Could a few extra lines have saved 'Threshold'

[Deks]

To be frank ... it was explained in the episode that they discovered a new form of Dilithium crystals that stay stable at much higher warp frequencies.

What SF lacked was likely a substance that would allow the engines to push through the threshold.
The Voyager crew had access to the research done on Transwarp and simply with the new substance at hand, they were able to cross the threshold.

Like I said, there are numerous ways to explain away what transpired in Threshold and it would fit within the parameters of Trek universe.
The Doctor also could have witnessed a mutation that looked like evolution, but in effect perhaps it was not.
Or there were a million other factors that could have explained Tom's mutation.

Bottom line is that the episode in question is apparently not like-able to multitude of people, and that's why it was discarded ... fine, but there were numerous other episodes of Trek from other series that were far worse in comparison.

 

[TheGodBen]

To be frank ... it was explained in the episode that they discovered a new form of Dilithium crystals that stay stable at much higher warp frequencies.

What SF lacked was likely a substance that would allow the engines to push through the threshold.
The Voyager crew had access to the research done on Transwarp and simply with the new substance at hand, they were able to cross the threshold.

That's known as Peter Griffin logic.

Firstly, they start the episode by having Harry saying that warp 10 is a theoretical impossibility, therefore scientists and engineers back home clearly hadn't come up with schematics for an infinite velocity engine because... everything they knew said it was impossible. Secondly, even if they came up with an engine that did something which is scientifically impossible, they were still going to have structural integrity problems getting the ship to hold together, problems that three novices when it comes to infinite velocity engineering should not be able to overcome. They even talked about this in the episode, but the solution was absurd; Neelix gives a folksy tale and that gives an Tom idea about advanced theoretical physics.

Like I said, there are numerous ways to explain away what transpired in Threshold and it would fit within the parameters of Trek universe.
The Doctor also could have witnessed a mutation that looked like evolution, but in effect perhaps it was not.
Or there were a million other factors that could have explained Tom's mutation.

None of which would have addressed the core of Braga's idea for the show, which was that evolution might actually be de-evolution. Braga didn't come up with the lizard stuff and then decide to explain it as being evolution, he came up with the evolution idea and decided to dramatise that concept by turning Tom into a lizard. To remove the evolution stuff from the story is to undermine the whole point of the story.


Brannon Braga himself disowned the episode and said that its events should be discounted due to all the scientific flaws it was based around as well as being plain bad. For all intents and purposes this episode is not considered canonical, nor should it be.

 

[SpyOne]

Let's transpose this to the real world.
A submarine (let's say british) is stranded on antarctica. The crew has to survive there. One of the crewmen has read wikipedia articles on nuclear physics, and is good with his hands. As life is somewhat boring in antarctica, he spends time buildsing the world's first fusion nuclear power plant, with a little help from a couple of other crewmembers.

Who would buy that plot ?

The audience of Iron Man? (Ducks and runs).

 

[stj]

None of the so-called science in Threshold is salvageable.
Star Trek has been in the hands of writers who think big words are bad for far too long to devote any time to the fictional science or its exposition.

On the other hand, the goofy science is just technobabble for a Tom Paris story. People who are fans of Paris often find a good deal of entertainment in Threshold for that reason. The rest of us notice that the Tom Paris story is the crudest sort of suffering hero fantasy, where Tom still gets to knock up the redoubtable Janeway. There is no dramatic tension, no thematic weight, just lots of Paris emo. And we still don't get a sense of what's wrong between Paris and Dad, so wrong that he goes into the Maquis. Nothing can make this good television.

 

[Withers]

More than this episode was stupid for transforming Paris and Janeway into lizards that mated in a swap it was stupid because it exemplified Voyager's inability to differentiate science and technology from straight up magic. This plagued the show from basically the pilot to the series finale like no other Trek show. There are so many examples of it the list would take forever to write- but if you're looking for one, clear cut case, Threshold is it.

-Withers-​