The salamander form is a gift from the Koala for all those who reach Warp 10. And you can't convince me otherwise. It did allow Tom to come back to life from the waiting room that looks out towards the Black Mountain.
I would say Tom/B’Elanna showed a connection as early as Faces in season 1. Tom demanded to know where she was and when she was scared he comforted her and hugged her. I do like that they were pals early on because it makes their love realistic. It grows from the seeds of true friendship and care for each other.
If you are going down the Alberto Santos Dumont rabbit hole, you are obliged to mention Gustave Whitehead--he is the only one with a newspaper account crediting him to a flight before the Wright flight of December 1903. Dumont's first powered heavier-than-air flight is in 1906. For the record, Dumont was quite clear in ceding the invention of the airplane to Wilbur Wright when Wright came to Paris to demonstrate the Wright Flyer, which was technically far ahead of any Dumont designs. History will not forget Dumont, but his bigger achievements were in the area of dirigible airships.
I would love to see Discovery Season 5 address the Warp 10 issue. My head canon is that merely breaking the Warp 10 barrier didn't cause Paris to mutate. Rather, being everywhere in the universe simultaneously he picked up a weird virus/bacteria/parasite/heretofore-unknown-infections-agent in some distant galaxy and the Doctor just got lucky in figuring out a treatment. As for Janeway having exactly the same mutations, it's simple; she got it from Tom, not from the same original source as Tom. That's why 800-ish years later they're not all zipping around at warp 10; they tried it a few times and there's just no telling what kind of infections the pilots will come back with from *literally anywhere in the universe*.
Warp 10 causing an absolutely freak DNA splice/mutation or introducing some kind of crazy virus (ENT: Extinction, anyone?) would make infinitely more sense than Tom Paris "evolving" like a Pokemon.
You would think that they wouldn't be able to interact with things at Warp 10, since otherwise they'd obliterate literally the entire universe. No interacting means no getting weird intergalactic viruses.
@andrewmurray1550 I think the transwarp drive that the Excelsior was testing in ST III isn't like the version the fake USS Dauntless had, but the origins of the warp drive tech that was in use by TNG and forced a re-do of the Warp Scale so 10 was theoretical limit when the pre-refit Enterprise did Warp...14, I wanna say?...once.
@@generalilbis yeah, the TOS warp scale was largely linear. Warp 1 was speed of light, and each warp after that a mathematical progression. Of course, in TOS you had the statement that travel times took days or weeks. At Warp 1.... it takes YEARS to get anywhere. So you need carefully managed speeds far in advance.
@@generalilbis The future Enterprise-D and the Pasteur did Warp 13 in All Good Things... and, while it could be a clue that it was a bogus future, the anomaly existed in all three time periods, and it was the future Enterprise which finally sealed it. So... it seems to be canon in at least a possible future. The Enterprise-D also passed Warp 10 in "Where No One Has Gone Before" due to the Traveler's machinations. The refit Enterprise must have also travelled faster than Warp 10 in The Final Frontier to reach the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy, thus Threshold, to the best of my knowledge, is the first time that it was stated in universe that Warp 10 was an "infinite velocity" and existing everywhere at once type of scenario.
Yeah, I'm surprised there wasn't a nod to the Improbability Drive in Temporal Observations, given that it basically does the same thing - pass through every point in space at once and choose your own exit point.
I'm giving you a down for portraying Alberto Santos-Dumont as having flown an airplane before the Wright Brothers. The wright brothers first flew an airplane in 1903. Alberto Santos-Dumont flew the first powered airship in 1901 but an airship is not an airplane, it is a blimp. Alberto Santos-Dumont didn't fly his first airplane until 1906, roughly 3 years after the Wright Brothers.
but...but...but the Wright Brothers did not take off unassisted and the strong winds at Kitty Hawk helped for lift! - Imagine that the arguments come from Henrique Lins de Barros, a Brazilian physicist who has written two books on Santos-Dumont, told Reuters in 2003 that the Wright Brothers’ flight did not fulfill all the standards in place at the time, which included taking off unassisted, publicly flying a predetermined length in front of experts and landing safely. - I'm sure the Brazilian physicist has no motive for pushing his views of who was first in heavier-than-air-powered flight. I am not taking anything away from Alberto Santos-Dumont, because you could say he was the first to take off unassisted. That is also a great accomplishment for not relying on a launching rail. But the Wright Brothers still were the first to fly a powered heavier-than-air craft. You cannot change the criteria afterward to dismiss that achievement.
Okay, right. So they did sucessfully break warp 10. And seemingly the only negative consequence is that you turn into lizards... which seems bad. But like... The doctor can completely undo it... Sooooooooo... Why not use it?
There's a novel, or a comic, I don't remember which (so it's not canon, per se) that explains what happens beyond people/beings turning into lizards etc lol If I remember right, it messes up subspace really bad, causes some sort of warp explosion around the warp entrance thingy that can destroy almost anything, and also causes paradoxes because of the whole "every point in the universe at once" etc.
lets see, The Doctor gets downgraded into an Atari by the time Voyager reaches Earth, Starfleet has no idea how to undo all the Lizard, Dragon or Bovine mutations.
Ethical issues. The lizard-crew are now sentient beings in their own right who want to be lizards. The Federation's doctors cannot force them to undergo reverse evolution.
Because just because you say you want to infect me with a plague, "But! We can cure it later!!" Doesn't mean I am insane enough to actually agree to it. As often as things go south on the show there's no reason to believe any one in their right mind would risk it.
I really like the retro reviews! In line with them, there should be lists of Dilithium ups and Trellium downs for each season of the TNG-era shows. I'd like to see what Sean determines to be the best and worst of those seasons!
I never hated this episode. I understand why it's not considered to be one of the greats, but it's genuinely not a bad story! It was quite adventurous compared to many others. Great analysis of it!
While pretty much everything about this episode is poorly written (especially the evolution parts which hurt me the most as a biology student) I still kinda like this episode. I like the concept of warp 10 being this impassable barrier and that it means having infinite velocity and being in the all places in the universe at once
If the standard is Powered Heavier-than-Air flight the Wrights had their first flight in 1903, Santos-Dumont was focused on Lighter-than-Air flight (and building a better engine for that) until 1904 and didn't strap their lightweight motor to a glider until 1906. A better competitor to the Wrights would be Gustave Whitehead who had Controlled Powered Heavier-than-Air in 1901 (and without the assisted launch, which is why people try to discount the Wrights).
I actually like this episode, although totally understand the hate. One early Up for the episode is that it’s the first episode to feature the newer, slimmer shuttle (although they changed the door at the back after this episode for some reason). I’ve always liked the look of this shuttle. Also, totally agree with Sean about that GORGEOUS shot of the shuttle and Voyager going to warp. Big fan of watching the nacelles fold up like that, but extra points for them doing a new shot rather than the usual stock shot.
I'm curious why you think Santos-Dumont has a better claim to being the inventor of the airplane, especially since his first flight was in 1906 while the Wrights' was in 1903. Both machines had extremely limited endurance and dubious stability; the only difference I see is that Santos-Dumont's plane had conventional, wheeled landing gear, while the Wright Flyer took off from a rail.
I remember seeing this episode when I first watched Star Trek Voyager, and I thought this episode was bizarre, though I kinda liked it. And, now that I think about it, Threshold is like Star Trek’s version of The Fly, but instead of a fly, it’s those weird looking salamanders as the transformation.
“Well we tried once and you turned into a Salamander, we can never try this again.” “We could always try for less than Warp 10 - we won’t get home instantly, but we could be there in a couple of hours.” “Never again.”
My only problem I had in that episode was they never explain why he couldn’t have got a message to Star fleet if he was everywhere at once and theoretically couldn’t a warp 10 drive function in some way like the spore drive in discovery (love it or hate it)
yeah, the logic of infinite speed is bonkers. IIRC they had to use a computer failsafe just to get him to stop at the right place. Which... if that does work... why not automate it?
I had a great prolonged joke/story I improvised once where the salamander babies reproduced in great numbers, coalesced into duplicates of the ship and crew, sought out the real Voyager, only to come apart at the last moment. Leading to Tuvok bringing up the viewscreen just in time for millions of salamander to splatter into the viewscreen like bugs on a windshield (wiper and all). Paris then turns to the rest of the bridge and says "Never go full Mudkip."
As a scientist, I think it is so awesome that the predatory journals were called out with a Star Trek episode! Although I am on the side of the loathers, I really liked the Ups and Downs review. Seán's enthusiasm is infectious!
As Janeway says, there's no reason for them to believe that *she* didn't initiate. As for abandoning their offspring-plenty of species don't care for their young, even highly intelligent ones. If octopodes didn't experience, as Casual Geographic puts it, "extreme post-nut clarity," cephalopod society could conceivably be as advanced as our own.
@bigfootwalker5399 given your picture I gotta ask, real animal or the greatest hoax in history? Is Patterson the greatest hoaxer ever or one of the most important figures in zoology?
Seán, I love what you've done with the place. I see your video come out, i re-watch the episode and hurry back for the breakdown to geek out with you. The ending of the episode doesnt do justice to RDM's absolutely stellar performance. Its a shame that all we seem to remember is "the one with the lizard babies."
two things. First I wanted to thank you for reviewing this episode in an objective way, maybe not completely objective but objective enough considering how much a lot of people hate this episode when it's really not as bad as everyone thinks. I agree with you that the last part of it is by far the worst but that the episode itself has a lot of great scenes. Second, in a weird way the lizard thing could actually support the distant origin theory because if the idea is that humans will eventually re-evolve back into reptiles, then that would support the theory that we share an ancestor with a reptilian species. They could have actually connected those two episodes together, but nobody thought to do that.
I really enjoyed this and hearing you recap and your thoughts. I like this format and I really appreciate that you covered this episode without joking too much about the famous ending. I also 100% agree with your opinion about the sfx and everyone’s acting (it’s all very believable and shockingly gross -and fun).
As insane & (until lower decks) officially uncanonical as the salamanders are, you can’t skip or erase this episode. There’s too much character development for Paris. It feels like a later season episode as far as character acting from everyone.
When Tom talks about his bedroom being both a sad and happy place it seems like it's an almost an outside respective of happy and sad moments in his life, he previously talks about how during the flight he became aware of everything and being everywhere all at once but it fades away so it could be almost spiritual and he saw outside of reality.
There should be a trellium down for them solving over lunch a problem that presumably the best experts in half the galaxy had been trying to solve for centuries.
Eh....it's very frakking convenient, but to be fair, look at Sikkarian spacial trajector tech. I bet lots of Alpha and Beta Quadrant cultures had been working on variations on long-range teleporatation for decades or centuries, but a Delta Quadrant species developed the tech for basically beaming someone or something 40,000 light-years without any pattern loss. Yeah, the tech was nerfed by the need for Sikarria's crystalline mantle to make it work, but imagine the leaps and bounds that ST transporter tech would make if a Sikarrian expert on the spacial trajector tech was able to consult with Federation scientists. Who knows what juicy tidbits Neelix picked up in his years as a trader and scavenger that could help existing Federation/Starfleet tech along by simply noting something was possible and sharing observations about how he knows. B'Elanna can run rings around Neelix as an engineer, but even she's limited to what she thinks is possible until she believes otherwise.
What makes the episode so bad is that Warp 10 breaks the physics of ST. Warp 10 is just as unattainable as the speed of light. In both cases you would need infinite energy to achieve it.
I hate that warp 10 is infinite. Therefore there is a huge difference between warp 9 and warp 10. You end up stating you're going warp 9.99999999. There is no way to go infinite velocity because it's impossible to do. It's more impossible then hitting the speed of light, at least the speed of light is a true value. It's about 0.3 Gm/s.
@@muffenme - you forget time dilatation. The reason the speed of light is the same no matter how fast you're going, is that time slows down as you speed up. So if you expend N energy to get to V, you then have to spend the same N amount of energy to get to what you now perceive as Y in your slower rate of time.
@@JohnnyWednesday true, but normal warp time doesn't slow down going by the show even though in real it does. That why I didn't bring it up because it wasn't brought up in Star Trek or any sifi show I see. It just fly though space faster then the speed of light and no go wrong with time. If it 1300h on earth and you flew for 2.5h one way at warp 8 then flew back at warp 8 and it would be around 1800h. So time slowing down isn't a problem.
Warp is not actual "speed". The ship is actually only moving at sublight velocity. It's space itself that is squeezing the warp bubble formed, like a wet bar of soap, around the ship and popping it over vast distances. At no time does the ship's actual velocity achieve light, let alone FTL.
I don't care that it 'breaks the physics', because Warp already breaks our notions of physics, there is nothing wrong with that. I'm annoyed that reaching Warp 10 is introduced as an engineering problem, Paris could just do it by optimizing his ship, not inventing new physics.
As a Brazilian, I really appreciated the Santos-Dumont shout-out! As a biologist, though, this episode is tough. They got so many things wrong about evolution. Sooo many things...
oh wow look at this! A new Star Trek series?? It's called Voyager? Boy! I cannot wait to see if this new episode of a new series gets thumbs ups or thumbs downs! (Slow month?)
First two thirds of the episode is fine, really like the visuals and the introduction of the Type 9 Shuttlecraft. If you go with the Doctor cures Tom and skip the second Warp 10 trip and just end the episode it's a solid 7/10.
Fun Fact. Robert Duncan McNeil was in the 80s Masters of the Universe film starring Dolph Lundgren. Also in that film is Anthony DeLonghis as Skeletor's henchbeing Blade, Anthony portrayed Maj Cullah in Voyager.
In a Vidiian episode in which a scientist takes one of the crew's face to appear more appealing (and thinks that B'elanna's Klingon genome will be the key to the Phage and subsequently seperates her into two beings, one human, one Klingon), B'elanna is comforted by Paris who helps her to gain self confidence. So I'd say that B'elanna's human side was already charmed by him. Only remained to conquer the Klingon side, which will take more time. As for the aeroplane, you've got that wrong. Clément Ader invented the Aeroplane, called in French "Avion" (from the Latin "Avis" meaning bird). Sure, the terme "Aeroplane" also existed in French but has been disused for quite a while. However Santos Dumont, operated in France in the same time period, just after Ader and his views were more matching what we consider to be an aeroplane. Ader's "Avion" had a test trial in front of many officials and military and failed spectacularly despite going off the ground (more like a ground effect than real flight mind you) and the pilot lost control and killed many people in the public. Years later, Santos Dumont and others took over and demonstrated more secure flights in the same period as the Wright bros. Later on, Blériot, another crazy inventor, designed the real first modern aeroplane that was light and more powerful than what was used s trainers back then. Designed 11 models, some of them quite wacky, tested them himself and nearly died several times, lost all his fortune in that folly but finally managed to cross the English Channel in 1909. His XI model was one of the first to be mass produced (some older Antoinette models were elegant but very heavy and not powerful enough to cross the channel, using a heavy boat engine whereas the Blériot XI used a specially designed engine that was light and powerful). That episode is kinda a guilty pleasure for me, especially at the end... Janeway dismissing Paris's guilt casually as if she was telling us that had Paris been older and hadn't she been her captain, she wouldn't have acted as a surrogate mother to him but would have fallen for him. That's clear that, captain or not, motherly figure or not, lover or not, she likes him. No wonder she felt so angry when he disobeys her orders in a submarine episode later on and deranks him, confining him one MONTH in the brig !
NGL, I genuinely & unironically love this episode! 🥰❤️ Purely in terms of utterly-amazing pilots I, personally, believe that Will Riker should've been at least mentioned at some point during the episode!
As a Brazilian, shout out to Santos Dumont! Although there were others doing the same stuff at the time, knowing in fact who was the first to invent the airplane is very hard. Santos Dumont had a very interesting history, he’s also regarded as the inventor of the wristwatch, as a pocket watch was too cumbersome for practical use during flights… so Cartier made him a wristwatch. If I remember correctly… He used to fly around Paris in blimp until an accident killed some people (I think…).
I gotta say, after TOS, Vger is my favorite. TNG laid the groundwork, er, spacework, true. But Vger is a mashup with "Lost in Space", brought to near perfection. Would have been nice to see Robot and Dr. Smith, though.:)
Oh! Sean, you missed this 'Blink-and-You'll-Miss-It' reference - in addition to Jake Sisko writing about Kaferian tiger-bats in "For the Cause", Kaferian apples were also mentioned by Gary Mitchell in "Where No Man Has Gone Before."
Sean, great review of "Mud-puppies in Space". In other words, your review is great and balanced for likely the most justifiably despised episode of Star Trek.
B’elanna was fire and ice at Paris, from the beginning. It brings to mind the Pamchemko line from the cutting edge. After being told, “all we ever do is fight,” his response is, “foreplay”
When you said you were going to explain your down about the pilots I was like "nah, there's no way a non Brazilian will remember Santos Dumont" and THERE YOU GO. Trek Culture is just 🤌🏽🩷🩷🩷🇧🇷
Should mention. Neil Armstrong wasn't the pilot of Apollo 11. He was the mission commander. Buzz Aldrin was the lunar module pilot and Michael Collins was the Command Module pilot.
Transwarp cooridors and Slipstream are simular to Hyperdrives. They are essentially just passageways through subspace that are already defined and mapped out.
I'm glad you acknowledged the time lord reference with the two hearts but should have also made note that his delusional ranting about time was also another Doctor Who nod
Ive said it before and I'll say it again... The doctor isn't going to be effected so unless you have plotting issues or unable to stop where you want, just zip back and have doc sort out the crew.
Great vid as usual--always with angles and ideas I hadn't picked up on. When I saw this back in the day, I figured the warp scale was redone within the canon because someone figured out the technique used to get around the lightspeed barrier also had an infinite point that could only be approached. I once heard that Warp 1 was supposed to be the speed of light, so my head canon said they always knew about this new infinite point because of math, and said the warp limit was 27.8 or something like that. Enter the 24th century and they "go metric" so to speak. Exceeding lightspeed for travel is taken for granted, and it's decided to make a new scale based on the warp limit. My quick math says lightspeed on the new scale is Warp 0.3597 - a figure most citizens wouldn't care about, until they need to calculate something. Einstein will always be relevant! Transwarp--I always thought the Excelsior "Transwarp Drive" was more a label, perhaps a new technology to get higher warp speeds. The Borg rely on "corridors" so that is some kind of subspace magic (or structure) they know how to traverse. Personally I'd like to see someone figure out how to travel instantly to any point in the universe, much like the way the Enterprise was once pulled to another galaxy. Then we could explore the old Spock quote about how he thought life from other galaxies would be different from ours, as well as what lurks in the vast voids between the strings of matter where most of the galaxies are.
Why can’t they focus on the amazing episodes like Equinox, Year of Hell, Nothing Human, and Counterpoint? I feel like every other series gets video like “10 times DS9 blew our minds” while all VOY gets is focus on the most controversial episodes.
I like to think the Stat Trek 3 transwarp drive succeeded, they were able to go beyond a, then, warp barrier, so that's why TNG and TOS have a different warp scale.
Honestly, watching you break the episode down like this makes me agree with your assessment that the first 3/4 of the episode are actually pretty good. If they had come up with a different final 1/4 and resolution for Tom's transformation, maybe we wouldn't be dumping so much hate on it. Just anything that didn't involve Janeway getting abducted and forcefully evolved and just...yeah... You could still have Tom break out and go on the run on the ship for the final act, and you could have him pursue Janeway and all that, but end it with them managing to either capture him or undo the transformation before he can do any harm to Janeway.
Sean talks about coffee nearly killing Tom Paris and that second I almost die choking on honey mustard for some reason. Good video, one of my favorite episodes but you can't even make fun of it for being so ridiculous.
Threshold is good up to the kidnapping... it is when the show really starts to go off track. It is like they needed to wrap up the show right now and that was that. Even keeping the ending as is, they needed to have Paris and Janeway not completely human. Janeway also needed to give an order about observing the offspring for a while to if they need assistance or not. Just some little touches would have been a huge improvement.
Regarding your “down” about Orville Wright. There is a lot of gray area in the topic of who was actually first to fly. The wonderful podcast “Our Fake History” did a three-episode deep dive into this (episodes 146-148). It is well worth the time to take a listen. A lot of forgotten figures and a few whose contributions were inflated more than they perhaps deserve.
What would be cool to see is "revisited up and downs", where you come back to an episode you covered when it was new but now we have the full context of the series and maybe the positivity or negativity seems to have not aged well and you re review it with that context of time and plot. Also an ups and downs for the entire series (American style) would be cool. Like an ups and downs of TOS, or the Next Generation or something
I've always liked Nelix. His character was always goofy, but his life experiences helped Voyager and her crew plenty of times because he loves to try things for the sake of trying them. Edit: I have a minor peanut and the veins popping our of your head has happened to me.
The way I choose to think of W10 vs QSS vs TwT and PrW is that in conventional warp, you have this drag effect, but the CAUSE of the drag effect is never discussed. There's also a huge shift from velocity to basically universal quantum-uncertainly therefore W10 isn't a speed at all. That effect isn't present in the other modes of travel for whatever reason, so the vessel is free to just continue to increase its velocity. Measuring them according to however objective warp speed is calculated is easy. Side-note, but if you find some numbers about warp velocities and distances, you start to see why hero ships are "the only ship in the area" because warp velocities pair poorly to the size of the galaxy.
With them being surprised he just disappeared on the first flight, i think this might be down to them expecting him to go beyond the range of their sensors but they would still get telemetry until that point. what did happen was the shuttlecraft just went poof. they could detect it, and then couldn't, rather than being too far away. i do also wonder whether some of them actually believed the target was infinite velocity but rather really really really really, really high velocity and so would still need time to travel distance
"Thresholds" could have been really good, and I agree with all of your ups and downs. If they'd have just modified it a bit, as trying to get closer to (as opposed to breaking) Warp 10 to get home faster... OR better, a NEW FORM OF TRANSPORTATION ie (Transwarp - Borg concept, Slipstream, etc). This leading to the shuttle disappearing. We get to the point that Paris escapes, but Janeway is in the shuttle to stop him. He knocks her out, but in a moment of sanity, carries her out of the shuttle (to show there is still some shred of humanity within him). He then launches the shuttle, uses the "tech" and disappears again. However, we then get an explanation with threads of DS9 "Accession", meets SG1 "The Fifth Race", meets SNW "Sharades" sort of explanation, with Paris's first flight having accidentally crossed into a realm of beings who plucked the shuttle out of its existence to save Paris, unknowingly having caused the change that is happening. Paris, suddenly returned to his human form (but still in the sickbay gown) pleads to be returned. They respond that they have caused too much interference with corporeal beings who "are not ready" and that to return him would cause more damage. Paris appeals to the idea that they have returned him to his human nature, surely if they have the ability to send him back in time too... to the point that he was first returned. There is debate, but sure enough we find us back on Voyager's bridge, back at the point in which they discover the shuttle after the first flight. There is Paris, once again human, with fleeting memories of everything, but enough to know that "we are not ready."
All right StarTrek boy, I see you sneaking in that TNG reference. Only instead of being in Paris in the holodeck Paris was in sickbay with a holodoctor.
I thought you were going another direction when you downed the list of pilots: Neil Armstrong was mission commander on Apollo 11, Michael Collins was the pilot. But now I know Alberto Santos-Dumont so thanks for that!
