Discover Top Posts Tagged with #threshold voyager

Next up: my irritation with Threshold.

First of all, since this relates to both of my points, I feel the need to mention that Tom and Kathryn didn't really "evolve," which is the word that's used to describe the phenomenon in the episode. Rather, they simply mutated. Evolution is mutations surviving through generations due to being advantageous. Therefore, an individual can't evolve in a phylogenic sense.

With that out of the way: it's possible that the babies could have developed some sort of intelligence/sentience beyond that of salamanders (which is not what they actually were, of course), given that their parents were mutated from humans. The Doctor even says (although while having analyzed only up to the middle stages) that Tom has increased brain capacity. However, it is unclear what Kathryn and Tom's mental states were. Their lack of memory of the time during the (potentially) final stage of transformation is not necessarily indicative of a lack of sapience, as Tom, while delirious, still retained the ability to pilot a shuttle very late into the humanoid stage. It's possible that when found, T and K had the mental but not physical capacity to speak. It's possible that the kids could have gown up to have the same abilities, and, in my opinion, it was at least worth finding out.

Secondly, and this is the part that pisses me off the most: they left the babies to die. Not to live. There is almost a zero percent chance that they survived for very long after the end of the episode. This is for several reasons. First of all, while the planet they were left on was their "habitat" as Chakotay says (as his justification for leaving them), it was certainly not their native one, at least not in the sense that they were adapted to life there. They weren't adapted to life anywhere. Additionally, while they weren't really meant to have any specific type of lifestyle, I can guess that they might benefit from a more altricial childhood for a few reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, there were only three of them. When an animal has only a small number of offspring at a time, it is usually so that they can provide care, which includes not only feeding and protection, but often also teaching. Also, at only three days old or less, the babies are impressively comparable in size to their parents, in a way that also indicates an altruistic lifestyle. When animals only produce a few offspring at a time, their bodies typically put more energy into them. Another example other than large size in lactation, which may of may not be applicable here, as Kathryn was a mammal. When animals have a lot of babies at a time, they are often very small, as many are not expected to survive, so the loss of energy is not very great when one dies. Of course, it's possible that the babies were experiencing accelerated growth the same way that their parents were mutating rapidly and they may have been born much smaller. Beyond that, they could have even been the only survivors of many more siblings. However, I think that this is unlikely, due to the fact that they were still with their parents and even in a nest. All of this is to say, those babies probably needed their parents to protect them, feed them, and teach them how to live on their own.

It's my opinion that the decision made should have been to bring them back to Voyager with their parents, to raise them as children if possible, or at least, to give them the best care possible. But, if this wasn't the decision that was going to be made, the humane thing to do would have been to euthanize the kids. Otherwise, they were almost guaranteed a short, unpleasant life ending in starvation, predation, dehydration, infection, or any other manner of death.

Also, it kind of sucks that Chakotay made this decision by himself. I know that first officers have to make very difficult decisions and can't always be right, but it seems to me that this is a choice that Chakotay didn't even need to make. This wasn't a heat-of-battle decision. He easily could have stayed in orbit and taken the babies aboard the ship (or left them, since he seemed to think they could survive on their own) for the short time it took to restore K and T, and then passed the responsibility off to them. This would have been both easier for him and more morally correct.

#did i basically just write an essay on accident?#star trek #star trek: voyager #threshold #threshold voyager #kathryn janeway #tom paris #chakotay

The cat I am pet sitting is not having it with the salamander babies lol

#gotta get my threshold watch in for the day #cat is very confused #star trek #star trek voyager #threshold day #threshold voyager

Threshold is one of those things that really shoulda been a wake up call for my brand of identity weird. watching it air for the first time all like, "Damn, I wanna go warp 10" pretty much every stage of the episode. Like, as the mutation got more intense and they both turned into lizards I was like, fuck I want this.

Years later and I'm trans and in the non-human community and it's like, "oh that explains that"

#6aaah #voyager #star trek voyager #threshold #threshold day #threshold voyager #voyager threshold

Having ADHD feels like my brain is Tom Paris in Threshold. Half the time it’s Tom Paris at warp 10. So trying to be everywhere and everything at once, vibrating beyond light speed, overwhelmed by the vastness of what lays before me... The rest of the time it’s like Tom Paris after Warp 10. So practically unconscious, waking up just to drop some tmi anecdote, then screaming shit like PEPPERONI at inopportune moments.