Threshold

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.

Tom Paris breaks the warp 10 barrier.

This is a famously panned episode that entertains if you go into it with the right frame of mind.

If you take your Star Trek seriously and appreciate good thought-provoking sci-fi writing, you might find Threshold somewhat of an insult to the intelligence, but if you appreciate wildly implausible ideas brought to life by a professional cast you can still take some enjoyment.

It starts off strongly with a good premise that works with the dilemma faced by the Voyager crew. Tom's ambition of piloting at warp 10 fits perfectly with his character and the build up to the flight is as good as any character work in the show.

Then events turn ridiculous in so many ways it would take too long to cover. The plot contrivances, the scientific implausibility, the reset button ending, and the fact the writers have taken a great Star Trek foundation of the warp 10 barrier and done THIS to it.

Robert Duncan McNeill carries Brannon Braga's ideas (including a tribute 'The Fly') remarkably well in an entertaining performance. I refuse to believe he plays the ranting and raving Paris as anything other than a tongue in cheek homage to Seth Brundle. There is some development for the character in the episode's resolution and the makeup effects are excellent.

Where does it sit on the list of worst Star Trek episodes of all time? It's not great, but it cannot be accused of tedium and I have seen some far worse in Voyager, The Original Series, TNG, and Enterprise.

Brannon Braga always says "what was I thinking" when he discusses this episode. No way! In fact I liked it, quite a bit. But not for the reasons you are thinking.

Tom is a pilot first and foremost, on top of being a jerk most of the time. In this episode, it appears that he is spearheading a team that has been planning hard designing a shuttle that can do something extraordinary, and he is the man that will pilot this. This is the flight that will give him something that he has wanted since he was a child, a feeling of accomplishment by doing something nobody else has. He is very sincere in all of his efforts and his arguments with Captain Janeway award him the chance to do this thing. But he is almost prevented from doing it because The Doctor thinks he has developed some form of brain-measles. Fortunately, and because we know Tom Paris' character well by this point, he is able to talk himself back into the pilot's seat.

However, what begins as a quest to break an ultimate speed barrier, takes a sharp twist and "devolves" into insanityland.

And I have never laughed so hard for a Star Trek episode, ever!

People simply don't appreciate the humor of this episode, especially the non-standard and possibly unintentional (but probably, actually intentional) comic acting by Robert Duncan McNeil. He nails this, if he had not pulled out all of the stops, the episode would have been perceived worse than it has been. But I never have thought of this episode as bad, only as drastically insane. Which was something that we needed at the time due to the serious turns in Trek during this period, with the Dominion and the Founders and Maquis and other threats in Deep Space Nine, to the destruction of the Enterprise D and the Borg Attack in the Next Generation movies of the period. With all of the seriousness of the state of the Federation on the Alpha quadrant side, we really needed something totally crazy to happen in the Delta quadrant side. And this was simply the first time they did it in Voyager, they had some other totally whack episodes after this, but nothing as crazy as this episode. It set a new standard for insanity. Which is why I personally love it.

And the ending is just way beyond the pale, when you think it can't get any crazier, it does, and then it even gets more absurd and insane after that, up until the very last scene which is the most incredibly crazy thing that we've ever seen any Star Trek, ever.

Y'all simply don't have a sense of humor, enjoy this for what it is, high comedy and absurdity, Star Trek style. Get out the popcorn when this episode plays, pretend like you are watching mst 3000, and enjoy it. I always make a point to watch this at least once every six months, it really lifts me up when I am in the dumps. Whaddya think this is? The last episode of Game of Thrones or something? (Which I also liked).

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.

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.