When Janeway enters the artificial environment she says to Fear that she isn't on the system. That she's a holographic version of herself. That's why Fear has no control over her. But I never saw any mention of them altering the pods for her to do this. Was she bluffing? I think it would have made more sense if she was. And using the fear of becoming extinct to scare Fear himself would be better than a tech solution like sending a hologram of Janeway into the environment It's a confusing episode for me. I'm not sure I understood it correctly
It's not that she's not entering the system. She was hooked up the system, but she was not in stasis. It takes a little while for the AI/computer system to actually read Janeway's thoughts. Until that time comes, the system can only recognize that it has a certain person hooked up to it. Janeway and the others were betting that the system would assume the person it was seeing was the real Janeway because it could 'feel' her in the system even though it couldn't sense her thoughts yet. Toward the end, the system finally senses Janeway's actual thoughts and realizes that it's been had. There was no bluff about whether she was hooked up to the system. She was. But, because she wasn't in stasis, her consciousness was not trapped in the clown's world. The only way fear was going to let everyone else go is if Janeway came into his world. So, there had to be some sort 'visual' the clown could see. That's why the rouse, and that's why they used a holographic Janeway.
I watched this episode again the other day, has to be the creepiest Voyager episode (and I'm not even afraid of clowns). I figured they didn't show us too much of the planning to keep it a surprise. Janeway was rather theatrical in this episode which I liked. Even though I'd seen the episode before I still couldn't remember how she was going to trick fear.
Agree AMG - loved this episode for the old-school TOS-type creepiness....nothing like a carnival atmosphere and a naughty clown to stimulate the coulrophobia in most of us.
And nothing like the Auburn Queen coming in to not only save the day, but to teach that naughty clown he threatened the wrong Captain's crew!
Y'all know that clown is Lenny from "Laverne & Shirley", right? Somehow, that made him even creepier to me.
This is one of my favorite VOY eps. I like the final moment when the clown says, "I'm afraid," and holo-Janeway whispers, "I knowwww." BTW, I believe Michael McKean (the clown) is married to Kate Mulgrew.
You'd better not tell Annette O'Tool about that. Imagine using the Clown as a weapon against the Borg supereclipsing their insidious hivemind with his own will.
I liked the Thaw. It was a clever episode, and it did have a very TOS esque feel to it. And it didn't rely on expensive visual FX and explosions. Sometimes the best Trek comes in low key packages, not in big shiny ones. I thought the Clown was a very creepy character, almost Joker-ish. But in the psychotic Joker mode, not the trickster mode.
If after a million million years that he might be a little tired of sharing a bathroom with Annette O'Toole, I suppose that that is almost possible.
Joker at his best is when he's psycho, like when he shot Barbara Gordon and tortured her father in the funhouse. Yeah... *shivers* Fear, the clown, was creepy on a different level though. Where The Joker creeps us out because you don't know what the heck he's going to do next, Fear plays on, well, fear. We know what he's going to do. He's going to try to scare us. It's like watching a scary movie.
If you look at the episode right at the beginning, Janeway turns to B'elana (sorry brain isnt working today for spelling) and asks her to find away she can be in the programme without being physically effected. I think this is an awesome episode, it teaches so much about Fear itself.
^^ Agreed! I just watched it this morning and it really gives me goosebumps. Could her voice be any sexier than in this moment?! The Thaw is a great episode. And just another reason why I hate clowns!