Thirty years ago, Star Trek: Voyager aired one of its most controversial episodes ever: “Threshold,” the episode now infamous as “The One Where Captain Janeway and Tom Paris Turn Into Amphibians and Have Babies.” Over the years, revisitation has made it possible to reframe “Threshold” from one of the worst things that Star Trek has already done to a charming and memetic moment from camp to an episode that, while deeply flawed, remains has sparks of potential.
So to mark 30 years of this moment in Hiking infamy, we decided to put aside the space amphibian sex jokes (aside from the ones we’ve already made – please, we’re only human) and return to one of those sparks of potential, a bright spot in an otherwise very silly episode: what “Threshold” has to say about TravelerRebel police officer Tom Paris.
In the first seasons of Star Trek: Voyagerone of the few recurring arcs that the series engaged with consistently from episode to episode was the reformation of Lieutenant Paris. Tom joins the series with an incredibly messy past: a former Starfleet officer decommissioned for covering up a pilot error, imprisoned for throwing himself into the arms of the Cardassian resistance group known as the Maquis, then paroled by Captain Janeway for what was supposed to be a brief test run for his new ship rather than a 70,000 light-year journey home from an uncharted quadrant of the galaxy.
Almost everyone on Traveler in its beginnings, it operates with a sense of grief that their lives and the future they had planned for had been destroyed in the blink of an eye, but not Paris. Paris is living his dream, piloting a high-end ship, while making fun of the maquis who joined him. Travelerthe Starfleet crew in necessary circumstances, and the only Starfleet authority to answer to is the woman who trusted him enough to give him a second chance in the first place. Much of this manifests itself in one particular way in these early seasons: Tom is kind of a huge, arrogant asshole, even when he’s sincerely trying to prove that the trust placed in him was justified.
This brings us to “Threshold” and Tom’s perfectly audacious, yet ambitious, idea to find a way to cross the titular threshold of Warp 10 – the long-established threshold. Star Trek lore that warp engines could not reach faster-than-light speeds above this maximum. It’s a fascinating idea that a show with a premise like Traveleron an isolated Starfleet ship trapped tens of thousands of light years from Federation space, is ready to attack, especially since one of its main characters is an arrogant pilot with a chip on the shoulder of his padded uniform. This in itself is a brilliant way for the show to engage with Star TrekThe broader legacy even if isolated from it.
But that’s not the moment we’re talking about. This moment comes after Tom’s first experimental test flights saw him successfully manage sustained speed above the warp threshold, then have medical complications as his body undergoes what ultimately proves to be a rapid acceleration of the evolutionary process. Tom’s body begins to deteriorate little by little, requiring continued medical treatment: his hair falls out, his eyes glow, his skin becomes marbled and flaky, and his joints and limbs begin to fuse together. The dashing young hero of the moment has been transformed into this broken wreck, evolving but evolving.
It is in this form that “Threshold” delivers its greatest moment. It’s a fascinating grotesquerie: body horror is incredibly effective at Hiking and I have the impression Traveler building on his incredibly scary effects work with the Vidiians from the previous season, made all the more frightening by the fact that it was one of our heroes who was made horrifying. But it’s the breakdown of Paris’ personality that is most effective. The wild changes he has undergone are almost like the falling of a mask, both metaphorically and literally, as parts of his face fall away.
At one point he lashes out at Captain Janeway for taking pity on his horrible form; the next, for her trying to diminish what he accomplished by surpassing warp 10. His ego, usually controlled by his sincere desire to prove himself to the world and to Janeway in particular, is rampant, creating a scene both frightening and tragic as he vacillates between the man we knew and this miserable figure. It’s a wonderful feeling of character for Paris to once again find himself in the middle of an accident caused by his own hubris and respond by impulsively lashing out at the world around him – it’s just that this time, the ugliness that marks his soul and the filters he’s built while trying to redeem himself TravelerIts early days, so far stripped bare in its despair and agony, are now reflected outside.
Of course, that’s when he kidnaps Janeway, forcing her to undergo the same process, and they have sex with space amphibians before. Traveler tries to get by, without ever resurrecting the millennial work ethic nightmare again. But before that moment that would seal “Threshold’s” infamous legacy for decades to come, it shone with true brilliance. A fine example of even some of Star Trekthe lowest levels having at least something It’s worth thinking about.
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