Retro Review: Threshold
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When Paris attempts to travel in a shuttle at Warp 10, he breaks the barrier but begins to mutate.
Plot Summary: Paris, Torres, and Kim are working on a plan to break the Warp 10 barrier, which in principle would allow them to exist at every point in the universe simultaneously and then get Voyager home in an instant. They are stymied until a comment from Neelix gives Paris an idea for a solution, which he then successfully tests on the holodeck. Janeway is amenable to an immediate test by a pilot in a shuttle, but the Doctor advises that Paris not fly the mission because of a genetic anomaly that could kill him. But Paris pleads with Janeway to be allowed to take his shot at greatness, so she agrees to let him fly the mission. The shuttle successfully breaks the barrier, disappearing from the ship’s sensors just after reaching Warp 10, but Paris falls unconscious upon returning and his body quickly begins to break down. First he becomes allergic to water, then he stops being able to breathe oxygen, and while the crew tries to keep up with these shifts, his tongue falls out. The Doctor announces that Paris is evolving, becoming an amphibian-like creature, and begins to develop a plan to resequence his DNA. Before he can do so, however, Paris escapes from confinement, abducts Janeway aboard a shuttle, and departs at Warp 10. When eventually Tuvok and Chakotay track the shuttle to the surface of a planet, they discover that Paris and Janeway have both become giant salamanders who have mated and produced three offspring. Because there is abundant plant life on the planet, Chakotay decides to leave the babies there. Back on the ship, the Doctor restores Janeway and Paris to their previous physiology, and Janeway gives Paris a commendation for being the first to reach Warp 10.
Analysis: The first time I watched “Threshold,” I was offended by it, and I stand by my statement that this is the worst episode of Star Trek ever filmed including both “Turnabout Intruder” and “Shades of Grey” – though, interestingly, it is not even close to the most offensive episode even of Voyager, a title reserved for the fourth season’s it-doesn’t-count-as-rape-if-there-wasn’t-penetration story “Retrospect.” In fact, I spent most of this rewatch laughing at “Threshold.” It’s the only episode of Voyager that was ever interesting to my younger son – who “met” Kate Muglrew at a convention held before he was born, when I was six months pregnant with him, and who had Voyager fans hanging around for his entire early life. This is the legendary “salamander babies” episode, whom he knew as action figure accessories before he’d even seen them on screen, and who doesn’t love inch-long plastic salamander babies? I have given away most of my Voyager paraphernalia, but I still have those, along with poor “Threshold Tom Paris” who has a newt face, though sadly his molded-on plastic clothes don’t come off to show the rest of his amphibian physique. I highly recommend watching “Threshold” as the comedy that I believe it was secretly intended to be, because even on his worst day, Brannon Braga can’t possibly believe that Star Trek fans are this stupid. I hate having to take this episode seriously enough to review it when I’d prefer to focus on moments like the Doctor being asked to wake Paris and doing so by yelling, “WAKE UP!”. There are parts that are idiotic and parts that are just plain sub-mental. It’s so much more fun to pretend that this was always intended as parody, or a response to a silly fan fiction prompt — “Under what circumstances would Janeway have sex with Paris, and what would their children look like?”
Okay, let’s talk about the science fiction stuff. My understanding of warp theory is about equivalent to Neelix’s – meaning that I could probably accidentally come up with the key to saving Voyager that none of the trained people on the crew can do – but I thought warp had to do with distorting the space-time continuum in such a way that travelers can in essence jump across distances insurmountable by sublight methods, essentially creating folds in space. It involves geometry and logarithms and paradoxes and possibly cosmic bubbles and strings, but the only way it could allow a person to be in all places in the universe at the same time would be in a static pocket universe, not our constantly dynamic one. Instead we’re supposed to believe that Paris achieves infinite velocity, yet can keep chatting in normal spacetime over a comm system with his crewmates until his DNA starts degrading…why? On account of his atoms being stretched too thin across the entire universe? It’s never explained. Nor does anyone address that fact that, although Picard’s crew learned that extremely high warp speeds were destroying the fabric of the universe, making the leap past the Warp 10 threshold isn’t considered particularly dangerous. Couldn’t Paris have ripped the entire universe apart? And even assuming we’ll let all those questions slide on the grounds of insufficient scientific knowledge – I mean, no one has ever traveled at Warp 10, so we don’t know exactly how it would work, though it makes no more sense that the shuttle’s body and nacelles would shear apart at that speed than at Warp 9.9, especially if Paris’s own body holds together – why in heck would our mammalian DNA revert to that of an amphibian, which is an earlier rather than later stage in our evolution, though apparently the Doctor doesn’t know that? And how would we keep speaking clearly if our tongues fell out? So many scientific inanities, so little time.
I’ve given Star Trek a pass on ridiculous science quite often as long as there was an impressive storyline or character development, so let’s get back to those instead of belaboring Paris becoming allergic to water even though human blood is more than 90 percent water. Let’s see: we already knew Paris wanted to be a hero, we already knew he wished he could impress the father with whom he never got along, we already knew he’d been interested in sex from an early age, we already knew he liked the looks of Janeway. We can guess he’s right that near-death is the best thing that will ever happen to him, though sadly he can still whine even after his tongue falls out. We didn’t already know that given an evolutionary excuse, he’d abscond with and impregnate the captain, but hey, somehow that’s not a huge surprise! What is a surprise is that both Paris and Janeway (who was excited before launch about her dog expecting puppies) go along without blinking with Chakotay’s decision to abandon their children on a Delta Quadrant planet, even if they’re salamander children resulting from assault and rape. Presumably the Doctor could have fixed the salamander part. Now the best-case scenario is that the babies will starve to death or meet with an accident before they get eaten, adopted by a native species, or worst of all turn out to be compatible with local fauna, because for a captain obsessed with the Prime Directive, leaving unchecked Alpha Quadrant DNA on a planet about which they know nothing is a violation of the worst sort. Those babies could kill all the local species with bacteria they’re carrying or with unchecked predatory instincts, they could reproduce and overwhelm the local population, they could continue to “evolve” as quickly as Paris did and conquer the Delta Quadrant…or, which would most serve everyone right, they could be assimilated by the Borg and used as the means to conquer Earth.
Nope, those babies should not be in the Delta Quadrant. They should not be anywhere except, as I said, in terrible fan fiction — I have, after all, seen fanfic in which Spock goes into pon farr and rapes Kirk because he secretly considers Kirk his true love and life mate, and Kirk forgives Spock because Spock isn’t in his right mind, but then Kirk finds out he’s pregnant with Spock’s butt babies, and McCoy manages to safely deliver the kids and they all live happily together in a flexible group marriage with Uhura and Chapel. In truth, I think that this scenario is hotter when it’s Thor, Loki, and Bruce Banner from The Avengers, with a side of Natasha and Tony, because Thor totally would do it if he got exposed to that Infinity Stone, and Loki totally could do it since he can turn into a girl, and maybe it’s gross that they’re brothers but Loki is adopted and anyway it probably wouldn’t be rape OR incest because Loki would probably go for it. Ahem, what, I do have standards! The thing is, “Threshold” isn’t bad fan fiction; it’s canon. Can anyone name a sci-fi franchise where a male captain gets abducted and raped, let alone impregnated? Even if it happened – and even though some viewers are okay with fictional rape, so if you don’t mind imagining this, if you weren’t as revolted as I was by the scene in Outlander where Jamie’s body is sexualized by the camera while he’s violated by his enemy, in the same way that Daenerys Targaryen’s body is sexualized by the camera as she’s sobbing through her brutal, barely-consensual wedding night – can you imagine any of the male captains then giving his abductor-rapist a commendation? If Janeway is somehow trying to save face by implying that it was secretly consensual, what are we to make of the hint that we can’t see someone as a leader if that person has also been a victim? Even though Janeway is arguably the worst leader ever, risking a crucial crewmember and a shuttle without asking for a mechanical test, I’m not laughing now. I’m thinking the only good part of this episode is Michael Jonas showing his loyalty to Seska, committing treason to Voyager.
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Great review, but the interface here is awful. Every time I scroll down, the text bounces up and down. Fix?
Could have just said, “Nope!”
An up to date modern browser such as Chrome will be fine.
I don’t hate this episode as much as most do. It’s stupid, but I always value episodes that are a bit offbeat, or try something different or just are somehow interesting – rather than banally boring episodes.
Three words: Jump the Shark!!!
I was impressed with the professionalism of all the actors involved. How they managed to refrain from either laughing or vomiting when presented with this script is beyond me.
This episode is one I simply refuse to accept as cannon, because it’s so banal. Downright stupid. I assume the shuttle launch followed by Voyager also jumping to warp happened on other occasions offscreen. But one single good visual sequence an entire episode does not make!
I didn’t even consider it would be non-consensual, just two frogs getting it on
If memory serves, even the writers later dismissed this episode from canon by having, I THINK, Paris, say that no one had ever reached Warp 10.
Possibly the lowest point at least in the Voyager series. Possibly the whole franchise. Then I think of shows like “The Way to Eden,” and it gets harder to say if this was the lowest point in the franchise or not. I usually skip this one.
Too bad the only people who decide what is or is not canon are the owners of the franchise huh.
Umm, there was no rape, with penetration or otherwise, in Retrospect, Seven’s supposed memories of being attacked were false, the crew’s investigation showed that the person she accused was innocent. Seriously don’t know where you get some of this stuff Michelle.
Paramount / CBS decide what is official canon, yes. We can all choose for ourselves what we will accept within the films and series on an individual level.
Regardless of how you want to perceive Warp Theory, the premise in this episode is utterly ridiculous because the notion of “Warp 10″ is supposed to be impossible. I think of Warp Theory is being like a circle, the outer edge of the circle being the regular universe and Warp Drive distorts space so the the ship is in a lower, smaller, circle. It can bend this space incredibly well and fast and since it’s now in a lower circle the distance between two points is smaller. It goes to the second point, unfolds space and emerges back on the outer rim at the new destination. The ship never moves than maybe .5c it’s just that it moves across a smaller distance so that, relative to the real universe, it’s effectively traveling the speed of light.nn”Warp 10” would be the center of the circle, the node of it since all points are now as close as possible to one another as is possible. “Occupying all points in the universe at once.” But it’s in another dimension so it’s not physically there.nnThe problem is with any way you want to look at it is that it would take enormous levels of energy to fold space that deeply. Not “infinite” energy since you’re just going into deeper space (not moving at an infinite speed) but I think of it the deeper in the circle you go the more energy it takes to press in. Sort of like pushing down on a really taut tarp. Obviously it’s easy to get to 2000c since that’s around maximum warp, but we also know that that’s a fairly “slow” speed in terms of traveling between two points in the universe.nnAnyway, “Warp 10” is something Starfleet has likely been researching and studying for decades, they have their top engineering minds working on this and trying to figure out someway to achieve it or to push warp speeds faster and faster and their fastest ships can only manage 2000c for short periods of times without needing rest. “Warp 10” being orders of magnitude faster than that not something we can quantify as a number because, in effect, it’s Infinite-C. nnVoyager is a tiny ship, with a so-so crew, meager resources and their chief-engineer was a rebel defector. Yet they’re able to best the smartest minds in the Alpha Quadrant and get a friggin’ shuttle craft to travel at “Warp 10.” This is like a bunch of middle-school boys playing with toy rockets to manage to achieve FTL travel by pretty much stumbling onto it. (And, yeah, I know rocketry really started out that way, but rocketry by comparison is “easy” and didn’t need to much of radical technology to achieve. Just unique adaptations of current technology. FTL travel is going to take marvels of science and things we’ve not even conceived of yet. Not something stumbled on by kids with bottle rockets.)nnBut, fine Voyager achieves “Warp 10” and it has the side-effect of turning you into salamander. nnBut doesn’t The Doctor find a cure/reversal for it at the end of the episode? So…. shouldn’t they be able to use this technology to get them home and then once there simply give everyone the cure to prevent the salamander effect. (And it’s said to be caused by accelerating evolution. Individuals don’t evolve, entire species do, and evolution occurs due to reaction and adaptation to the environment; it doesn’t have a pre-destined path.) This was one, of many, cases of Voyager doing the “Gilligan’s Island Effect.n Where “trying to get home” is the premise of the show so they can never truly get home until the end, but we also need to see attempts at them trying, and failing so we know that they’re not just accepting their fate for the sake of there being a show
Exactly what I was thinking. And the crew took her accusations seriously even though they were false. So I too, have no idea what the reviewer is talking about.
“The Way to Eden” certainly wasn’t GOOD, but I find it a lot easier to watch if I think of it as a time capsule from 46 years ago. At the time it was made, hippies were having sit-ins everywhere, singing their songs and somehow managing to shut down buildings. This seemed like an awful lot of power for young people to have, and mainstream American didn’t really understand it. That Star Trek dealt with it at all — even this badly — is kind of cool, and that they had Spock understand the hippies in the episode and even sort of approve of them was pretty radical.nnThe TOS episode I can’t really find any justification for is “And the Children Shall Lead.” About the only use I find for it is as a benchmark against which the fan productions can be judged. Are the Star Trek Continues or Star Trek New Voyages episodes perfect? Of course not. Are they better than “And the Children Shall Lead”? Usually, yes. 🙂 So I guess even it has its place. :-Dnn”Threshold,” on the other hand…
My fine old Victorian browser was good enough for A. Conan Doyle, and it’s good enough for me!
We reach. 😉
We often do! I like that. 🙂
Me too. But then again it’s only logical, isn’t it? You know, great minds think alike? 😛
If accepting the episode as canon I like to dismiss it as a weird dream Paris is having. No more entertaining but it at least explains the craziness.
“I mean, no one has ever traveled at Warp 10, so we donu2019t know exactly how it would work, though it makes no more sense that the shuttleu2019s body and nacelles would shear apart at that speed than at Warp 9.9″nnnnIt makes lots more sense, because the difference between Warp 9.9 and Warp 10 is an infinite difference. The shuttle would also need infinite power for structural integrity, infinite power for shielding to protect it from everything hitting it…
Kang has only this to say:nUgh.
Aw, love “Way to Eden”. A guilty, silly pleasure of mine. It gives Chekov a bit of a back story. It mirrors the hippie movement going on in the world at that time ( who’s to say something like that couldn’t have popped up in the future again?), there’s the discredited Timothy Leary professor type character, and on a more personal note – growing up in a house hold where pop music was verboten, it was kind of my introduction to something other than classical music. We used to sing the silly hippie songs from it. I love groovy Charles Napier in it. Guess Ben Stiller and me are the only ones who love it.
That’s real now! Soonest like he said!n
I love The Way to Eden. Big toothy grin Charles Napier as Adam. “Oh Herbert, you are stiff”! Crazy Dr Sevrin. “We respectfully request that you take us to Eden”. Groovy Tongo Rad “tell me, how do you breath with all those clothes?” And Spock’s groovy jam session session with the hippie chick and her bicycle wheel. Fun.
Any time Spock plays the lute, it’s an episode I want to see. 🙂
Yes, and now for Trek’s 50th anniversary those three words will be “Star Trek Beyond”, where nuKirk will literally “jump the shark” on a motorcycle just like Fonzie. Ayyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!nnnBehold the following still from the movie trailer:
I was curious, so just found Michelle’s last review:nnhttp://www.trektoday.com/reviews/voy/retrospect.shtml