A black hole emitting radiation causes the crew of the Enterprise to suffer psychological symptoms that cause obsessiveness.
When I saw the episode summary for this one I didn't think I was going to like it. It just sounded like a throwback to some of the earlier franchise concepts where characters would behave irrationally and just annoy me for 40 minutes. However, I didn't find it that bad.
I think it would have been better if more of the obsessions had the type of ironic conclusion that Malcolm Reed's ends up having. Hoshi's obsession with cooking adds nothing, neither does Trip's nor Archer's for me. The Dr Phlox and Mayweather scenes are reasonably good as they added a bit of urgency to the situation.
My favourite scene involves Reed arguing the case for his new alert system and in doing so he lets out a lot of underlying feelings about how the Enterprise is run. I found this pretty compelling along with the whole concept of the ship's alert system. Even though the notion that a starship wouldn't have this in place already is nonsense, it's still entertaining to see it developed.
For me the episode shows how obsessiveness channelled in the right area is not a bad thing and it contrasts Reed's task with those of the other crew members. Maybe that was the main point of it, but still, how cool would it be if we had a load of seemingly pointless obsessions that all ended up coming together into something very positive?