Some funny random trivia about "Threshold"

[Lance]

I was just looking through the Memory Alpha article of this, and more than a few little remembered facts about this much derided episode amused me. So, I thought I'd share them here too.

* The episode won an Emmy. Yes, really. Albeit one for "best makeup". Probably well deserved, but still, the sentence "The Emmy-award winning Star Trek: Voyager episode 'Threshold'!" just doesn't exactly roll off the tongue easily, does it?

* In addition to this, it was the third highest-rating episode of the entire second season of Voyager. Think about the apparent ramifications of this for a moment. I wonder how many of those viewers never tuned it again?

* The episode was one of the few Voyager episodes to be commemorated with a special release Playmates action figure (an 'evolved' Tom Paris with his Lizard offspring). Surely a 'must buy' for Christmas stockings everywhere.

* Robert Duncan McNeil, bless him, did his very best to try and rationalise the story in his own mind... despite his seemingly being completely baffled by it. "[Tom] breaks warp ten, starts shedding skin, he kidnaps the captain and then he becomes one with the universe, [he and Janeway] are salamanders, and have a baby [...] "That was a bizarre show, it really was."

* Brannon Braga, despite being contrite and apologetic about how awful the episode turned out to be, later executive-produced a completely unrelated TV show called 'Threshold'. I'm not convinced he wasn't just trolling all of us.

And finally:

* Despite the show's later efforts to decanonize the events of the episode by claiming that no-one's ever broken Warp 10, it's still there on my DVD boxset. So, clearly it still must have happened, dammit.

 

[Lipton]

I actually saw that action figure in the store once (there were like a stack of ten of them) when I was a kid and wondered what drugs Playmates were on when they decided to make it. It didn't sell, obviously, I don't know why the stores ordered it.

Yes, the makeup was exceptional, but kind of gory. I mean the tongue, man, the tongue!

They really should have left it out of the main season two episode list and stuck it in with the special features as "The Episode of Shame".

If I can point to any episode of Voyager that was a waste of an episode, this was one. They could have done so many other things with that hour of airtime.

 

[hux]

I've never understood the hatred for Threshold

The warp thing in particular never bothered me. Warp ten is the threshold for warp speed; anything over that results in weirdness. Fair enough.

I was more astonished by how you lose a tongue and turn into a different species (and yet get turned back?) I love the way that after Chakotay and Tuvok find the creatures, they then cut to the doctor saying he restored them huh, what, oh ok. To be fair though, other shows have had equal silliness in that department. Didn't the TNG crew de-evolve

It's a fun, silly episode full of science fiction cheese. I'd rather watch "Threshold" than a patronising, horrendous episode about faith like "Sacred ground" or yet more episodes about holograms realising they're holograms.

 

[Starborn Dragon]

Threshold doesn't really make any sense at all.

Why would breaking Warp 10 cause Paris to be one with the universe and why would it case him to change into a Salamander?

It's not really evolution either.

And according to current scientific mode, you can't break the FTL barrier either. Although that's really just an unproven hypothesis that has been accepted as a kind of a religious dogma.

I personally believe that any belief can be treated like a religion if it is held so strongly a person can not even consider the fact that they could be wrong and expect and demand everybody else to accept their beliefs and believe the same way.

And science is not supposed to be that way either.

It is supposed to be concluded on what the evidence tells you, and to the best of my knowledge there is no real evidence that the FTL barrier can't be broken or gone around in some way. All there is is speculation, but for some reason the scientific community has accepted it as a hard law.

Meh, but what do I know.

 

[Kor]

I did not enjoy this episode.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

* Brannon Braga, despite being contrite and apologetic about how awful the episode turned out to be, later executive-produced a completely unrelated TV show called 'Threshold'. I'm not convinced he wasn't just trolling all of us.

Except that, as people often forget, Braga didn't create Threshold. Bragi F. Schut did. So I doubt he chose its title. Most of Braga's career has been as a producer on shows that other people created, like Threshold, 24, FlashForward, Terra Nova, and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. The only shows he does have creator credit on, Enterprise and Salem, are both co-creations with other people. He's not an auteur like Whedon or Sorkin or the like -- he's more of a journeyman producer who gets brought in to execute other people's ideas.

I've never understood the hatred for Threshold

The warp thing in particular never bothered me. Warp ten is the threshold for warp speed; anything over that results in weirdness. Fair enough.

Except that "warp ten" is actually supposed to be infinite speed. Early in TNG, Roddenberry wanted warp 10 to be an upper limit on warp speeds, but it was later decided that it would refer to infinite velocity, so there was no way anything could be beyond warp 10. That's why "Threshold" was talking about Tom's shuttle occupying every point in the universe at once if it hit warp 10. Since any number divided by infinity is zero, if you could travel at infinite speed, then it would take zero time to travel from your starting point to any other point in the universe -- but if it takes zero time to travel between them, then you occupy them simultaneously.

But talking about infinite speed with the finite label "warp 10" and the doubletalk about occupying every point at once is just confusing. So not many viewers understand that it's supposed to mean infinite speed rather than a finite limit.

I was more astonished by how you lose a tongue and turn into a different species (and yet get turned back?)

My personal rationalization, before I just started treating the episode as apocryphal, was that the salamander mutation was a trick played on transwarp travelers by the Q -- that traveling in an infinite velocity state meant trespassing in the Q's realm, and so they mutated people who tried it in order to scare them off.

 

[T'Girl]

If I can point to any episode of Voyager that was a waste of an episode, this was one.

Worse than the "evil clown" episode?

 

[Lipton]

Thanks, Christopher, for explaining the infinite velocity - I understand it much better now.

Hux, my main complaint with Threshold actually was that the timing of the direction was odd... made the whole thing seem ridiculous. To top it off, the only time I saw the episode was with my sister and she kept laughing out loud at every plot turn. Except the part where he pulled out his tongue. She was just like, "What?" and the look on her face made me laugh out loud that time.

I also did not like "Sacred Ground"... it was incredibly boring, somehow way more boring in execution than it would look on paper. I consider it to be a waste of an hour of airtime as well (and of the acting skills of the cast).

EDIT: T'Girl, I actually liked "The Thaw". It was funny in a good way to me. It makes sense to me that it would be rather like a dark comedy with that evil clown and all, although I'm not sure how funny they were trying to make it.

 

[Christopher]

Wow, "Sacred Ground" is one of my favorites. It's a thoughtful exploration of faith and a rather subversive story to tell within Star Trek's generally secular framework.

 

[hux]

My personal rationalization, before I just started treating the episode as apocryphal, was that the salamander mutation was a trick played on transwarp travelers by the Q -- that traveling in an infinite velocity state meant trespassing in the Q's realm, and so they mutated people who tried it in order to scare them off.

That could work as an explanation (or another super race with an equally warped sense of humour) it's the fact that they jump cut from salamanders to the doctor saying....."I've restored you"....that always cracks me up

That Doc sure is clever

Worse than the "evil clown" episode?

I've come full circle with "The Thaw". Used to utterly despise it but now I see it as campy, fun nonsense with a nice dark ending. (It's very TOS)

Wow, "Sacred Ground" is one of my favorites. It's a thoughtful exploration of faith and a rather subversive story to tell within Star Trek's generally secular framework.

As an atheist, I'd love to see some religious, spiritual or faith based episodes that are done with subtlety and intelligence but "sacred ground" just made me angry. It's nothing more than...."science doesn't have all the answers, you know"....the end

Not nearly interesting enough for me

 

[Lipton]

Wow, "Sacred Ground" is one of my favorites. It's a thoughtful exploration of faith and a rather subversive story to tell within Star Trek's generally secular framework.

Hmm... Well, that does seem like an interesting basic concept, I just didn't think it executed well. Though I suppose once you've produced a whole episode, you have to air it. Perhaps I should watch it again... I never did see the first 10 minutes of it and the only time I saw it was when I had a headache.

I think my opinion of an episode (if I only see it once) is often swayed by my environment, unfortunately.

 

[Christopher]

I've come full circle with "The Thaw". Used to utterly despise it but now I see it as campy, fun nonsense with a nice dark ending. (It's very TOS)

I like how surreal and theatrical it is, like a Twilight Zone episode. I generally like these Joe Menosky stories where the enemy is an abstract concept. And it gives the Doctor the best entrance ever.

 

[Lance]

In all seriousness, my main beef with "Threshold" isn't that it's a bad episode (although it *is* a bad episode ), but more that the idea needed at least a two-parter to be explored in more detail. As others have said, the biggest problem is that the episode throws around a lot of big ideas, but because they needed to have it all wrapped up in 42 minutes, it feels too rushed. A "Part 2" might've given it all a bit more weight.

Mind you, someone will come along now and correctly point out the conundrum: "You want two episodes of Threshold? Are you craaaayzzzeee man?!"

Threshold doesn't really make any sense at all.

Why would breaking Warp 10 cause Paris to be one with the universe and why would it case him to change into a Salamander?

It's not really evolution either.

I think the general idea Brannon was going for was that after a species has reached a peak in their evolution, then rather than evolving further, they might instead revert to a more primal phase. But none of that has got any scientific grounding, it's just Brannon Braga doing one of his classic mindf*** premises (as others have stated, Tommy P 'evolving' into a salamander makes about as much sense as Reg Barclay devolving into a spider).

 

[Melakon]

I actually saw that action figure in the store once (there were like a stack of ten of them) when I was a kid and wondered what drugs Playmates were on when they decided to make it. It didn't sell, obviously, I don't know why the stores ordered it.

Playmates probably blackmailed them-- 'Oh, you want Seven of Nine? Well, for every one of her, you have to order twelve Thresholds.'

 

[Lipton]

You're probably right on there, dude!

 

[Nebusj]

I think the general idea Brannon was going for was that after a species has reached a peak in their evolution, then rather than evolving further, they might instead revert to a more primal phase.

Which is itself an idea that's got a ... well, long, if not exactly reputable ... heritage in science fiction. See Edmond Hamilton's ``The Man Who Evolved'' for a pretty good if very 1931 treatment of the subject.

 

[Christopher]

I think the general idea Brannon was going for was that after a species has reached a peak in their evolution, then rather than evolving further, they might instead revert to a more primal phase.

Which is right in a sense, but very, very wrong in other senses. Braga was right to challenge the assumption that a species' evolution would inevitably take it "upward," since there is no specific direction to evolution. It is certainly possible for an evolutionary change to reverse itself, given the right circumstances. But he was very, very wrong to present a species' evolutionary future as some sort of predictable, preset program already built into its genetic structure, because evolution is simply a response to environmental changes, and can proceed very differently depending on how a species' environment changes. The same population splitting off into different environments will have descendants splitting into two separate species, which is how much speciation occurs. So it's impossible to predict a species' evolutionary future or "accelerate" its evolution along some guaranteed, predetermined path.

 

[Catarina]

I liked Sacred Ground. A tad slow paced for my taste, but watchable.

 

[Karzak]

What's so tough to understand about the action figure? The thinking was likely that it'd was another cool alien toy to play with.

I mean, look at the sheer ridiculous amount of alien action figures from Star Wars. No brainer, guys. No brainer.

 

[Melakon]

Yeah, but you expect no brainers from Star Wars.