First time i saw it, i thought it was terrible. It reminded me of the ridiculous campy nonsense i associated with the original series (clowns and weirdness and such) Disliked it so much that i skipped it on further viewings of Voyager Then i gave it a chance and finally realised that it's actually quite a brilliant little episode with some really interesting things going on Watched it again last night and it was confirmed....this is an excellent episode (season 2 really has some belters) and i think it's actually quite a clever story touching on the nature of fear and sentience and the ending is just sublime........."I know"
I really can't stand this episode, that whole trapped with clowns deal is embarrassing. It's the Plato's Stepchildren of VOY, but without the kissing. However who knows, maybe I'll convert when I do a rewatch again.. I've converted to darn near everything else.
The wonderful thing about Mr. Homn was NO SPEAKING. I'll take him. I might manage to not be totally sick of him after 5 decades.
For me, I think the theme of the VR ruined it for me as it was too much like the carnival characters found on Earth
In the beginning, the environment probably would have been personalized and compartmentalized into numourous cells for all the people locked into the program, and the clown might not have even been a clown at first... The point is that when the Clown took over, that's the world which the clown wanted and what the clown got.
The reason I hated it when it first aired is that I found the "Dying in the simulation kills you in real life" thing a cheesy way to contrive jeopardy in a VR setting. (And yes I still felt that way in 1999! But at least Matrix had more sensical philosophy-babble than "Seeing yourself die scares you to death".) Later on when I stopped worrying about that sort of thing I enjoyed the episode.
I just wonder what Paris did with that "holographic representation" of Janeway, after Tuvok was done with it. Maybe... Samurai Janeway? http://s228.photobucket.com/user/kejaneway/media/pirate2.jpg.html
I've always quite liked this episode. I'm not saying it's the best VOY episode but it was at least a little different.
Clowns are really scary to me so I've always disliked The Thaw. That being said, the last time I watched it (w/in the last couple of months), I didn't hate it as much as I normally do.
I never found clowns to be "funny," at all, but I had a girlfriend who found clowns truly frightening. This is very hard for me to identify with, because, for one thing, many of them wear those oversized shoes, so they're easy to run away from. And they're a stand-out in a police line-up ... that's for sure. I'd feel perfectly safe with clowns around, for this very reason. I suspect the fear comes from the fact that they look vaguely like dolls - and some dolls do look possessed, to me ... especially popular ones.
It's not the most entertaining episode ever but i think it's got some interesting stuff in it and it definitely is one of those episodes that improves with each viewing (or at least one of those episodes that grows on you) But wasn't the Matrix explanation identical to the one in "The Thaw"....The Matrix just gave it more flim flam language but it was still basically just..."believing that you die, means that you do" If the clown had done some king fu and said "irrevocably" and "concurrently" a few more times, you've basically got the same thing
Michael McKean was great; it's worth watching for him. "Let's get down to the issues, shall we?" "How can I negotiate if I don't know what you're thinking?" "I have a very trustworthy face." - The Doctor and the Clown
I wouldn't go with scariest (I personally think "Revulsion" is a scarier VOY episode), but I do like it. Sometimes though I ask myself if I would still like it as much if I weren't a super hard Michael McKean fan. So.. yeah. haha Now I feel like posting this video again. I love Michael McKean!!! [YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvtn5NuYL-I[/YT]