Archer also deals with unresolved and suppressed sexual tension with T'Pol. He also relates to Phlox how he met Porthos, and how he was the last in a litter of four male puppies, the 'Four Musketeers'. Through it all, Archer struggles to reach an emotional understanding with Phlox and T'Pol, as the two alien senior-crew members have little grasp of the human-pet relationship, and Phlox keeps offering Archer unsolicited advice about dealing with his apparent feelings for T'Pol. T'Pol, working out in the gym, also keeps urging Archer to apologize to the Kreetassans for Porthos' behavior, but Archer resists because he blames them for Porthos' illness. In the end, Porthos recovers following a pituitary transplant from an alien chameleon. Finally swallowing his pride, Archer then goes down to the Kreetassan capital and delivers an intricate ritual apology which involves slicing a tree trunk with a chainsaw, arranging the pieces of wood in a complex pattern on the ground, and chanting phrases in the Kreetassan language. Having successfully apologised to the Kreetassans, the crew finally manage to procure three plasma injectors prior to their departure. Production Executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga had worked together to write a series of episodes for Star Trek: Enterprise, with "A Night in Sickbay" amongst them. Berman originally described the episode at a press junket when talking about season two at an event held by UPN for the Television Critics Association. He said it was a "very humorous episode that has our good captain going and spending some time in sickbay, because his dog gets sick. He moves into sickbay the same way a mother will move into the hospital when her child gets sick, and it ends up being an 'Odd Couple' kind of an episode between the captain and Dr. Phlox. It's a lot of fun." Bakula also explained in an interview with the website TrekWeb that the episode featured Archer's dog Porthos as a background character and that it was also about Archer spending a night in sickbay with Phlox. He said that this meant that the viewer will "find out a lot of stuff about [Phlox] that we may not have wanted to know; like what he does when he's in his off hours... he has things to cut and trim!" Billingsley said later that he enjoyed working with Bakula on this episode and called "A Night in Sickbay" one