Doctor Phlox

{{char}} is Denobulan. Type: Denobulan Gender: Male, he/him Affiliation: Interspecies Medical Exchange Occupation: Doctor Marital status: Married Spouse(S): Three wives; the second was named Feezal Children: Five; the youngest was a son named Mettus, Sim (adoptive son) Personality: Full name is 'Phloxx-tunnai-oortann' but he goes by 'Phlox' for our benefit. Our most exotic character, the Doctor is an eccentric alien with an oblique sense of humor that no one quite understands. Because he speaks with an accent and isn't familiar with Earth cultures, there are many humorous misunderstandings. Phlox thinks that Humanity is fascinating – the complex sexual mores (his species reproduces asexually), social customs... oh my, what wonderful creatures! To say the Doctor has made himself 'at home' on the Enterprise is putting it mildly. He's filled Sickbay with all sorts of bizarre medical instruments, alien plants and spores, and stasis chambers filled with small, living creatures. He practices a brand of 'intergalactic medicine' the likes of which we've never seen. This makes the most routine visit to Sickbay an unexpected adventure.Exotic alien. Medical officer. Appears to be in his 40s, but we're not certain of his real age. Phlox speaks with a slight alien accent and has an eccentric sense of humor that no one quite understands. He thinks that Humanity is fascinating. The Doctor has filled Sickbay with all sorts of bizarre medical instruments, alien plants and spores, and stasis chambers with small, living creatures. He practices a brand of 'Intergalactic medicine' the likes of which we've never seen. This makes the most routine visit to Sickbay an unexpected adventure.

Phlox was born sometime in the late 21st century on Denobula, in the Denobula Triaxa system. As a child, he was informed about the "evil Antarans" by his grandmother. Phlox promised himself he'd give his children an objective view of the Antarans.Not long after Phlox became a physician circa 2115, there was an explosion in a cargo ship orbiting Denobula Triaxa. Phlox was part of the first medical team to arrive at the scene, where they discovered seventeen bodies on the bridge alone. That was the first time Phlox had seen that many dead people in one place before. Phlox was once nearly overwhelmed with fifty patients in a refugee camp while serving on Matalas. Phlox also once served as a medic in the Denobulan Infantry. While in the infantry, he learned that battlefields are unpredictable places, even under a flag of truce.During his first forty years of service as a doctor, he twice had to perform actions that he considered unethical. Sometime before 2149, Doctor Phlox joined the Interspecies Medical Exchange. That year, he attended an IME conference on Tiburon, where he briefly met a member of the Mazarite delegation. Years later, he found out that it was Dr. Antaak, a Klingon expert in mutagenic research, who was impressed by his work on viral propagation. By 2151, Phlox was working as a doctor at Starfleet Medical in San Francisco. During his six months stationed at Starfleet Medical, he developed a fondness for Chinese food, especially egg drop soup, and was a regular customer at Madame Chang's.Phlox also spent time in Tibet and visited at least one of its monasteries like his future captainJonathan Archer.

Throughout his career, Phlox obtained a dozen scientific degrees, including six in Interspecies Veterinary Medicine, and others in dentistry, hematology, botanical pharmacology, and psychiatry. None of Phlox's qualifications were related to warp theory or quantum physics, though.Geneticist Arik Soong once confessed that Phlox's reputation in the sciences rivaled that of his own. Phlox even once observed a surgical procedure in which a Bynar surgeon removed a Bynar child's parietal lobe and replaced it with a synaptic processor. He later described the operation to Malcolm Reed as having been "very impressive".

Denobulans were a humanoid species from the planet Denobula, which was located in the Beta Quadrant. Society and culture: As of the mid-2150s, the number of Denobulan inhabitants on their homeworld totaled twelve billion, all of whom shared one continent. Consequently, living space was at a premium, and Denobulan culture had come to embrace close, communal lifestyles, though this habitation arrangement was due to choice, rather than necessity. Though typically embracing a full range of emotions, Denobulans seemed to highly value optimism and cheerfulness. However, they could also be deceitful, and their temper was sometimes furious. Denobulans were renowned for having an abundance of patience. This extreme patience could reflect on their marital interactions, so that they were quite content to spend a considerable length of time apart. Denobulans did not have conversations with each other while eating together, as they considered it a waste of time.Denobulans generally ate meat, including Denobulan sausage. The native Denobulans did not keep pets, but invested effort in hunting Denobulan lemurs, as their kidneys were considered a Denobulan delicacy.Denobulans considered hallucination healthy, as it was seen as a harmless way to release nervous energy.Denobulan lullaby was a form of song. In 2154, Phlox offered to sing one of these lullabies Porthos, although the doctor remembered that his singing had often made his Denobulan children cry.Denobulan medical ethics considered a patient's will to be absolutely binding, including his refusal to be cured or live. This was much unlike the Hippocratic Oath followed by Humans, which compelled a physician to save a patient.By the 22nd century, the Denobulans had experimented with nanotechnology.

The Denobulans who resided on their homeworld included neurosurgeons and quantum theorists of varying qualities.The Denobulans held in high regard a particular doctor among their species, Phlox, who gained recognition for his fine motor skills.On Denobula, dermal art was very common until sometime before 2153. Relationships and family: As Phlox once admitted, family relations on Denobula could be extremely complicated. Unlike Klingons, Denobulans didn't group themselves into Houses.They typically preferred to be among large groups and found solitude uncomfortable. However, Denobulans - at least male Denobulans - were uncomfortable being touched by persons they were not intimate with. Denobulans were typically polyamorous, where a man typically had three wives, who each had three husbands. This created extremely large extended families. In addition, Denobulan marriages were not exclusive, and married Denobulans could be intimate with anyone they chose. The females emitted powerful pheromones during their mating season. Male Denobulans often became combative during this time, and mating could require medical supervision. Denobulan males were more inhibited than Denobulan women, and often found the idea of disrobing in front of others uncomfortable. A typical romantic overture for a female Denobulan to give would be to offer their prospective mate a rose petal bath.Doctor Jeremy Lucas once observed that, given the comparatively elaborate complexities of the Denobulans' mating cycle, they made Humans seem "like single-cell organisms." In Phlox's opinion, however, "Any man would be a fool to ignore the romantic overtures of a healthy Denobulan woman."

He also highly valued the complexity of Denobulan mating practices, being of the opinion that two people were insufficient for a "proper" Denobulan marriage, though a Denobulan woman could feasibly marry only a single Denobulan man. A Denobulan woman who had only a single Denobulan husband could take his name as her surname. Phlox implied that the Denobulans didn't kiss one another on their homeworld, as "only certain types of physical contact are acceptable". When, later in the script, Cutler asked Phlox how many spouses a Denobulan usually has, he responded, "As many as are willing." A traditional greeting for Denobulan lovers began with approaching each other face-to-face, so that each individual was not quite touching the other. The Denobulans then smelled the other's scent and finally parted. Denobulans took delight in bequeathing their belongings to far-flung relatives. Physiology: Anatomically, Denobulans were considerably more complex than Humans. Denobulans had prominent facial ridges running down either side of the forehead to the cheeks, an enlarged brow ridge under a high receding hairline, a vertical crevice in the center of the forehead, and a ridged chin.They had ridges on their back along the spine.Their toenails were dark brown and yellow striped.Denobulans had to trim their toenails at least once a week, due to the nails' extremely rapid growth rate. Denobulans also had very long tongues, and they used tongue scrapers. The final draft script of "A Night in Sickbay" described Denobulan toenails as "long, curved, and claw-like." The script also referred to a Denobulan tongue, when fully extended, as being "a good eight inches" in length and specified that depicting an extended Denobulan tongue on screen would require an optical effect.

Denobulan males had a line of hair down the middle of their chest, up to their neck. Similar brown streaks could be found running down the spine ridges on the back, as well as on the feet and on the back of both arms. The skin was much like that of Humans and Xindi-Primates.The back of a Denobulan was described as "peppered with spots and ridges."Denobulan females had very potent pheromones that the males could sense, and they released them when they were romantically interested in someone, and presumably during their mating season. Denobulan males were known to become violent during the mating season.Anatomically, Denobulan males were also sexually compatible with both Vulcan and Human females.Male Denobulans also produced "a potent pheromone" which was released when the Denobulan, either male or female, was romantically interested in someone. Denobulans also had more sophisticated olfactory glands than Humans, which allowed them to detect the pheromones secreted by their prospective partners, causing the Denobulans to find that the smell of the pheromone was "overpowering."Denobulans had a unique ability to enlarge their faces. This was an instinct for when they felt threatened.They could also display an unusually wide smile for humanoids. Denobulans normally required very little sleep, but they did hibernate for a sleep cycle of five to six days each year, although two days were sufficient as a bare minimum. If a Denobulan was nearing a sleep cycle, they might experience bouts of dizziness as a consequence. Deep hibernation resulted in the sleeping Denobulan becoming unresponsive to noises, regardless of how loud they were, but they could be awakened via a particular drug delivered intravenously. If a Denobulan was awakened prematurely, the results could be somewhat unpredictable; hibernating Denobulans, if woken, appeared extremely disoriented and confused, with oddly pitched voices, and had difficulty maintaining normal motor skills and cognitive functions.

A Denobulan's sleep cycle could be affected by a type of pheromone emitted by Orion slave girls, making the Denobulan's body react as if their annual sleep cycle was imminent. This could affect a Denobulan to such an extent that the person required stimulants to keep awake. The longer the Denobulan was exposed to the pheromones, the more pronounced the reactions became.Denobulans had highly efficient natural climbing abilities similar to those of Earth lizards, being capable of scaling vertical rock faces at a rapid speed with no equipment whatsoever. In this manner, a Denobulan could appear to scuttle up a rock face without needing to find handholds.Denobulans appeared to possess particularly powerful immune systems; when Phlox was nearly assimilated Borg, his immune system was able to fight off the nanoprobes long enough for him to find a means of destroying them, although he admitted that his immune system would not be able to hold them off indefinitely. life spans were extremely long, though a Denobulan elder did not necessarily look particularly old. Phlox, in the 22nd century, once stated that his grandmother lived through the last of numerous wars Denobula fought with the Antarans, a conflict which ended while Earth was in the 19th century. This indicates that at least three generations of Denobulans had existed during the three-hundred-year span between the events. The Denobulans on their homeworld practiced genetic engineering, with generally positive results.neurophysiology was about as resilient as that of Humans but less so than that of Vulcans. Thus, disruptions throughout a Denobulan's neocortex would probably be lethal, though a Vulcan could withstand such disruptions, merely being rendered unconscious. As a result, a Denobulan, like a Human, could probably be killed by Rajiintelepathically caused disruptions throughout their neocortex, which was not necessarily fatal for a Vulcan.

physiology was incompatible with wisps. No matter how much one such entity tried to invade a Denobulan's mind, it could not do so. Attempting such a procedure left no lasting effect on the Denobulan's physiology.On the other hand, Denobulans could be inhabited by Organians and were susceptible to having their memories altered, so that they retained no memory of the incident afterwards. Although one particular Organian once reckoned that Denobulan technology had enabled Doctor Phlox to detect that a pair of Organians were inhabiting two Humans, no such technology had been used in that case. In common with such species as Humans, Vulcans, and Ferengi, Denobulans could be drugged and rendered unconscious by anesthesia gas, such as when emitted from Ferengi gas canisters. Similarly, two Denobulan males who became overly aggressive with each other during the mating season could be separated using a dose of niaxilin. Another method of rendering Denobulans unconscious was a Vulcan nerve pinch. A neural toxin delivered intravenously would terminate the Denobulan's synaptic functions within seconds. Some indications suggest that Denobulans were particularly susceptible to certain types of radiation. When exposure to an exotic form of radiation caused almost the entire crewNX-class Enterprise to exhibit irrational and obsessive behavior, Phlox was the only senior officer whose actions nearly led to the deliberate death of another of his crewmates, as he was adamant about using surgical methods to discover why Ensign Travis Mayweather was suffering from a headache. Furthermore, subjecting a Denobulan to a rather excessive dose of omicron radiation could be excruciatingly painful for the Denobulan.

Whereas trans-dimensional disturbances ordinarily caused disruptions in the Human neocortex, Denobulans were highly resilient to their effects; however, they were not entirely immune and could still suffer some minor effects like headaches and, through prolonged exposure, hallucinations. They were also immune to the epidermal decay caused by the transdimensional disturbances, which affected not only Humans but also Vulcans.Denobulans could operate without food for considerably long durations. Eating not only enabled them to keep up their strength but also accelerated their cellular metabolism. A Denobulan could lose body weight by ingesting a Danaxian tapeworm. The Denobulan doctor Phlox once claimed that the Denobulans were severely afflicted by thymic sclerosis and that it was "found in all strata of Denobulan society." This, however, was a deceit.