{"id":264776,"date":"2026-01-30T04:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T04:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/264776\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T04:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T04:22:07","slug":"the-best-moment-in-the-worst-episode-of-star-trek-voyager-30-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/264776\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Moment in the Worst Episode of ‘Star Trek: Voyager,’ 30 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirty years ago, Star Trek: Voyager broadcast one of its most controversial episodes ever: \u201cThreshold,\u201d the episode that is now infamous as \u201cThe One Where Captain Janeway and Tom Paris Mutate Into Amphibians and Have Babies.\u201d Over the years, revisitation has allowed the chance to reframe \u201cThreshold\u201d from one of the worst things<\/a> that Star Trek has ever done to a charmingly memetic moment<\/a> of camp to an episode that, while deeply flawed, still has sparks of potential<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So to mark 30 years of this moment in\u00a0Trek infamy, we decided to put aside the space amphibian sex jokes (aside from the ones we\u2019ve already made\u2014please, we\u2019re only human) and look back at one of those sparks of potential, a bright spot in an otherwise very silly episode: what \u201cThreshold\u201d has to say about\u00a0Voyager\u2018s rebellious conn officer, Tom Paris.<\/p>\n

In the early seasons of\u00a0Star Trek: Voyager, one of the few recurring arcs the show engaged with on a regular basis from episode to episode was the reformation of Lieutenant Paris. Tom joins the show with a shockingly messy background: an ex-Starfleet officer drummed out of service for covering up a piloting error, jailed for pettily running into the arms of the Cardassian resistance group known as the Maquis, and then paroled by Captain Janeway on what was meant to be a brief trial run for her new ship rather than a 70,000 light-year journey home from an unexplored quadrant of the galaxy.<\/p>\n

Almost everyone on\u00a0Voyager in its early days is operating with a sense of grief that their lives and futures they\u2019d had planned were destroyed in the blink of an eye, but not Paris. Paris is living his dream, piloting a top-of-the-line starship, still getting to bite his thumb at the Maquis who joined Voyager\u2018s crew through 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. This largely manifests in one particular way in those early seasons: Tom is kind of a huge, cocky asshole, even when he is sincerely trying to prove the faith put in him was justified.<\/p>\n

That brings us to \u201cThreshold\u201d and Tom\u2019s perfectly cocky, yet aspirational, idea of figuring out a way to breach the titular Warp 10 threshold\u2014the long-established\u00a0Star Trek lore that warp drives could not achieve faster-than-light speeds above that maximum. It\u2019s a fascinating idea that a show with a premise like Voyager, about an isolated Starfleet vessel trapped tens of thousands of light-years from Federation space, is primed to tackle, even more so when one of its main characters is a cocky ace pilot with a chip on his padded uniform shoulder. That in and of itself is a brilliant way of the show engaging with\u00a0Star Trek\u2018s broader legacy even while it\u2019s isolated from it.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the moment we\u2019re talking about. That moment comes after Tom\u2019s first experimental test flights successfully see him manage a sustained speed above the warp threshold\u2014and then have medical complications as his body undergoes what is ultimately revealed to be a rapid-onset acceleration of the evolutionary process. Tom\u2019s body starts breaking down bit-by-bit, requiring nonstop medical treatment: his hair falls out, eyes glaze over, skin mottles and flakes, and his joints and limbs start fusing together. The dashing young hero of the hour has been turned into this broken, evolving-yet-devolving wreck of a thing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in this form that \u201cThreshold\u201d delivers its greatest moment. It\u2019s a fascinating grotesquerie: the body horror is incredibly effective for\u00a0Trek\u00a0and feels like\u00a0Voyager building on its stunningly creepy effects work with the Vidiians the season prior, made all the more chilling by the fact that it\u2019s one of our heroes who has been rendered horrifying. But it\u2019s the breakdown of Paris\u2019 persona that is most effective. The wild changes he\u2019s undergone almost feel like the dropping of a mask, both metaphorically and literally, as parts of his face slough off.<\/p>\n

In one moment, he rails at Captain Janeway for taking pity on his gruesome form; the next, for her trying to diminish what he\u2019s accomplished in breaking past warp 10. His ego, usually kept in check by his earnest desire to prove himself to the world and Janeway in particular, runs rampant, making for a scene that\u2019s chilling and tragic in equal measures as he vacillates between the man we\u2019ve come to know and this wretched figure. It\u2019s a great character beat for Paris to find himself again at the heart of an accident caused by his own hubris and to respond to it by impulsively lashing out at the world around him\u2014it\u2019s just that this time the ugliness that marks his soul, and the filters he\u2019s built up as he tried to redeem himself in Voyager\u2018s early days up to this point being stripped away in his despair and agony, are now reflected on the outside.<\/p>\n

Of course, that\u2019s when we get to him kidnapping Janeway, forcing her to undergo the same process, and them having space amphibian sex before\u00a0Voyager tries to move on from it, never bringing the workplace ethics nightmare of the millennia up ever again. But before that moment that would seal the infamous legacy of \u201cThreshold\u201d for decades to come, it shone with a moment of genuine brilliance. A fine example of even some of\u00a0Star Trek\u2018s lowest lows having at least\u00a0something worth thinking about.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thirty years ago, Star Trek: Voyager broadcast one of its most controversial episodes ever: \u201cThreshold,\u201d the episode that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,4523,12119,101161,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-264776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-paramount","12":"tag-star-trek","13":"tag-star-trek-voyager","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}