Did you find yourself at a loss to explain how confused the premise is?? Going from warp 9.5 (or whatever) to INFINITE SPEED just....makes me just go "whaaaa."? Whatever 9.5 is whether its 9.5 x 9.5 x 9.5 x 9.5 or something else....its not even remotely related to INFINITE SPEED. The term 'warp 10' is meaningless if its actually infinite speed. Increasing a ships speed and going infinite speeds are two completely different problems. It would be like discovering a more efficient means of extracting oil from shale and expecting to apply that to cold fusion. And holy shit...if Paris is such an 'infinite speed' aficionado that he's a new form of dilithium and a brainstorm session away from solving it...WTF is he doing in the command branch of SF??
As for "Threshold", it never happened! It was just a nightmare Paris had after eating too much Leola Root stew or drinking too much of Neelix’s coffee. The best evidence for this episode being nothing but a nightmare is the fact that no one ever mentioned the events in the episode in later episodes. I mean, Paris almost dies, turns into a lizard, abducts Janeway who is also turned into a lizard and they have lizard “children” and no one talks about it or jokes about it later!
I had read the TNG tech manual so I knew warp 10 was infinite speed. The evolution thing was just so dumb though.
Yeah, the concept of the term "warp 10" as a placeholder for infinite speed had already been around for several years. But the way they depict it in this episode, as something you can accelerate up to (even with the benefit of this new "transwarp drive" they came up with)... that was a bunch of hooey. The TNG-era warp scale is on a curve which never actually reaches warp 10. So the best you could ever do is add more numbers after the decimal point of warp 9.9999~whatever. Kor
It peaked my curiosity when I first watched it but after thinking about it for a minute when it was over...
It's arguably more entertaining than any number of safe, sane, middle-of-the road episodes. That ending with the salamanders made my jaw drop in a good way. I still remember that moment, which is more than I can say for a lot of less wild-and-crazy episodes.
I found "Threshold" more plausible than TNG's "Genesis" where the crew turn into Neanderthals, spiders, and venom spewing creatures. FWIW
When I first saw Threshold I was only ten or eleven and had no idea the science was bad. I loved the episode. Now that I know the science is bad? I don't care, I still love the episode.
I look at Threshold the same way I look at Spocks Brain. The episode ends weirdly, but there was some good in there, like the first 20 minutes. As for the whole Warp effect, yeah it's probably implausible, but it was fun to explore.
So i gave this some thought cause i'm a big ol nerd. Maybe it works like this. The TNG scale is still (X) to the fourth power, BUT....'warp 10' 10,000 times the speed of light is impossible within the framework of warp theory.....BUTTTTTTTTTT (This is a big ol butt) for some reason INFINITE SPEED ISSSSS theoretically possible within whatever warp equations they have. So thats what they call Warp 10. Now...how the fuck you can occupy all points in the universe at once??? Wouldn't you kill everything? Wouldn't you have infinite mass? Seems to me one shouldn't be striving to break the fucking universe.
So they know Warp 10 turns you into a salamander. I don't know why they just didn't go Warp 9.9999999etc? Or have the EMH subject the crew to anti-protons or whatever after they hit Warp 10 and got home.
Or put everyone is stasis, and let the computer fly the ship. And let the EMH contact Starfleet command over subspace radio when they get close enough.
I guess the same goes for TNG Conspiracy. Which I hate. On the other hand, I love TNG Genesis with Reg Barclay as spider.......
I haven't watched the ep in years, but it never struck me as being anywhere near as bad as so many people make it out to be. There are much worse episodes of Voyager, and many poorer episodes of other Trek series. If the utterly stupid nonsense with the salamanders didn't exist it would actually be a decent ep, as I recall. But all anyone remembers is the idiotic bits, which granted are pretty damned idiotic. Indeed. I don't get why this piece of crap (which is on my list of eps that are much, much worse than "Threshold") isn't regarded with the same derision "Threshold" routinely attracts. "Genesis" has no redeeming features of any kind, IMO; it's just complete garbage.