2x21 The Breach

[7.4/10] John Billingsley, the actor who plays Dr. Phlox, is such a boon to Enterprise. Let’s be honest, as grave and serious as “The Breach” wants to be with its faux-racism/space prejudice story here, in the wrong hands, it could come off as pretty hokey. It’s not hard to imagine Archer pontificating for an entire episode about judging people for who they are and setting aside old grievances and having the hour turn into one big eye-roll.

But Billingsley brings a certain humanity and dignity to the proceedings that helps soften what could otherwise be a thuddingly obvious allegory like “Stigma” from earlier this season. “The Breach” is very much about whether groups with longstanding animosities and prejudices toward one another can lay them to rest and start to make grand societal progress. But it’s also a very personal story about a doctor having to reckon with his people’s history, his family’s history, and the dying patient lying on his table. Billingsley has the facility to handle all of that, giving each part of it the volume and tenor it deserves, in a way not every performer on Enterprise does.

His emotional reaction gives life to what could otherwise be an abstract moral dilemma. Moral dilemmas are the lifeblood of Star Trek, and honestly, even before the episode gets to the space racism angle, “The Breach” offers a good one. The conflict between the twin medical principles of “first do no harm” and “vindicate the patient’s will” make what to do in this situation a chin-scratcher from the beginning. Then you throw in the complications of Dr. Phlox potentially having to disobey a direct order from his captain, the racial animus behind the patient’s refusal of treatment, and the complicated efforts to bridge the gap between them, and you have an episode with all the neat moral wrinkles that makes Star Trek so fun and thought-provoking.

But hey, it can’t all be high-minded moral complication, so we also have a story about Trip, Malcolm, and Travis going spelunking in search of some lost Denobluans. There’s not much to it, but I’m not complaining either! Especially in an episode where the A-story is spent with people wrestling with intricate human emotions and relations between peoples, there’s nothing wrong with having a B-story that is essentially pure action and spectacle.

The impetus for the story is that a nearby planet with some rare minerals and other archaeological goodies has recently changed governments. The new administration is virulently against “off-worlders” and so demands that every alien on their planet must evacuate immediately. The Enterprise is sent to rescue a trio of Denobulans who are lost and researching deep within a local cave system, and some of our heroes search through the perilous cave system to try to find and save them.

The cave-ridden adventures offer some fun action and some decent banter, and not much else. There’s some cool cliffhanger moments, with Mayweather, Reed, and Trip dangling perilously from slippery rock formations and crawling through claustrophobic volcanic tubes. And their bickering back-and-forth with the Denobulans who aren’t quite ready to leave their finds is worth a chuckle. There’s a ticking clock until the locals open fire to goose the proceedings and give the rest of the crew something to do up above. But for the most part, this is just a tidy little caper without much substance beyond the usual fun of a search and rescue. Again, that’s not a bad thing, given the contrast between the cave stuff and Dr. Phlox stuff in “The Breach”.

As small stakes as the Dr. Phlox material is by comparison -- we’re only talking about one man refusing treatment here -- the episode does a nice job of making it feels like major stakes. This isn’t just a situation where a doctor is struggling with how and whether to treat a resistant patient. It’s a test case for whether two peoples with 300 years of bad blood can coexist and find common ground, even in the slightest of terms.

“The Breach” takes care to lay out the conflict and its history in succinct but believable terms. The notion of a longstanding grudges held over from historical massacres scans with issues in the real world in a natural way. As a Jewish man, it’s not hard to empathize with both sides of the argument between Phlox and his patient.

And yet that high-falutin' allegory is given shape by Phlox’s personal experiences. The story about his grandmother, who still bore ill-will and prejudice against Antarans, and his efforts to raise his children differently, is relatable to anyone who grew up with older relatives that bore the bigotry of their times, and endeavored not to let them pass on further.

What deepens that idea, though, is that despite Phlox’s best efforts, those ideas were passed down. In what may be the only good thing to come out of “A Night in Sickbay”, we learned that Dr. Phlox was estranged from his son, and now we learn why. His youngest boy, Mettus, held onto those prejudices, and Phlox wouldn’t stand for it, leading to a decade-long rift. In 2019, more than in 2003, the notion of a renewed form of hate and prejudice rising in a younger generation, as a seeming regression from societal advances over the past, is all too palpable and poignant.

Yet, in the end, Phlox committing that story to his patient is what bridges the gap between the two of them. Not everything is magically solved. It takes a good deal of argument and mutual frustration to get to that point. But the two of them recognize their shared humanity (er, humanoid-ity) and see one another as people. That is a first step, the sort of first step that Star Trek is as steeped in as any flavor of moral dilemma.

And it’s just as steeped in talented performers being able to elevate somewhat corny or heavy-handed material. John Billingsley gives you the moral resoluteness of Phlox when he stands up to Archer, the genteel politeness when he tries to treat his patient with respect despite earning abuse in return, his patience-losing frustrations when his tolerance elapses, and his personal pain from his past and more present family history. It’s those kinds of performances that elevate an idea, an episode, and a series, from just being an entertaining way to pass the time, to being something that sticks with you.