[VOY] Lynch's Spoiler Review: "Threshold"
Scott Forbes
+--, tly...@alumni.caltech.edu writes:
|
|WARNING: The article below contains spoilers for VOY's
|"Threshold". Crossing the spoiler threshold may have unsavory
|consequences.
[snip]
|-- The closing scene felt like sniggering. Among other things, there
|was the continual reference to "mating" -- seems that no one can
|actually talk about having *sex*. (As a wonderfully mockable
|moment, however, right after the conversation stops being about
|mating, Janeway says to Paris that she's putting a commendation on
|his record. The line "you were GREAT!" immediately followed from
|me. :-) )
It could be worse. My ever-so-slightly-warped mind recalled a certain
Budweiser beer commercial during the amphibian scene:
Paris-salamander: "Bud."
Janeway-salamander: "Weis."
...and so on... ;-)
--
Scott Forbes for...@mcs.com
Timothy W. Lynch
"Threshold". Crossing the spoiler threshold may have unsavory
consequences.
======
Written by: Michael DeLuca (story); Brannon Braga (teleplay)
Directed by: Alexander Singer
Brief summary: An attempt by Lt. Paris to reach warp ten
("transwarp" velocities) goes horribly wrong, as Paris begins to
change into something not at all human.
======
Before I begin, a flashback. I wrote in my review of TNG's
"Genesis" a line which is now coming back into vivid focus. When
discussing "Genesis" and all the myriad reasons it was terrible, I said
"If this is going to be typical of 'Voyager', count me out."
Little did I know. "Threshold" was similar to "Genesis" in all the
worst ways: contradicting itself right and left, dumb ideas that should
never have been filmed in the first place, and a use of science so bad
that it borders on contemptuous.
First and foremost, given the episode as it unfolded, the Voyager crew
should be able to *keep using transwarp* to get home at this point. It
was said partway in that all they need to do is figure out a way to
steer; that is still true. But wait, you say, isn't everyone going to turn
into amphibian-like creatures? Yes, but that's obviously no problem;
it takes time to happen, and the Doctor's already figured out in what
direction to click his heels three times to rescue the crew. It is, simply
put, not an issue -- which means that we should see a devoted
emphasis put on trying to use transwarp to get Voyager home. Five'll
get you ten that we don't; "Threshold"'s intent seems to have been to
put transwarp firmly into "there are things man was not meant to
know" territory.
(The fact that the doctor managed to cure Paris and Janeway is one of
the inconsistencies I mentioned. He was very emphatic earlier about
the need for urgency in treating Paris; otherwise, he said, there would
be "no original DNA left" and a cure would be impossible. Not that
this ended up being the case when he actually had to try on the fully-
altered creatures, of course.)
Overall, the entire show felt like an excuse to do a let's-mutate-Paris
story, really. It was clear, for instance, that this technique *wouldn't*
get Voyager home; if it did, that's it for the series. Therefore, it was
clear something was going to go wrong. Given that a simple "sorry,
can't make it work" would be rather less than compelling, that
suggested a side effect -- thus Paris's plight. That in itself wouldn't
necessarily be a problem if the issue felt realistic or if Paris's woes
were handled well. They weren't.
For one thing, the conversation between Paris and Janeway when she
tries to remove him from the test flight was mostly pointless. It did
serve to get across Paris's motivations for having to be the one to go
on the flight, if a little bluntly; but that bluntness, combined with the
rather blatant parallels to a similar scene in "Apollo 13", greatly
weakened any power the scene might have had. (The way in which
the brain problems were set up as a plot point and then used as a red
herring was not entirely appreciated, either.)
Once Paris returns and starts changing, the entire episode gets silly to
the point of being almost unwatchable. While the actors did
everything they could (McNeill in particular), and occasional snatches
of dialogue were fun (I particularly liked Paris's self-claimed epitaph:
"here lies Thomas Eugene Paris, beloved mutant"), they couldn't even
come close to making up for the fundamental idiocies of what we were
being shown.
In a nutshell: Paris is dead, then he's not dead. He's growing extra
organs that no one can find any use for -- and that's never explained,
even later. After making claims that he's better than he was and
sounding paranoid, Paris removes his tongue and tries to escape. The
doctor proposing radiating Paris from the warp-core, but Paris
manages to escape showing strength that no one knew he had. He
kidnaps Janeway, steals the shuttle (continuing the tradition of shuttles
wearing a "Please Steal Me; Don't Worry, No One Will Stop You"
sign begun back in TNG), and goes at transwarp again, forcing her to
mutate along with him. Fortunately, Chakotay and Tuvok find them a
few days later, and the doctor manages to turn them back to normal --
but not until the mutant amphibian Janeway has had children by the
mutant amphibian Paris.
Everyone got that? More to the point, does anyone *want* that?
Let's see, where to begin about the problems there...
-- There's the usual "DNA is magic" concept, with the absolutely
stupid idea that changing someone's DNA will turn them into
something else instead of simply *killing them*. (Anyone who wants
more details on that can read my review of "Genesis"; I made the
points there and don't feel like repeating myself.) Bottom line: the
next DNA-is-magic Trek episode I see will be my last.
-- But wait; there's not only DNA idiocy, but the evolution idiocy
from "The Chase" is back, too. Apparently we can now predict
evolution without any knowledge of outside forces -- and apparently,
we're going to be very large, sentient salamanders. That certainly
puts my mind at ease. (It also, by the way, invalidates the humanoid-
as-end-result idea of "The Chase" -- I wish I could feel pleased about
that.)
-- Continuing that idea, apparently evolution is something that
happens to *individuals* now. I won't even start in on that.
-- As a nitpick, Paris at one point is getting hit with "0.057 amu's of
antiproton radiation". An extremely interesting concept, that -- given
that 1 amu (short for "atomic mass unit") is essentially the mass of one
proton. I'd love to know how Torres pulled that off.
-- As a non-science objection, Chakotay and Tuvok apparently have
no compunction about leaving Janeway's and Paris's offspring
behind. Okay, all well and good in terms of not wanting to embarrass
the captain -- but this is presumably a sentient race (at least, I'd hope
the "future of human evolution" would be such). Introducing a new
race isn't a massive violation of the Prime Directive? Riiiiight.
-- The closing scene felt like sniggering. Among other things, there
was the continual reference to "mating" -- seems that no one can
actually talk about having *sex*. (As a wonderfully mockable
moment, however, right after the conversation stops being about
mating, Janeway says to Paris that she's putting a commendation on
his record. The line "you were GREAT!" immediately followed from
me. :-) )
As I said, the actors did what they could with a godawful story, and
occasionally the dialogue got clever enough to overshadow the story
for a line or two (Chakotay's and Tuvok's exchange about how to
write this up in the log, for instance). Jonas's report to his Kazon
operative was also of interest. On the whole, however, "Threshold"
is a show that, while not as bad as "Genesis" for the first three-
quarters of the episode, made up for lost time in the last 15 minutes.
Unless you're a completist, and possibly even if you're one,
"Threshold" is a show to avoid at all costs.
So, to sum up:
Writing: Occasional glimmers of a good line or an interesting
character idea, but woefully outmatched by one of the dumbest
Trek story ideas ever constructed.
Directing: To be honest, it was difficult to tell; when I'm shuddering
that badly, I can't always look for it.
Acting: Most of the cast did what they could.
OVERALL: 2.
NEXT WEEK:
Tuvok is seduced by the dark side of ... oh, no, wait, it's a mind-
meld. My fault.
Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
tly...@alumni.caltech.edu
"I don't know how I'm going to enter this into my log."
"I look forward to reading it."
-- Chakotay and Tuvok
--
Copyright 1996, Timothy W. Lynch. All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
This article is explicitly prohibited from being used in any off-net
compilation without due attribution and *express written consent of the
author*. Walnut Creek and other CD-ROM distributors, take note.
Martin H Duke
Boy, this one is disappointing. What could have been a very interesting
"weird things in space" episodes yet fell down in a genetics mishmash that
rivaled TNG's "Genesis" for stultifyingly bad science. This one is slightly
better than that tripe, but is nevertheless a terrible piece of work.
PLOT:
The notion of transwarp drive itself is intriguing, as it dates all the way
back to the Excelsior in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock." The concept
of infinite speed and being everywhere at once gets my brain going. But one
of the things that I've liked about DS9 and Voyager is that the divinity of
the crew is downplayed; the brightest minds in the galaxy are at home doing
research, not on starships. Except for Bashir's first-in-his-class medical
breakthroughs, people in the field ought not to be able to discover things
that those working with the greater resources at home can't.
I find it very hard to believe that Torres, Kim, and Paris whipped something
up that Federation scientists have been trying to do for 90 years. I'm also
wondering what possible connection this could have with the transwarp conduits
in TNG's "Descent." There doesn't seem to be much similarity.
Of course, the fact that a slow shuttle can suddenly approach Warp 10 is
another matter, but we'll leave that for another day.
Technical concerns aside, the story through the first two test flights was
acdeptable. The discussion of scrubbing Paris's flight because of his
enzymatic imbalance was very reminiscent of Yeager's cracked ribs in "The
Right Stuff." I thought that the flights, Paris's disappearance, and his
sudden reappearance were all done very well, even if it was extremely
improbable that the shuttle should happen to appear somewhat nearby Voyager
each time.
When Paris lurches between life and death in sickbay, things start to come
apart. His directionless babbling and strange requests as he faces death were
very well done, with Kes's kiss shortly after death a perfect capstone to the
scene. His resurrection is sufficiently spooky. But the problem arises with
precisely what is happening to him. Do these people ever get on the net?
Don't they know what happened the last time they tried an evolution or
'devolution' storyline? Hasn't anyone ever explained to them basic genetics?
Given that we're dealing with a bizarre time/space phenomenon, things aren't
as bad as the funky disease in "Genesis," but they were pretty bad. I thought
they might have gone in the direction of Paris becoming an omniscient God a la
TOS's "Where No Man has Gone Before," as Paris is confronted with the immensity
of the universe and his mind's attempt to process it, but instead we find out
that humans evolve into amphibious lizards. Yippee. More about that later.
Things totally break down soon afterwards. Paris decides to escape and run
away with Janeway for no apparent reason. Doc and Torres come up with a
solution that is silly, even if it is glossed over; mercifully, the writers
didn't try to justify it with buckets of technobabble. In a rushed sequence,
Chakotay finds them, and Doc waves his Magic Wand to make it all right again,
as if they had the mumps. Janeway and Paris have a little talk (which was
wavered back and forth between decent dialogue and total insanity), and they
chuckle about the kids they left behind on the planet. Voyager flies off into
the sunset.
CHARACTERIZATION:
Surprisingly, the characterization here was pretty strong. Most of the
characters behaved more or less true to form, even Paris in the throes of
evolution.
Tom was his normal flashy self. It made sense to me that he had to be the
one to break the barrier; his entire image as 'pilot guy' depended on it. The
high point of this episode for him, though, came on his deathbed. His
ramblings were as good as they were mainly because they conveyed some things
about the person that spoke them. Those things would not have sounded right
coming out of anyone else's mouth, and they open a window of vulnerability
on Paris's soul.
Janeway handled things in a typically abrasive way, although at the end she
didn't seem right, just as everyone else didn't.
FINE POINTS:
- We saw Seska's spy again. It's nice to see some continuity, and I hope
that we see more of him and that it comes to something in the end. I'd also
like to see what happens when the Kazon try the transwarp drive themselves...
- Paris and Torres agreed that they needed to test sustained transwarp
operations. Why do you need sustained flight when you travel at infinite
speed? Beats me, but sloppy writing is the best reason I can come up with.
- This is a very sleazy nitpick, but when they bombard Paris with radiation,
Torres says to hit him with .057 amu of antiprotons. An amu is an atomic mass
unit. A proton (or antiproton) has a mass of roughly 1 amu. They're hitting
him with 1/20 of an antiproton!
- Paris pulling his own tongue out was cool.
- I'm in a very techie mood today: why are they depressurizing the shuttle
bay? Didn't TNG establish that they had a forcefield that kept the air in?
- I was impressed with some of the shots that the director set up. I
thought the communication with engineering, where Paris goes out of control
and a phaser repeatedly fires across the screen, was very effective. I also
liked the lingering shot of the pool of water on the jungle planet, although
I'm not sure why.
- We evolve into *amphibians*? One can make a case that the human race has
stopped evolving, as medical science allows almost everyone to survive and
reproduce. Even excepting that, it's difficult to see the particular path
TPTB project us to take. Those amphibians at the end seem remarkably slow and
stupid.
- What's scary about all the technical holes I've found in this episode is
that I *specifically* tried not to notice them and enjoy the story as a story.
I had the left side of my brain turned off for this episode, folks. I
actually didn't catch a lot of the problems that others caught for this reason,
but I *still* couldn't help but notice enough stupidity to make the plot an
unviable mass.
- On an unrelated note: last month I went up to Cooperstown and happened to
see the baseball cap that Kira was wearing at the end of "Starship Down". It
turns out that it's from the Homestead Grays, a Negro League team. An
interesting tidbit.
And Cooperstown was WONDERFUL. :-)
To sum up, the plot had some central problems that made it impossible to
be strictly self-consistent. From a dramatic perspective, though, the concept
of transwarp drive could have generated an interesting story dealing with
its implications for the human mind. Instead, though, we get genetic garbage
that is even more insulting given the unanimous outrage that met "Genesis."
It's a bad sign when I only feel strongly about a Voyager episode when it's a
depth charge like this.
My score: 3.5 (I expect a lot less out of Voyager)
-Martin Duke
(c) 1996 by Martin H. Duke. All rights reserved. Direct all requests
to pat...@mit.edu.
Reviews archived at http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/patton/home.html.