“ Turning into a slimy and totally ooky creature? Check. Vomiting body parts? Check. Still managing to have sex after all of that? Double check. It's like Bermaga wanted to see just how far they could heebie our Trek- injected jeebies. ”
In order to deliver the best possible recap of this worst possible Voyager episode ever, I punched a few buttons at Netflix, sent out for a new liver, and sat down to inhale all the episodes. At the end of those thirty episodes, neither my apartment nor my mental state was an exceptionally pretty thing to behold. I'm in the process of authoring a cocktail game thing and I had to drink all two hundred eight-one cocktails I researched just to get though it all. And when I ran out of drunk, I started mixing the dregs of bottles together. You wouldn't know it to look at 'em, but olive juice, ginger beer, and Linnie aquavit actually make a mighty fine tipple. Delivers quite a kick too. *Burp*
Okay, I know I said this was the worst possible Voyager episode ever, but the truth of it is that it was also kind of AWESOME in its supreme horribleness. Turning into a slimy and totally ooky creature? Check. Vomiting body parts? Check. Still managing to have sex after all of that? Double check. It's like Bermaga wanted to see just how far they could heebie our Trek-injected jeebies. Not even the truly memorable TNG episode "Genesis" managed to reach such squirmy heights, because the only thing to litter in that episode was Spot, and we didn't really get grossed out by how she managed to achieve her pregnant state. Janeway, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter. Anyway, my general reaction to Voyager has been as follows: if Janeway had actually abided by the Prime Directive, they never would have gotten stranded in space, right? How the hell did her crew not mutiny by the second episode? I would have. After watching "Parallax," when Chakotay and Janeway are both backing their individual choices for Chief Engineer, I realized that Voyager is so totally the Brady Bunch of Star Trek. There the two of them are, merging their totally separate families, and they have to decide who is more deserving of the attic room. Janeway's Marilla Cuthbert bun is just as memorable as Carol Brady's Wesson-infused mullet.
Paris fiddles around in a "shuttlepod." He gives feedback to Torres and Kim and counts up to warp nine-point-three before he admits to a little vector drifting, which always sounds semi-dirty to me. The sh'pod shakes and quivers. He reads a fracture in the port nacelle pylon -- oddly, he says "NAY-cell," and here I've been thinking it was "nuh-CELL" -- and tries to get up to warp ten, to the Threshold. Paris yells that he's breaking up as stuff "explodes" all around him. Torres looks on impassively, while Kim drops his chin on his folded arms. The camera pans over to show Paris sitting on his ass in the middle of a yellow-grid holodeck. Peering around him, Paris seems confused. "You're dead," Torres informs him, annoyed. Heaven is a holodeck. Paris sighs.
Voyager: "Threshold"
“ Then, when the camera moves through the space pebbles forming a planetary ring, there's this sparkly noise you can hear tingling through the music. It's what PopRocks would sound like if you dumped them down your auditory canal. ”
I do love this show opening -- I especially adore the part when the instrumental really wants to go into "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" but isn't allowed. It's undeniably awesome when Voyager skims through the space fog, sloughing off reflective light in its manta-ray wake. I admit that I do have this obsession that the Voyager looks exactly like a manta ray with the deflector array for a mouth. Then, when the camera moves through the space pebbles forming a planetary ring, there's this sparkly noise you can hear tingling through the music. It's what PopRocks would sound like if you dumped them down your auditory canal. Man, Enterprise SUCKED for an opening. I mean, just sucked...SO hard.
In the Mess, Paris, Kim, and Torres technochat over what went wrong in their threshold pushing. Neelix trots over to be far too cheerful and far too annoying. He thinks he can help them. "Great," Paris drawls. "Do you know anything about quantum warp theory or multi-spectral subspace engine design?" Hey, Paris? I've got a bottle of mezcal right here, and do you know what the worm is saying? "Shut up, Paris!" By the way, the snark in Paris's voice totally guarantees that Neelix is going to solve their problem by relating it to a simplistic problem he once encountered. Of course Neelix doesn't actually know anything about quantum warp theory or multi-spectral subspace engine design, but he professes to be a "quick study," and settles himself in a chair at the table. Torres ignores this and pointedly asks if Neelix has anything to eat. Neelix vaguely gestures something about Kalavian biscuits in the kitchen and starts perusing Paris's pad. Torres waits a beat before making a minor fuss about getting the biscuits herself. She's half Klingon; shouldn't she be used to such hardships of not being waited on hand and foot? Klingons bitch about shit like soft pillows, so I'd think they'd be okay with getting their own damn afternoon snack.
After some preliminary hemming and hawing over how long it might take to school Neelix in the background of their problem, Neelix blusters that he spent two years as an engineer's assistant on a freighter and therefore he and warp theory are old friends. Paris gives in and starts to get into the crux of their problem, in that they are trying to break the maximum warp barrier. Kim reminds the rest of us that nothing in the universe can go warp ten. Nothing except the Traveler and his life partner, Wesley. Speaking of which, how come the Traveler never popped up to help Voyager home in the wink of his lashless eye? Is it because they weren't like Mozart? I find that rather snobbish of him. Kim goes on to explain that if you were to travel at warp ten, you'd be traveling at infinite velocity. Neelix translates, "Got it. So that means very fast." Our Prius can go from zero to infinite velocity in sixty seconds, but we don't do it very much because it messes with our MPG. Paris tries to get through to Neelix: "It means that you would occupy every point in the universe simultaneously. In theory, you could go any place in the wink of an eye. Time and distance would have no meaning." Okay, if I start to think about how exactly that works, I go into a very dark rocking place. I've been there before, and it's not pretty. I prefer to go with Neelix's "very fast" approach. As it relates to Voyager's seven-year problem, Kim says that they could be back home in as long as it takes to push a button. Neelix is suitably impressed.
Voyager: "Threshold"
“ 'I... have no idea what they just said,' Neelix grins, and grabs at a cookie from the plate Torres was bringing out. Has she been putting those biscuits on that plate this whole time? Man, no wonder she couldn't hack the Academy. ”
Paris explains that they're attempting to break the warp threshold because they discovered a new kind of dilithium that is more stable at a higher warp frequency. Kim says that whenever they try to cross the threshold, the nacelles get torn off the ship. Neelix recalls a time when he lost a warp nacelle on his way through a dark matter nebula. Dismissively, Paris shakes off the overgrown mohawk of a chef. Wait for it. Neelix explains something about a dark matter bow wave and how so much pressure built up that the nacelle was torn from its housing. He suggests that the same thing is happening to them. Kim doesn't think so, but Paris looks contemplative. Suddenly, Paris postulates that the NACELLES aren't being torn from the SHIP, but the SHIP is being torn from the NACELLES. See, this is why I'm not a science person, because to me? That was all potato, potahto. Meanwhile, it sounds like Neelix cooked up something good for once, and Kim gets his freak on about depolarizing alloys of the titanium hull. Trek is always about depolarizing shit. Whatever, peeps -- just get me to the salamander sex! Not that I want salamander sex, mind you; I've just heard so much about it that I'm going to be a bit nervy until I see it. After calling Neelix a genius, Kim and Paris rush off to do something about a Keanu-less matrix, leaving the chef and morale officer a bit out of a breath. "I...have no idea what they just said," Neelix grins, and grabs at a cookie from the plate Torres was bringing out. Has she been putting those biscuits on that plate this whole time? Man, no wonder she couldn't hack the Academy.
Going in for another threshold test in the holodeck, Paris makes warp ten. We pull back to see that all the senior officers are watching a recording of this attempt in the briefing room. Chakotay and Janeway look excited; Kim, Paris, and Torres, proud. Janeway congratulates them, which prompts their request to put out for a manned flight. They want to push the sh'pod to warp ten, and then drop out of warp and come about. After that, they plan to analyze the logs. Chakotay thinks it's a frightening notion. Dude, your disembodied, invisible consciousness traveled around the ship in order to beat up Tuvok while your body was lying in Sickbay BRAIN DEAD and you find this frightening? Singular. Janeway says something about not being able to put the genie back in the bottle, and announces that she's confident in the team's efforts and research. I think they wrote this episode specifically so that Kate Mulgrew could say "threshold" as much as possible. She completely draws it out: "Thresssshhhhhhhhhold." Ironic that The. Worst. Episode. Of. Voyager. Ever. also bore the name of Braga's failed 2005 series. In the way that "ironic" means "prescient." Janeway gives Team Threshold the go-ahead, and tells Paris that if the manned flight is successful, he'll be joining an elite group of pilots, "Orville Wright [what about Wilbur -- WHY do people ALWAYS forget about Wilbur? I'm going to start a "Remember Wilbur" campaign. It's unfair otherwise], Neil Armstrong, Zephram Cochrane, Tom Paris." Of course Paris likes the sound of that just as much as he liked the sound of being a member of an elite group of pilots who formed a Kolvoord Starburst and ending up killing one of their squadron. Oh, my god -- my email box is already filling up. Yes, I KNOW that wasn't actually Paris. I KNOW it was just Robert Duncan McNeill in another role. It was a joke, people, a JOKE!