October 22, 2011

The Worst of Trek-Part 3

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What is the worst episode of Voyager? Also will be talking about DS9 and Enteprise.
So, here I am in January of 1996 looking through my TV Guide. I was not a regular fan of Star Trek-Voyager yet, but I had seen the show and was a little familiar with it. Then I see a caption advertising the next episode of Voyager had some really cool special make-up effects. Apparently it took five stages of make-up to transform Tom Paris into an amphibious creature.
I thought it sounded good, so I popped in the tape on my VCR and hit the record button. In those days I recorded lots of TV; in fact I have a whole library of TV from the late 80’s right thru the 90’s. But what did I manage to record his fine day? The worst stinking episode of Star Trek ever!
Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. I had no idea “These are the Voyages” would come out years later. If you haven’t figured it out by now the episode I am referring to is “Threshold.” If you have no idea what this episode is, consider yourself fortunate. How bad is this episode? The writer himself apologized for it. That’s right; Brannon Braga wrote this stinker and was quoted in an interview as saying, “I wrote the episode, or at least the teleplay. It's a terrible episode.”
I could do a thorough review, but there is one in The Agony Booth’s sight and as I looked over that I’m really not sure what else I can add to it. That review said it all, but for those who are curious here is what happens in the episode briefly:
Tom Paris is all excited because he has found a way to break the transwarp barrier. The fact they did this is in Star Trek III and a few episodes of Next Gen is irrelevant. They rig a shuttle for a test run, and it works. Tom breaks warp 10 and then disappears. They finally find him and he’s in bad shape. He actually dies in sick-bay. A few minutes later, he comes back to life. Then he starts to change and exhibit all sorts of strange symptoms. His flesh changes and he can no longer tolerate water. As his symptoms get worst, he also starts to become irrational with a strong desire to get off the ship.
The mutation begins to get just gross; he even pulls out his tongue at one point. Just as he has become almost unrecognizable as a human, the doctor discovers a way to use anti protons to cure him. They begin the procedure, but because this episode needed another ten minutes to kill Tom escapes. Of course security is unable to stop him and Tom winds up escaping the ship in a shuttle.
I briefly jumped over something because I wanted to point out this is where the episode gets really silly. Before getting into the shuttle he somehow ambushes Captain Janeway and drags her along. The shuttle launches, of course no one is able to stop it, and we see Janeway staring at this creature as the scene changes. The narration indicates a few days has gone by, and we discover that the doctor has figured out that somehow Tom Paris’s transwarp flight accelerated that natural evolution process in him and he evolved into a specimen of what humans will look like in hundreds of years. Hope they don’t have mirrors then.
Voyager locates the planet the shuttle lands on, and Chakotay beams down with Tuvok. They find two salamander’s sitting in a pond and determine this is Paris and Janeway (yes, I’m not kidding). Not silly enough? After they stun the salamanders, they see something odd. Three little baby salamanders suddenly appear and swim away. So in three days, they turned into another species and managed to have offspring? Are you kidding me?
The final scene is back on Voyager, and in its own way is more ludicrous than the previous one. We see Janeway, perfectly fine as if nothing had happened. She goes over to Tom, also back to normal and just fine, and talks to him about the fact that they had alien babies together. Eeewwww. They end the episode with a typical laugh, and we are so happy to see that final shot of the ship speeding away.
Why did I tape this one?? Oh well, there are worst things that could have happened I suppose. I could have taped “Fury” (oh wait, I did!). I could have taped the final episode (nope, did that too!). I just can’t win.
All kidding aside, Star Trek Voyager wasn’t all that bad. It wasn’t as good as Next Generation, but it had its moments. I think with “Threshold” they were just trying too hard to make a horror-esque show and it just doesn’t work for the same reason “Sub Rosa” didn’t work.
By the way, the absolute worst for me was that god awful “Fair Haven” crap. I mean, an Irish town? My wife liked that episode because it didn’t even resemble a Star Trek episode. That’s exactly what makes it so bad! Boring I can live with, but pointless and boring I don’t have time for.”The Fight” was god awful too; did we need the obligatory boxing show really? People put down “Nothing Human” a lot but I liked the debate involved, and there’s nothing like an ethics lesson from time to time. Finally, for those wondering why I haven’t mention the insanity in season one it’s because I was lucky enough to not have to experience that Kazon crap.
Well, I could talk about Voyager all day. In fact I will probably talk more about it at a later time. Right now I want to mention Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.
DS9 was the spin-off to Next Generation and had a darker tone. I gotta tell you, I never cared for DS9. Not saying it was bad, there were some good episodes like “Crossover”. Since I never watched it though, I don’t really know which episodes were really bad. So, I did some digging and found that there is one episode almost universally considered the worst show.
The episode is called “Profit and Lace”. Apparently this is a Ferengi episode where Quark has to cross-dress. That doesn’t sound very brilliant, and from what I’ve read no one really cares for this episode. Another episode that I know I never saw was about a baseball game the crew played on a holosuite. That sound’s just silly. Finally, the episode “Let He Who Is Without Sin” is generally considered unwatchable. The crew goes to Risa for a vacation, well what can go wrong there? They already did a boring Risa episode on Next Gen, why not DS9 too? From what I can tell the episode is just silly and pointless with everyone out of character for the entire hour.
Enterprise came after Voyager left the air and was just not done well. The cast was fine, but something just wasn’t right about the show. Many fans won’t even talk about it, and I can’t blame them. As with DS9, I didn’t watch this show regularly. One episode that seems to stand out as exceptionally bad, with this show it’s hard to be particular, is “Unexpected”. In this show a male member of the crew becomes pregnant. Ok, stop right there!
I would kind of like to see these episodes, and maybe someday I will so I can really talk about them. This article was kind a synopsis because there is already a great review of “Threshold” online and I really can’t talk about the other shows but I wanted to mention them. Next time I will start talking about the movies, and while it will be hard to talk about the horrible disappointment that was “Generations” without repeating things many of said before me, I’m willing to give it a shot.
What was your favorite? If I missed a great bad one let me know, maybe I just blocked it from my memory. Wish I could that with “Threshold”!
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