire character and function in the Temporal Cold War as being;
  "I'm a tool, I'm a tool, I'm an incredible, unbelievably annoying tool".
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Continually nearly destroys the timeline through sheer incompetence. Daniels will send vitally important historical figures into dangerous situations he can't be bothered to do himself and believes in following vital intelligence provided by the enemy ("Carpenter Street").
• Time Police: A really bad one.

The Valakians

• From Nobody to Nightmare: After Archer left them to die, they were rescued by the Romulans, who provided them with extensive gene therapy and protective clothing in the hopes of eventually converting them into allies against the Federation. After many years, the Valakians were gradually transformed into the Breen — who would later become allies of the Dominion.
• Hazmat Suit: He speculates that, when hearing Weyoun state that their homeworld is temperate and that their need for the suits is confusing, that they serve as life-support suits to help the genetically deformed Valakians in the wake of their transformation to escape the disease killing them.
• Revenge: And they demanded control of Earth at the end of the war as retribution against Archer's Federation.
  • Also, the reason why, in "Regeneration," Phlox is capable of coming up with a way to resist assimilation, but that's never in any other series (despite how massively useful that would have been in, say, "The Best of Both Worlds," or the second half of Voyager where the danger of being assimilated was very, very probable)? Turns out that he was gunned down by Breen Assassins. On one hand, Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, as that information could have potentially saved the entire Alpha Quadrant a lot of time and trouble, but on the other, you can't really blame them for wanting to gun down Phlox.

The Menk

• Gone Horribly Wrong: After Archer left them to replace the Valakians, the Menk were abducted and enslaved by the Ferengi; eventually, they overpowered their captors and flew off on their own. Surrounded by technology they didn't really understand and free food to gorge on, the end result is that the Menk became the Pakleds.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Archer and Phlox decided to let the Valakians die off so that the Menk could undergo a glorious evolutionary breakthrough (leaving aside that evolution does not work that way). That glorious leap forward turned them into the Pakleds.

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