Worst. Episode. Ever.

I had a big spiel to put her, but why bother beating around the bush. Threshold is not just the worst episode of Voyager, but the worst episode of Star Trek ever produced across its seven[1] incarnations, and that is a significant “honour.” The original show had an episode about annoying space hippies after all. Threshold may in fact be the worst episode of any television show I’ve ever watched. Better episodes have made me quit shows on the spot.

While I think Voyager is one of the lesser Treks, overall I do like the show. It had a good premise, two starship crews, one Starfleet, the other the Maquis terrorists/rebels they were chasing, are pulled to the far end of the galaxy where they attend a hoedown,[2] sacrifice one ship to save some space elves, and are forced to work together on the decades long journey home. They weren’t the Deep Space Nine crew, but there were some interesting characters,[3] and they had some great stories. Lazy and overly safe writing squandered most of the potential however, and in the end it was seven more seasons of The Next Generation, a show was already running out of steam when it ended.

Threshold seems to fit in well with the concept. The crew experiments with a new type of warp drive, one that will let them reach home instantly. Will they succeed, or will there be horrible unforeseen consequences that mean this will all be forgotten after the end of the episode? This was the fifteenth episode of the second season, which was already very uneven, so you can do the math. Why is this one in particularl so bad though? Well…

Business As Usual

Voyager was plagued by a number of recurring problems, and Threshold exhibits several of them. Neelix, the space-hedgehog garbage man with delusions of competence who became the ship’s cook, guide, and “morale officer”[4] inserts himself into a conversation about theoretical warp physics. The holodeck is used to simulate something that has never been done before and is theoretically impossible. There is a heavy reliance on technobabble, using anti-protons to restore mutant DNA to it’s original state.[5]

The worst though is something I’ve already touched on in the introduction, the reset button. Voyager’s premise called for an ongoing story where the crew’s actions had real consequences, but the producers were scared to let anything change episode to episode. Most of the Trek series do this, but it stands out more on Voyager, where except on a few special occasions each episode ends with the ship in the same state it started in. Torres is separated into a human and a Klingon? Put her back together.[6] Tuvok and Neelix are merged by a transporter accident? Split them apart. Harry is dead? Replace him with a duplicate Harry from a parallel timeline and never mention it again. Threshold hits the reset button so hard at the end that it has been unofficially removed from canon, but given the potential consequences of this episodes stupidity this is probably for the best.

To Infinity, And Beyond!

Warp dive is Star Trek’s excuse for faster-than-light travel[7] and as explained in the episode warp 10 is infinite speed,[8] meaning that you would simultaneously occupy every point in the universe. Harry Kim calls it a “theoretical impossibility”. Captain Janeway refers to their plan as “more fantasy than theory.” Because that’s what we’re doing in this episode, trying to reach warp 10 and be home by dinner. This is stupid, because they’ve already admitted it’s impossible, and since it’s the middle of the second season it’s clearly not going to work. So we’re already looking at a silly, likely bad, episode, but wait, there’s more.

How are they going to do this? They found better dilithium crystals that allows for higher warp frequencies,[9] which they use to make a transwarp[10] drive. After some forced drama about replacing him because his brain might explode, Tom Paris, Voyager’s chief pilot, prepares to make a historic test flight. He’ll be as famous as the Wright brothers, Neil Armstrong, and Zephram Cochrane.
[11] He takes a shuttle up to high speed, engages the transwarp, and accelerates farther until he hits warp 10.

He accelerates. To infinity. Infinity does not work that way. Either something is infinite, or it is not. It’s more a mathematical concept than a number, so it can be a bit hard to wrap your head around,[12] but infinity is larger than any real number. No matter what math you do you will never reach it, as you can always add 1 more, and what is acceleration but applied math. So now we’ve not just fudged Trek lore like transwarp and dilithium, or the basic physics of acceleration, but math itself. This is 2 +2 = 5 or Π = 3.2 territory, infuriatingly bad for a science fiction show, but not yet worst episode ever levels of stupid.

March of the Mutants

We still have a fair amount of episode to go at this point, so the test flight works as expected, Tom sees the velocity readout hit warp 10,[13] and he returns near the ship, lucky for him as he could be anywhere in the entire universe, which is a pretty big place.[14] He’s hailed as a hero, Neelix gives him the dubious honour of naming a new coffee blend after him, and plans are begun to adapt the transwarp to Voyager itself, as soon as they figure out how to stop where they want. But wait, Tom is having a bad reaction to the coffee and has to be rushed to sickbay.

The Doctor announces that Tom’s issue is not a reaction to Neelix’s cooking, but he has become allergic to the water in it.[15] Tom’s body continues to mutate rapidly. Soon his lungs can no longer process oxygen and he’s put behind a force field with a different atmosphere, but despite the Doctor’s best efforts Tom demands a pepperoni pizza and dies. The Doctor, who is a hologram and thus needs no rest, decides to wait until morning to do an autopsy, and leaves the body in the open under a sheet, presumably so that any of Tom’s friends and colleagues who come by can be traumatized by it.[16]

Overnight there’s a commotion in sickbay. Tom has resurrected himself,[17] but now he has two hearts.[18] His rapid changes continue while the Doctor works on a cure for being a mutant. While looking like a burn victim Tom argues with Captain Janeway that maybe this is good for him, only to end up pulling his own tongue out. Later he escapes,[19] overcomes some yellow shirts, stuns the Captain, and takes off with her on the magic shuttle. Voyager tries to pursue, but they still have to obey math and can’t accelerate to infinity.

What is so wrong with all of this? Honestly, nothing really. It’s goofy, but it’s not unusual for Voyager or Trek in general. There’s no reason given for why warp 10 causes any of this to happen, but in and of itself, it’s decent enough. It’s the explanation for what these changes are that makes Threshold so infuriatingly stupid.

It’s Evolution Baby

It takes Voyager just three days to track down the missing shuttle, which, again, could have gone anywhere in the entire universe. That gives the Doctor enough time to finish his mutant cure, which is to pelt them with anti-protons.[20] He’s also figured out what has been happening, if not why infinite speed would cause it. Tom’s changes are an accelerated form of evolution, and he may represent a future stage of humanity. No. All they need to do now is beam down, scoop up Tom and the Captain, turn them back to normal, and be ready for an entirely unrelated adventure next week. So, what do they find?

Tom and the Captain have become giant salamanders, living in the swamp on this random planet on the opposite side of the galaxy from Earth. They’ve even had time to have three babies together. Luckily the Doctor’s elementary particles are effective enough to cure being a salamander, and after a bit of denouement, this foolishness is over.

No. No, no, no. NO!!! Am I being presumptuous, thinking I know the future that evolution has planned for us and objecting to it being giant salamanders? No, because evolution does not have a direction, a future, or a plan. Evolution does not work that way! Tom Paris is not a Pokemon!

It’s a complex subject, but the basics are really not that hard to grasp. Evolution is the process of change in a form of life over successive generations as it becomes better suited to survive in it’s environment. Every creature is a little different from others of it’s species, and some of those differences give one an advantage over the others, making them more likely to survive long enough to produce offspring and pass those advantages along. It happens over many generations, and has no set end goal. It is an iterative, long-term, and reactive process, not a line that can be followed forward or even backward.[21]

One creature can not evolve on it’s own. Breaking the laws of the universe did not give Tom enough experience[22] to evolve into a new form. Even if it could happen, what are the first things that happen to Tom? He becomes allergic to water and can’t breathe oxygen. These are not advantageous traits for survival in a creature more than half made up of water that lives on a starship with an oxygen rich atmosphere. In fact, these changes kill him, albeit only temporarily. It would make more sense if he sprouted wheels or treads to get around more efficiently on the smooth metal floors!

All Children Left Behind

Being a giant salamander might be an advantage in the swamp where Tom and Janeway eventually ended up, but that’s just a random planet where no human has ever set foot before. Their three babies seemed to be doing quite well there at least. What ever happened to those little guys anyway?

They abandoned them. Left them in the swamp. By the twisted idiotic broken logic of this episode, those are humans, and they are just left where they are. To be an invasive alien species on this poor planet that they just happened to land on.

At this point in the show it’s expected that Voyager will take seventy or more years to get back home. It’s been brought up already that they may need to encourage the crew to have children that can eventually replace them. Well, you’ve got three of them right there. Sure, they’re giant salamander babies now, but the Doctor can cure that. With anti-protons… GAH!

Crossing the Threshold

This episode is a train wreck of everything that can go wrong with Voyager. You’ve got a magic shuttle, a magic holo-deck, and a magic particle that cures being a salamander. It misunderstands not only Star Trek’s established lore, and basic science like acceleration and evolution, but math itself. It’s total mockery of evolution, a concept which many people even now are willfully ignorant of, is infuriating. It tops it all off with child abandonment, potentially destroying some innocent planets ecosystem in the process.

Think about this though…. their magic engine works. They could use it to go home instantly. Sure, there’s a pretty significant side effect, but they’ve already proven they can cure that. The Doctor is not biological, and would not be affected. Worst case, go home, spend a little time getting in touch with your inner amphibian, and wait for the cure. The Doctor could probably fix most of the crew before they even choked on Neelix’s coffee.

The writer, Brannon Braga, has defended this episode, saying the message was cut out of the final version. “I think I was trying to make a statement about evolution not necessarily being evolving toward higher organisms, that evolution may also be a de-evolution.” While that is technically true, it doesn’t excuse this nonsense, because evolution does not work anything like the way it’s presented in this show, nor does it explain any of the other problems.

I stand by my original statement. This is the worst episode of Star Trek, maybe of anything. It’s beyond stupid, it’s infuriating, and none of these events or discoveries or abandoned children will ever be brought up again. I have to make a confession though…

I don’t actually hate this episode. It’s ridiculously bad, but it’s not offensive like Profit and Lace, or boring like Shades of Grey. It’s trying so hard to be exciting and deep only to face plant at infinite speed. It’s the best so bad it’s good episode since the time Spock was a remote-controlled-zombie searching for his own stolen brain. What’s happening is nonsensical right from the teaser, but the cast does their best to sell it, particularly Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris. I might prefer The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, but they could never be as downright silly as Voyager.

Parts of this episode make me angry, but others are laugh out loud funny. Neelix’s butting into their conversation actually helps, and Tom calls him a genius. It has one of the best of the recurring jokes about the Doctor’s bedside manner. Tom desperate cry for pizza as he’s dying and him pulling out his own tongue are hilarious as McNeill calls on his inner Shatner.

My favorite bit is at the end though, during the wrap up. Tom and Janeway talk about what happened. After she was kidnapped, “evolved” into a salamander, and had his babies, the Captain tells Tom that sometimes the female initiates mating, and how she’s considered having children, just not with him. Then she gives him a commendation.