since it’s Threshold Day and i see people dragging the episode through the mud as usual - and, granted, it’s at least a little bit justified - let’s all stop and appreciate the really good things about Threshold:
- THE MAKEUP
- seriously, Tom Paris’s transformation was spectacularly done as far as the makeup and prosthetics and so on
- RDM acted the shit out of it
- big turning point for Tom Paris in his evolution into a Good Boy
- the doctor was more sarcastic all episode than he had ever been in anything up to that point
- the doctor making increasingly bitter jokes as tom transforms more and more into a big sexy salamander
- hearing tom’s backstory and suddenly understanding so much more about him
- lastly: the memes.
ALSO as much as the “turned into a lizard and had sex with the captain” bit is, ummmm, quickly pushed under the rug, “Threshold” marks a turning point in Tom’s character. His determination to take a risk for the ship, and his willingness to face the consequences, seems to be the catalyst for Janeway and Tuvok’s decision to have him “go undercover” to flush out Seska’s agent. Which is another arc no one wants to talk about, but hey, they tried.
And more generally, setting aside his acting out during that spy arc, “Threshold” sees Tom become more confident in himself, less hungry for the approval of others and yet more trusted by his peers and superiors. He’s still a goofball, but he’s more mature – he’s left some of his adolescent neuroses behind and taken the final step into adulthood.
(I just realised that OP covered all of this in their fourth dot point and I just took two paragraphs to say the same thing, but anyway…)
AND FURTHERMORE, season 2 of Voyager spends a surprising amount of time playing with B-movie tropes: killer robots, alien femme fatales, that sort of thing. And “Threshold” is where they took the brakes off, with Tom carrying Janeway bridal style as he … you know. Someone out there, who is more knowledgeable than me, could write a whole thesis on B-movie tropes in Star Trek, and “Threshold” would get a whole chapter.
Of course, the irony is that the B-movie stuff is why “Threshold” is considered a failure by people who are wrong, and that’s important too – Star Trek has always struggled with finding a balance between Fun Silly SF and Proper Grown-Up SF. (Back in the ‘60s, TOS was upheld as “SF for grown-ups, not like those silly B-movies and shows for children. And the tension continues now, when the ‘dark and gritty’ reboot is literally powered by space mushrooms, to the eternal dismay of fanboys.)
It really does have great Tom Paris character development! If Threshold never happened, we would really be missing out!
On the other hand, the fact that they leaned into “Tom and the captain fucked and had salamander babies” only to abandon them is so bizarre?? Like, what were they actually thinking? What was going on in their heads? They could have done everything else, but not had them HAVE BABIES and they could have just avoided the whole thing? So they clearly WANTED that to happen! They could have done something different. But no! They really just wanted Kathryn and Tom to fuck. As salamanders. And produce multiple offspring.
Truly iconic. XD
And while Threshold is admittedly a weird episode, it’s far from the worst. Every series has done truly awful episodes and even Voyager has other terrible episodes.
