Threshold

Threshold is really a halfway decent episode for the majority of its runtime. And that makes it all the more entertainingly tragic and bemusing when it goes off-a-cliff.

I didn't first watch Star Trek until around 2012. And I checked the IMDB scores along the way of my viewing. So I was expecting this episode to be much worse when I saw it's low score. And I think the low score is both deserved and not. It depends on the viewers frame-of-mind.

I find a lot of the story ideas in the first 2/3rds of the episode to be interesting. I like the idea of them trying to reach warp 10 and there being some odd consequences to Tom Paris succeeding. And I like Tom trying to achieve some distinctive accomplishment to undo his bad reputation from before he left on the Voyager trip, and him discovering that accomplishing that goal doesn't guarantee his happiness. They showed all of those story elements as if there was nothing odd that also happened along the way. And there are some REALLY odd things that happen along the way.

The main issue with this episode is that they don't explain the glaringly odd story decisions at the end. And it's difficult to understand why reaching warp 10 would cause humans to become lizards. They try to say that it's humans evolving into their future identity millions of years into the future once they've evolved. It's trying to be sort of like the opposite of that TNG episode where the characters de-evolve backwards.

Anyone who understands evolution will say that no one can know what their future ancestors long in the future will look-like. Because species adapt to avoid dying within their changing environment which they're forced to live within. And no one today will know what any species in the distant future will have to adapt-to, or if the species will succeed or go extinction. Also there is the chance of speciation events where our species could go-off in different directions with different populations to form different species. So how could someone's body know what it's ancestors will body will become? It just makes no sense. And what makes obviously even less sense is why the writers decided to entangle the Captain in this issue, and have Tom and the Captain produce offspring in their lizard bodies. They also don't sufficiently explain how the doctor managed to fix this odd problem and bring Tom and Katherine back to normal.

What we see at the end has a completely ridiculous tone that contradicts a lot of the serious human messaging that they were trying to convey through the rest of the episode. And that's what that makes the episode a failure and entertaining. Because they present the message and the distraction as if it's completely compatible and not really too odd or distractingly.

Unlike other bad Star Trek episodes which one should skip, this one is genuinely worth watching. It is entertaining and bizarre to watch in the best way possible. Other bad episodes like the season 5 boxer episode from voyager or the season 2 flashback episode for TNG are boring and best skipped. I'd argue that this isn't even the worst Tom Paris episode given that the Alice episode later on is bad and boring.

Threshold is a bad episode which is fun to watch and wonder, "what were the creators thinking?

It's sort of like the cult bad movie The Room which is also both bad and entertaining and a cult fun movie to see. This is fun bad cult episode that gets discussed far more that other episodes which Star Trek fans do their best to pretend don't exist.

The fact that some art is bad, but can also be entertaining unlike other bad art which is generally not entertaining or worth experiencing is sort of an interesting topic of discussion when it comes to what makes art good. At least it's an interesting question to me.

Because it's so clearly bad and entertaining I gave this episode a 5. But depending on how one is looking at the episode, one could easily give it a 10 stat or a 1 star score because it is both truly bad at what it's aiming to be, but entertaining anyway. And that's an odd combination to pull-off by mistake.

It's interesting too to note that Brannon Braga who wrote this episode, wrote a lot of top notch Star Trek episodes for both Voyager and TNG. And has had an overall very successful career. This episode is an obvious exception to his creative talent. And it's a reminder that sometimes the difference between brilliant and laugh-out loud bad is finer than we'd often like to recognize. Especially when it comes to trying to create original engaging art while dealing with deadlines. So keep that in mind before being too negative toward everyone associated with this episode. I also think it's unfair to criticize a lot of the acting or directing on this episode. I think the production team did a good job given the task of bringing this story life. The pre-production is where this episode failed to deliver what they were going-for.

Do all the people hating on this episode think Voyager is a good show? They are watching this series all wrong. Watch it like a B movie. Watch it like a daytime soap opera set in space. This show is not Ray Bradbury, Philip Dick, or Harlan Ellison.

Where this show fails is slapping together the same old plots, getting preachy about star fleet nonsense, or taking itself too seriously. TNG was meaningfully Utopian. Voyager is a tired rehash that's lost in space.

This is an original episode worth watching. It's not perfect, but one of the more entertaining episodes in the first 1.5 seasons. I found myself watching it rather than doing chores with it on in the background. It has a great Cronenberg vibe. True to that style the ending is gross and weird. I would have enjoyed more time seeing the Salamanders living their lives as the next level of human evolution. Would they decide the wear cloths? We'll never know. But sometimes it's best to let the audience imagine.

It's hard to believe how off the wall this goes, but It earns some credit for that. The whole cast takes the insane premise dead serious.

Robert Duncan McNeil's performance is so earnest it defies belief, including trying to talk after he spat out his own tongue. This isn't a cute slam on his acting, he took completely ridiculous material and worked his butt off to make it work.

It's truly astonishing and includes a Voyager officer trying to sell this technology to the Kazon, Tom kidnapping Janeway to produce salamanders and, of course, the Doctor curing Tom and Janeway with some magical DNA thing.

Honestly I was on board until they said the future of human evolution is salamanders

I actually take Paris's transformation and struggle seriously, I think it's a very moving portrayal of mental suffering and the struggle on the part of loved ones to provide care.

If any of these negative nabobs who crap on this episode can appreciate Cronenberg or Carpenter or Barker then they should also be able to appreciate this.

I think Threshold is equally great viewed either as a serious drama or a comedy, there certainly is comedic timing, but as somebody who has had mental health problems and three day stays Threshold feels real.

There are families who have had to see their loved ones die in horrible ways, AIDS victims living long enough to have mold growing on their tongues, cancer patients transformed behaviorally by chemo and radiation therapy.

I'm honestly bothered by the lack of intelligence in these other reviews, even the ones that score the ep highly also go on to bash Voyager as a "bad" show and they call this a "terrible" episode --- I'm baffled!

Voyager is as excellent a show as Next Generation or DS9.

And it's not as though Next Gen didn't already give us "Identity Crisis" where Geordi very casually investigates his and another crew member's transformations.

It's great that in Threshold Tom Paris is believably wigged out by what's happening to him.

There's also the Next Gen ep "Genesis" which is not less whacky than Threshold but Genesis is without any real belivable reaction to the bizarreness that ensues, I think that Threshold is a much better episode than Genesis.

As for people pretending to care about science --- Star Trek has NEVER been scientifically credible, ultimately it's got more in common with the Globe Theater of Shakespeare's time than it does with science education, this is about performers on a stage creating human stories.

I give Threshold a 5/5, an excellent episode.