We’re still not sure for whom this episode was
intended. Fans absolutely hate
it. Those involved in the production
disown it. The cast despises it.
It consistently ranks among the worst installments in the franchise’s
history.
“Threshold,” the 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager, is an hour of television with no real purpose. Bereft of logic, there is no lesson
learned and the consequences of the episode are never mentioned again. If this were Friends, it would be known as “The One Where Tom Paris Mutates Into
a Salamander and Spawns with Captain Janeway.”
And it also happened to be the episode that hooked me on
Star Trek.
I encountered “Threshold” when I was nine-years-old, at the
height of my pre-pubescence. It
hit the trifecta for elements that excite pre-teen sci-fi fans: Brazen
scientific exploration, the freakshow factor, and weird implied sex
scenes. My folks were in the other
room so I watched the show as though the TV were covered in a brown paper bag. This episode was full of scenes you
don’t want to watch with your parents[1].
The plot revolves around Tom Paris attempting to reach the
purely theoretical Warp 10, the speed where time and space become infinite[2].
Now, Tom Paris was my guy. Part of it is that he was the helmsman and boys like
pilots. Also, this is Voyager, which featured the most diverse
Star Trek cast up to that point[3]
so I naturally latched onto the white male character who looked like me.
When Janeway insists he skip the flight due to health
complications, Paris lashes out. Despite
having no character development other than ‘White Guy,’ he opens up and starts
ranting about never earning his father’s approval. He wants accomplishment. He wants, nay, needs to make history.
Essentially, Tom Paris is a whiny teenager with father
issues. “Okay, Voyager. I can empathize. What else have you got?”
So, Paris breaks the threshold for trans-warp flight, hits
Warp 10, and there is much rejoicing...until his DNA starts to rewrite itself. He slowly morphs into a strange being
looking like a cross between Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly and Benjamin Button. Paris starts to grow gills. He rips out his hair and sheds his
skin. He gets sexually frustrated
and wants to make out with Kes.
And then Tom Paris rips out his own tongue. Similar to “Genesis,” the TNG Barclay mutation episode[4],
I could not look away.
Kids have an inherent morbid curiosity and like to stare at
gross things, even if looking through fingers. There were the good old days when the Learning Channel would
only show surgeries and I would watch, change the channel and cringe, then
change back to gawk.
Back on Voyager, for no apparent reason Salamander Paris escapes
from sickbay, abducts Janeway, hijacks a shuttle, breaks the warp barrier again,
she mutates as well because of course she does, and they escape to a nearby
planet[5].
Tuvok and Chakotay give chase and find their missing
crewmates...who are now giant salamanders raising a family in a swamp. As they recover Paris and Janeway, the couple's amphibian offspring slither away into the primordial ooze, never to be
mentioned again. Presumably they
died on their way back to their home planet.
Cured, Paris and Janeway act like sensible adults after a
one-night-stand and agree to never talk about this ever again. Roll end credits: Executive producer - Rick Berman.
I turn off the TV, very much with the feeling of “I should
not have watched this.” This was
too adult. Too mature. Too insane. There was no going back to innocence after the off-screen
interspecies impregnation of Captain Janeway.
The other geeks and I talked about it at school on Monday. This wasn’t the well-ordered science
fiction of TNG. This wasn’t the
outer space politics of DS9. This
was bat-shit crazy. Typically
children process adult situations through giggling. But we didn’t giggle.
We uncomfortably nodded.
Agreed that the episode did, in fact, happen. Then we proceeded to speculate what sort of insanity would
happen next.
And with that uneasy fascination, I kept watching Voyager
every week.
Re-watching it as an adult, I can confirm that “Threshold”
is a truly terrible episode.
Nothing redeeming. Terrible
dialogue. Cheap CGI. Any entertainment value is predicated on viewing at the right time and right
place. It is the perfect
encapsulation of puberty.
Resenting your father. The
need to tame the unknown. Strange
changes to your body. And an
uncontrollable need to breed with the first woman you see.
The reason the episode is so maligned? It’s because the target wasn’t
audiences 18-49; rather, the show targeted a 9-year old boy on the cusp of
manhood[6].
-30-
[1] To be honest, I still can’t
watch an episode of Game of Thrones
with my dad without it feeling like father/son, Bob Crane, Auto-Focus porn
bonding.
[2] Which includes the painfully
protracted build-up where he hits Warp 9.7...then Warp 9.8...and then Warp
9.9...
[3] Much like the SuperFriends,
the crew included a Black Vulcan and an Apache Chief.
[4] Which warrants another essay
on what that did to my young brain.
[5] This sequence occurs in the
final five minutes of the episode, the story structure managing to be as
offensive as the sociological implications.
[6] That and the Emmys, as it
won the award for Best Makeup, causing future generations to call it “The
Emmy-Award Winning Threshold.”
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