Another update, sorry for the spam. It just seems like it works randomly. On the tenth try he finally opened the bridge. Then the one after that took several tries to command him again too. So I guess if you encounter something like this, just keep trying. One of those tries might just work.
Make sure you are hitting tab again to exit the menu not the ESC button. That's what happened with me until I realized what was going on. It doesn't really tell you that hitting ESC instead of tab again will cancel all commands.
