|
Porthos
Porthos is Archer's pet dog. One of four males born in a litter of English Beagles, Porthos and his brothers, Athos, Aramis and d'Artagnan, were named after characters from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père. He has been Archer's faithful companion since the age of six weeks, and has remained so for the duration of Archer's 10-year assignment as captain of Enterprise.
Porthos was portrayed by a male beagle named Prada in Season 1. Afterwards, he was played by two female beagles, Breezy and Windy, although the character of Porthos remained male. Prada also portrayed the character Lou in the film Cats & Dogs.
Archer would occasionally leave Porthos in the care of Dr. Phlox when he was away or otherwise unavailable.
Archer cares very much for Porthos. In the pilot episode, Travis Mayweather says Archer won't use the transporter for himself and certainly not for his dog. In "A Night in Sickbay", Porthos nearly dies when he contracts a deadly pathogen on the Kreetassan homeworld, but is saved when Phlox transplants a gland from a chameleon-like creature.
Although Porthos isn't the first domesticated pet to be featured in a Star Trek series (Data owned a cat, Spot, in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Captain Jean-Luc Picard owned a Lionfish named Livingston), Porthos has the distinction of being the first pet to maintain an ongoing presence in the series, and even - as illustrated above - become the focus of an episode.
In the Mirror Universe depicted in "In a Mirror, Darkly", Porthos is a Rottweiler. According to the episode's podcast on Startrek.com, the dog that portrayed the mirror Porthos was known on set as an even bigger "baby" than the dogs which have played the regular Porthos. Episode writer Mike Sussman noted that the animal was "The sweetest dog I have ever met."
In the episode "Acquisition", Porthos was interrogated by a group of Ferengi pirates while the rest of the crew were incapacitated, but the aliens' universal translator could not decipher his barking. The pirates didn't know what to make of the dog, even speculating that he was perhaps food.
In the 2009 Star Trek film, it is implied that "Admiral Archer's" Beagle was involved in a freak accident when Montgomery Scott used him as a test subject for a transporter experiment. Porthos, however, would have been over 70 years old when Scott was born, so whether or not the beagle was Porthos remains undetermined.
|
Molly
