I was watching Threshold the other night. In the opening scenes, Tom is piloting the shuttle, while Torres and Kim are running mission control. At the end of the scene, we discover that the Tom is really on the holodeck. Is there a real shuttle out in space that Tom is piloting through the holographic interface? If not, how does the computer know what kind of stresses that a warp 10 flight would produce? And if it was purely holographic, why couldn't Tom ask the computer for the fix instead of Neelix? In TNG, when there are unknowns, the holodeck doesn't give back information (Elementary, Dear Data). On the whole, I didn't think it was too bad an episode. Sure you had some goofy Newts, but, TNG had some weird (de)evolution with Genesis and that was a pretty cool episode. What killed it for me was the Newt Puppet Paris and Janeway. The Newt babies looked good to me. Sad to see Paris pining for Kes, especially when he is working so closely with B'Elanna. Janeway cockblocks him though.
It wasn't the unpredictable stress of sustaining warp 10, it was the known stress of approaching warp 10 and the transwarp threshold as the 9.99 recurring, recurs deeper into the decimal places as they are still flying geometrically faster every second and yet never getting within kissing distance of Warp 10. They just assumed that once they got to warp 10, that every thing would be cool because the Borg arn't too bothered by the effort when they're scooning around at Warp 10.
The Borg used a different kind of drive system, one that utilized a network of transwarp conduits that aren't too unlike wormholes (aside from the Voyager using one to ultimately get back home, the Enterprise-D also used one to briefly visit the Delta Quadrant in TNG's "Descent" two parter). http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/_...en/images/c/c5/Transwarp_conduit_topology.jpg
Do you really think Tom would have thought about the Borg at all in Threshold? You know how the Federation welcomes youngling races who figure out Warp into the Galactic community with a warm hand shake? Janeway should have been worried that someone would be attracted by their transwarp experiments or their slipstream experiments or their enhanced warp drive experiments from Course: Oblivion, just like the Traveller got a woody when he say how tight Wesley's potential was in that boy geniuses catsuit.
What I don't get about this episode is that in one scene they mention that the Doctor did a physical exam on Paris and the results showed that because of some physical ailment there was a big chance that the Warp 10 shuttle trip would kill Paris. Once Captain Janeway learned that the trip would likely kill Tom, she told him that someone else would have to pilot the shuttle. But after he said, "pretty please Captain, let me pilot the shuttle" she basically says, "well, okay, I guess you can!" It didn't seem like Janeway to just let Tom risk his life because he really wanted to be the test pilot. On a side note, if someone else flew the shuttle and the test flight had proved that it was safe to fly Warp 10 I wonder what Captain Janeway would have done with Paris if there was a 100% chance that it would kill him. Would she have left him somewhere in the Delta Quadrant or hope that the Doc was wrong and let Paris stay on the ship as they flew at Warp 10 back to the Alpha Quadrant.
How long could you drink %2 beer before you got tipsy, or %2 milk before you got a huge ass? Hmmm? So really after it happened once, it had really been been a %2 chance that it would happen to him every time he went to transwarp? Over the course of the show I can think of at least 4 other times Tom went to transwarp, even if a transwarp conduit is like a Faraday cage protecting passengers from all the weird freaky shit that happens in outer transwarp space. Did they have to reverse this Salamander metamorphosis happening to him every time he went to transwarp, or did the Doctor figure out an inoculation that he had to take once a month for just in case?
Obviously, the Salamander metamorphosis was not limited solely to Paris, so some extra shielding must have been put into place, or the Doctor just inoculated everybody as needed.
The biggest question is why didn't they use the tech to get home, the EMH wouldn't have been affected and could have told Starfleet Medical how to reverse the side-effects.
My suggestion is that perhaps not everyone could have been desalamanderized. If the Doctor told had Janeway that a third of the crew wouldn't survive desalamanderization, then she'd have rejected trying.
Now I'm picturing one of the below-decks crew hearing the one-third risk of permanent salamanderization and piping up, ``Well, that's okay, Cap'n, I like salamanders!'' And then everybody feels awkward being around him.
They couldn't navigate at transwarp. Try driving a race car with cut breaks and no steering wheel. If they had to send the Doctor, it would have been months later, or even years later after they had figured out how to plot a course in a straightish line to Earth.
He slows down, and enters real space by turning the engine off. Imagine if every time you saw a stop sign in the distance when you are driving that you have to turn the engine off and pray that you don't roll to a stop eventually past the stop sign and in the middle of traffic. Also, because they couldn't technologically see real space while in transwarp space, the pilot had no idea if he would reappear in real space inside a star... Or if there is even any correlation between what a star does to the same spacial coordinates in a near enough parallel dimension? Although they didn't have the technology to navigate, once Paris started mutating he was able to mentally identify where he was in the universe and where he wanted to be in te universe and then be there instantaneously which tracks with how the Traveller explained the interconnectivity of time, space and mind. If Salamander Paris could pilot the shuttle at transwarp perfectly by seeing the entire universe, and picking mentally where to exit, that means that he chose that planet he dumped the kids on over Earth. Superior lifeforms do not deserve inferior homeworlds.
Um … yeah, he does. There's way more space than there is star. I mean, pick a point at random just within the part of the solar system that's closer to the sun than the Earth is. You have a 99.999 999 96 percent chance of picking a spot that is not inside the sun. And when you consider that most of the solar system is outside the Earth's orbit, and most of space nearby the sun is outside the solar system, you get some sense of just how hard it is to hit a star even if you're trying.
Space is big? Duh. If you want to talk about percentages, then the void between galaxies is infinitely larger than the space held in the universe by Galaxies. There's is a 99.9999(recurring infinitely) greater chance of being trapped in the void and never getting back to any galaxy ever again, no matter how long the fuel supply lasted on that shuttle. Alternatively the Shuttle could "appear" on deck 12 of Voyager at full warp and rip it's way out at impelling at warp 2. Exiting transwarp space at their level of technological sophistication was a lottery with unfathomable prizes.
They might have used the term transwarp but they were talking about travelling at Warp 10, i.e existing at every point in the universe at the same time. So yes Paris was able to naviagte back to the Voyager just fine. Transwarp as used by the Borg was different to the transwarp they were using in "Threshold". Transwarp basically came to mean anything faster than conventional warp drive.