You know when Series Five starts stealing plots from Series Four it can't be good. When an eppy is so full of padding it has armrests it can't be good. And when the better part of an hour is spent dealing with only one character it can't be good. And yet "Doctor's Orders" is good. In order to avoid a two week detour NX-01 has to plunge through a transdimensional disturbance which threatens the crew with madness and death. (OK, and it makes the ship look positively gorgeous with her blue lighting and the hull reflecting the cloud.)

Fortunately Phlox and Porthos are immune- or so the doctor thinks- and thus it's into the purple cloud, after everyone with a neocortex has been lobotomized by electric coma buttons. The story is loosely framed as another letter to Phlox's human physician friend, Dr. Lucas. Phlox spends the four days making rounds on people and systems, loyally accompanied by the always precious Porthos. (Nary a bedpan in sight.) Sharing stories about Scruffers and Spican moths, feeding on leeches (why is anything marked "DO NOT EAT" kept in the galley?), everything is running perfectly until Phlox starts seeing fleeting shadows and other spooky things.

Though he's slow to realize it, the disturbance can induce hallucinations into him as well. In one Phlox nearly shoots the captain's dog thinking it's a bug Xindi, in another Hoshi creeps out of the shower with her Miri-disease face on! They meet up with T'Pol, but not really; in this instance the terrible split-screen chromakeyed cross-directing actually works. Similarly all the way up to the spoiler I kept marking my notes that this technobabble was far worse than usual. Afterwards the sting is gone from that accusation since clearly it's entirely inside Phlox's head, like the problems in Hoshi's or Archer's dreams earlier. It's hard to imagine any sort of effect which could bother a human but not a Denobulan (what, they don't have neocortex?).

Mangling the warp math- an hour at warp four is four days at impulse, or ten weeks at impulse as a quarter light year- seem contradictory but the story works anyway. For an effort like this to not appear totally stupid it depends entirely on the talent of John Billingsley. Without a doubt he delivers an entertaining, engaging- sometimes naked- performance, with the happy audience in tow like a beagle through emotions from fright to hilarity. Loved the singing! And, even with only one audience for a movie, the show must go on!