Star Trek

Wasn't that the episode where an actual demon captured his ship and only let them go because he was bored with them?

So I just watched something called Threshold and what is this I don't even.

No you didn't. Because that episode doesn't exist.

...I wish it didn't!

I wish I don't now!

I mean, why?

It was made, but it's not canon. Later on in Voyager, Tom explicitly says he's never flown at transwarp speeds.

I think the fact that it was made is a larger and more pressing concern.

What is this thing you're talking about? I barely watched Voyager, so I really don't know.

I don't entirely know but I watched 47 minutes of it and I hate it.

You know what you should have watched instead of that? "Bride of Chaotica!" It won't show much of Voyager, but it's a fun watch.

But if you're looking for the best of Voyager-as-Voyager and not as some Flash Gordon spoof, watch the two-parter "Scorpion"

@ Journeyman- Not sure if you're being serious because, as you see, people love to go the "X, X never happened!" route with that episode.

But basically with "Threshold" a few episodes prior Voyager came across a dilithium crystal deposit that was abnormally pure, which could create a more efficient energy transfer in a warp core. They test it out on a shuttle with Paris piloting it, and he reaches a mythical warp 10 (the rating scale of current Starfleet vessels top out at like warp 9.95). Not a bad premise. But...

apparently Warp 10 is infinite speed, Paris was everywhere in the universe at once. When they recover him he starts to mutate, which turns out to be that Warp 10 accelerated the evolutionary process and he becomes this salamander thing what humanity will eventually evolve into in like 5 million years. He goes crazy and kidnaps Janeway, they mate and have salamander babies that escape into the wild. The Doctor develops a miracle cure using antimatter that reverts the process.

It's simply one of those stories that didn't sound so bad when initially developing it but just got worse and worse as it went on. And by then they were locked in to the episode and had to film it. It's labeled next to "Spock's Brain" as one of the worst episodes of the Star Trek canon, and as mentioned even Brannon Braga officially disowned it and it was never mentioned again. I think the only bright spot was Robert Duncan McNeil does a halfway decent performance as he descends into madness and fear and there is a relatively inspired sequence where Paris goes crazy in engineering and the Doctor can only see glimpses of what is happening through a video link.

Oh, unnoun...I'm so sorry. Someone should have warned you.

Voyager isn't usually that bad. I'd be interested to hear what you'd think of Tuvix, unnoun.

edited 1st Sep '14 11:14:06 AM by resetlocksley

I wouldn't have minded getting another full Captain Proton episode.

I noticed eventually that each season had its own holodeck scenario that splashed through it, more or less. There may be one or two seasons that didn't have one, but what's consistent is that unless time is being played with, you only see the holodeck locations within their own season. An exception is perhaps Da Vinci's Workshop, which was introduced in the season 3 finale and ran through season 4.

I think several of them got their own episode. Bride of Chaotica did it best. Fair Haven got two episodes, which I love because "Fair Haven" and "Spirit Folk" both deal with ethics surrounding the issue of having these AIs at their disposal. Concerning Flight is the episode born out of Da Vinci's Workshop, although it forgets the workshop and just has the special guest star Da Vinci.

I don't recall Sandrine's and the Resort getting their own episode, but both of them were restricted to their season. I think Tom's holographic muscle car workshop appeared in multiple episodes, but I'm not sure. Flotter's world may have had brief appearances in other episodes.

I wouldn't have minded Satan's Robot killing Neelix and taking his place in the cast.

I was being serious so thanks for the summary. That sounds . . . worse than Genesis, that episode of TNG where the crew all evolved into primal forms. I think that was the name of it, anyway.

It was.

"Genesis" was weird, but in the best way. A full on haunted house monster movie that, while maybe a weak explanation, still had its own logic to it. Worf's mutation was terrifying, and also a good use of Data without being a Data episode. The way he calmly moved through everything while Picard was slowly falling apart was made the episode tense.

The same can be said for Tom's dementia, too. I think both episodes play a lot better to children. As an adult, you can't help but facepalm and give an embarrassed chuckle at the same time.

edited 1st Sep '14 10:14:07 PM by johnnyfog

So, Star Trek turns 48 today.

Happy . . . anniversary? Shows/movies don't have birthdays, after all.

Hi, I'm from the Doctor Who fandom. We had a little bash last year to celebrate the Fiftieth Anniversary of our show last year. You may have missed it.

Unfortunately, all the Star Trek franchise has to look forward to for 2016 is maybe the third Abramsverse movie.

Hmm. My interest in the Star Trek movies died when Abrams took over the franchise and they rebooted the thing. I watched just about all the other Trek films at least once, and recently watched First Contact twice, just because it was on. Heck, I even liked Nemesis (I know, I know, it makes most Trekkers vomit) yet the very idea of the reboot left me cold.

I don't think the nu!Trek films were made for folks of my generation that grew up with what I consider to be the real Spock, Mc Coy, Kirk, Uhura, Chekov, Scotty and Sulu - they were made for the generation that grew up when the Next Generation films were getting a critical kicking after making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office and they were told that they must get new iterations of those classic characters. Instead of, ya know, trying something totally new or taking another gamble in seeing if the "Enterprise" cast could carry a movie.

Because Bakula is the only Enterprise captain that we have seen featured that never was in a movie of his own, that folks could pay money to go and see. And that, despite what I and others think about the show, is crap. Bakula isn't a horrible actor. Given a proper script he's bloody brilliant, and so are the rest of the guys and gals in "Enterprise"'s crew. Get rid of that horrible theme song, have a decent script, good cgi and practical effects, competent direction by, I dunno, Jonathan Frakes, give the cast something to get their teeth into and bob's your uncle.

BTW, reference most horrible Voyager episode ever? It wasn't Threshold. It was this:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Course:_Oblivion_(episode)

edited 10th Sep '14 1:18:31 AM by TamH70

I really liked Course: Oblivion actually. Would've preferred to have had some way the story could have mattered past the end of the episode, but I really liked the concept.

The "time capsule telling everything about the heroics of that Voyager crew and what they got up to, and their expansion of knowledge in warp theory and practice which could have helped the Voyager!Prime crew not launching because reasons" thing was a kick in the kidneys. That hurt. That really hurt. And it made me coldly furious. That crew deserved some recognition for what they achieved from the Voyager!Prime crew and they never got it and it sucked.

The whole last ten minutes of the episode I was going, "no those sick bastards aren't really going to do that, are they? They couldn't be that much of a bunch of spanners in that production crew, surely? Oh wait, they are. Damn."

It's unforgivable. That's why I rate the episode as worse than any other.