Threshold - great up until the lizard part?

[Navaros]

When I first watched Threshold, up until the lizard part, I was terrified and fascinated by what was happening. I was shocked at how good it was.

It looked like Tom was transforming into some sort of demon or monster from another world.

IMO Threshold could have been one of Trek's best episodes if only they had stuck with that concept - have Tom transform into a demon or a really freaky monster. The best way to top that story off would be to have the crew be forced to kill the Tom character at the end, permanently...maybe after Tom permanently kills some regular members, like Harry or Chakotay or Neelix etc.

Do you think that Threshold could have been great if only they didn't ruin it with the lizard nonsense, and instead continued into the episode's ending with a full-on horror/SciFi theme?

[JB2005]

No!

Terrible episode, terrible concept, terrible science!

Good Make-Up though!

[Lange]

Honestly I didn't think Threshold was that bad till I started looking it up on the internet and finding information on how bad everyone thought it was. At the time when I was going through the Voy boxsets I saw it and didn't think a whole lot of it, thought it was average but not memorable but now looking into it I see what everyone thinks I still don't trash it completely. Maybe its hard for me to hate an episode of Trek but to me the episode seemed below average mostly but not horrific.

As for the lizard part I thought it was far fetched but sorta horrific and shocking at the same time but then yeah realized it was really a strange and outlandish concept

[Christopher]

All the transwarp stuff was ludicrous, the evolution stuff even more so. Evolution is adaptation to a species' environment. It's ridiculous to say there's a single predetermined evolutionary future for any species, because it depends on the environment, on what random mutations arise that the species can take advantage of (or which ones fail to arise, leading to the species' extinction), etc.

Still, there is some fairly nice character stuff for Tom in the first half of the episode, some worthwhile insights into who he is and what drives him. I figure that's Michael Piller's influence -- his first question about any story was how it affected or illuminated the characters.

Oh, and their "evolved" forms were amphibians, akin to salamanders. Lizards are reptiles, a totally different class of vertebrate.

[You_Will_Fail]

No, it wasn't great. There was very little drama or intrigue, it was just watching a group of people spout nonsensical technobabble. How anyone could find that entertaining I have no idea.
Also how would it have been entertaining for Tom to just turn into a monster, if it was still the evolution reasoning, it still would have been awful and stupid.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Christopher wrote:

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All the transwarp stuff was ludicrous, the evolution stuff even more so. Evolution is adaptation to a species' environment. It's ridiculous to say there's a single predetermined evolutionary future for any species, because it depends on the environment, on what random mutations arise that the species can take advantage of (or which ones fail to arise, leading to the species' extinction), etc.

Still, there is some fairly nice character stuff for Tom in the first half of the episode, some worthwhile insights into who he is and what drives him. I figure that's Michael Piller's influence -- his first question about any story was how it affected or illuminated the characters.

Oh, and their "evolved" forms were amphibians, akin to salamandhers. Lizards are reptiles, a totally different class of vertebrate.

I don't see the problem with the "evolution". We evolve to suit our envoronment - and Tom's evolution was insanely distorted to adapt to bizarre infinite transwarp that triggered it. It wouldn't represent normal human evolition (or devolution) at all.

[JB2005]

KingDaniel wrote:

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I don't see the problem with the "evolution". We evolve to suit our envoronment - and Tom's evolution was insanely distorted to adapt to bizarre infinite transwarp that triggered it. It wouldn't represent normal human evolition (or devolution) at all.

In Transwarp, the environment remained M-Class, because he never left the shuttle...and even if that's what it was, it's not evolution, it's just transformation...

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

JB2005 wrote:

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In Transwarp, the environment remained M-Class, because he never left the shuttle...and even if that's what it was, it's not evolution, it's just transformation...

He DID leave the shuttle. He was at home, and on Voyager and supposedly everywhere else all at once - and so his transformations/evolution can be attributed to exposure to all the weird environments of the universe when it was triggered.

[JB2005]

KingDaniel wrote:

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He DID leave the shuttle. He was at home, and on Voyager and supposedly everywhere else all at once - and so his transformations/evolution can be attributed to exposure to all the weird environments of the universe when it was triggered.

But then he should also have been instantly fried when he fell into a star...

[MacLeod]

Well as he managed to get back to VOY, using the process again meant they should have been able to get to Earth, and have the EMH tell starfleet medical how to undo the effects of Warp 10 flight.

It was a poor episode, I believe even the writter wants to forget about (that says something)

Wait sorry show over.

[Christopher]

KingDaniel wrote:

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I don't see the problem with the "evolution". We evolve to suit our envoronment - and Tom's evolution was insanely distorted to adapt to bizarre infinite transwarp that triggered it.

The problem was with the way the Doctor explained it:

The only difference between natural evolution and what happened to Mister Paris is that his changes took place over a twenty four hour period. Somehow, travelling at infinite velocity accelerated the natural human evolutionary process by millions of years. It's possible that Mister Paris represents a future stage in human development, although I can't say it's very attractive.

All of that is complete and utter nonsense. First off, evolution is a species-wide, generational process, so it doesn't make sense to say that the metamorphosis of an individual organism is equivalent to the evolution of his species. And the rest is based on the foolish assumption that there is a specific, predetermined evolutionary process that's somehow built into our cells and can be "accelerated" to make an individual change into his species' "future form." That's rubbish. The rate of evolution as well as its direction are functions of environment. A species whose environment remains unchanged can itself remain unchanged for tens of millions of years, like the coelacanth. And it's not like our current DNA somehow contains the latent information of every future mutation it will ever have. There's no way that travel at any velocity could "trigger" the emergence of information that doesn't exist yet.

[JB2005]

I'd imagine that this thread came about because SF Debris reviewed Threshold today?

[You_Will_Fail]

SFdebris reviews threshold ages ago, he only just got around to re-uploading it.

[JB2005]

Well, yes, but since it's been re-released today I was just wondering if that was the reason for the thread, since a lot of the stuff we're discussing is considered in that review!

[MacLeod]

You_Will_Fail wrote:

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SFdebris reviews threshold ages ago, he only just got around to re-uploading it.

Listening to it now.