Threshold is really a halfway decent episode for the majority of its runtime. And that makes it all the more entertainingly tragic and bemusing when it goes off-a-cliff.
I didn't first watch Star Trek until around 2012. And I checked the IMDB scores along the way of my viewing. So I was expecting this episode to be much worse when I saw it's low score. And I think the low score is both deserved and not. It depends on the viewers frame-of-mind.
I find a lot of the story ideas in the first 2/3rds of the episode to be interesting. I like the idea of them trying to reach warp 10 and there being some odd consequences to Tom Paris succeeding. And I like Tom trying to achieve some distinctive accomplishment to undo his bad reputation from before he left on the Voyager trip, and him discovering that accomplishing that goal doesn't guarantee his happiness. They showed all of those story elements as if there was nothing odd that also happened along the way. And there are some REALLY odd things that happen along the way.
The main issue with this episode is that they don't explain the glaringly odd story decisions at the end. And it's difficult to understand why reaching warp 10 would cause humans to become lizards. They try to say that it's humans evolving into their future identity millions of years into the future once they've evolved. It's trying to be sort of like the opposite of that TNG episode where the characters de-evolve backwards.
Anyone who understands evolution will say that no one can know what their future ancestors long in the future will look-like. Because species adapt to avoid dying within their changing environment which they're forced to live within. And no one today will know what any species in the distant future will have to adapt-to, or if the species will succeed or go extinction. Also there is the chance of speciation events where our species could go-off in different directions with different populations to form different species. So how could someone's body know what it's ancestors will body will become? It just makes no sense. And what makes obviously even less sense is why the writers decided to entangle the Captain in this issue, and have Tom and the Captain produce offspring in their lizard bodies. They also don't sufficiently explain how the doctor managed to fix this odd problem and bring Tom and Katherine back to normal.
What we see at the end has a completely ridiculous tone that contradicts a lot of the serious human messaging that they were trying to convey through the rest of the episode. And that's what that makes the episode a failure and entertaining. Because they present the message and the distraction as if it's completely compatible and not really too odd or distractingly.
Unlike other bad Star Trek episodes which one should skip, this one is genuinely worth watching. It is entertaining and bizarre to watch in the best way possible. Other bad episodes like the season 5 boxer episode from voyager or the season 2 flashback episode for TNG are boring and best skipped. I'd argue that this isn't even the worst Tom Paris episode given that the Alice episode later on is bad and boring.
Threshold is a bad episode which is fun to watch and wonder, "what were the creators thinking?
It's sort of like the cult bad movie The Room which is also both bad and entertaining and a cult fun movie to see. This is fun bad cult episode that gets discussed far more that other episodes which Star Trek fans do their best to pretend don't exist.
The fact that some art is bad, but can also be entertaining unlike other bad art which is generally not entertaining or worth experiencing is sort of an interesting topic of discussion when it comes to what makes art good. At least it's an interesting question to me.
Because it's so clearly bad and entertaining I gave this episode a 5. But depending on how one is looking at the episode, one could easily give it a 10 stat or a 1 star score because it is both truly bad at what it's aiming to be, but entertaining anyway. And that's an odd combination to pull-off by mistake.
It's interesting too to note that Brannon Braga who wrote this episode, wrote a lot of top notch Star Trek episodes for both Voyager and TNG. And has had an overall very successful career. This episode is an obvious exception to his creative talent. And it's a reminder that sometimes the difference between brilliant and laugh-out loud bad is finer than we'd often like to recognize. Especially when it comes to trying to create original engaging art while dealing with deadlines. So keep that in mind before being too negative toward everyone associated with this episode. I also think it's unfair to criticize a lot of the acting or directing on this episode. I think the production team did a good job given the task of bringing this story life. The pre-production is where this episode failed to deliver what they were going-for.
I didn't first watch Star Trek until around 2012. And I checked the IMDB scores along the way of my viewing. So I was expecting this episode to be much worse when I saw it's low score. And I think the low score is both deserved and not. It depends on the viewers frame-of-mind.
I find a lot of the story ideas in the first 2/3rds of the episode to be interesting. I like the idea of them trying to reach warp 10 and there being some odd consequences to Tom Paris succeeding. And I like Tom trying to achieve some distinctive accomplishment to undo his bad reputation from before he left on the Voyager trip, and him discovering that accomplishing that goal doesn't guarantee his happiness. They showed all of those story elements as if there was nothing odd that also happened along the way. And there are some REALLY odd things that happen along the way.
The main issue with this episode is that they don't explain the glaringly odd story decisions at the end. And it's difficult to understand why reaching warp 10 would cause humans to become lizards. They try to say that it's humans evolving into their future identity millions of years into the future once they've evolved. It's trying to be sort of like the opposite of that TNG episode where the characters de-evolve backwards.
Anyone who understands evolution will say that no one can know what their future ancestors long in the future will look-like. Because species adapt to avoid dying within their changing environment which they're forced to live within. And no one today will know what any species in the distant future will have to adapt-to, or if the species will succeed or go extinction. Also there is the chance of speciation events where our species could go-off in different directions with different populations to form different species. So how could someone's body know what it's ancestors will body will become? It just makes no sense. And what makes obviously even less sense is why the writers decided to entangle the Captain in this issue, and have Tom and the Captain produce offspring in their lizard bodies. They also don't sufficiently explain how the doctor managed to fix this odd problem and bring Tom and Katherine back to normal.
What we see at the end has a completely ridiculous tone that contradicts a lot of the serious human messaging that they were trying to convey through the rest of the episode. And that's what that makes the episode a failure and entertaining. Because they present the message and the distraction as if it's completely compatible and not really too odd or distractingly.
Unlike other bad Star Trek episodes which one should skip, this one is genuinely worth watching. It is entertaining and bizarre to watch in the best way possible. Other bad episodes like the season 5 boxer episode from voyager or the season 2 flashback episode for TNG are boring and best skipped. I'd argue that this isn't even the worst Tom Paris episode given that the Alice episode later on is bad and boring.
Threshold is a bad episode which is fun to watch and wonder, "what were the creators thinking?
It's sort of like the cult bad movie The Room which is also both bad and entertaining and a cult fun movie to see. This is fun bad cult episode that gets discussed far more that other episodes which Star Trek fans do their best to pretend don't exist.
The fact that some art is bad, but can also be entertaining unlike other bad art which is generally not entertaining or worth experiencing is sort of an interesting topic of discussion when it comes to what makes art good. At least it's an interesting question to me.
Because it's so clearly bad and entertaining I gave this episode a 5. But depending on how one is looking at the episode, one could easily give it a 10 stat or a 1 star score because it is both truly bad at what it's aiming to be, but entertaining anyway. And that's an odd combination to pull-off by mistake.
It's interesting too to note that Brannon Braga who wrote this episode, wrote a lot of top notch Star Trek episodes for both Voyager and TNG. And has had an overall very successful career. This episode is an obvious exception to his creative talent. And it's a reminder that sometimes the difference between brilliant and laugh-out loud bad is finer than we'd often like to recognize. Especially when it comes to trying to create original engaging art while dealing with deadlines. So keep that in mind before being too negative toward everyone associated with this episode. I also think it's unfair to criticize a lot of the acting or directing on this episode. I think the production team did a good job given the task of bringing this story life. The pre-production is where this episode failed to deliver what they were going-for.