![]() Threshold
Submitted Saturday, September 17, 2005 - 11:40:07 AM by Klaitu
Sci-Fi, Sci-Fi, Sci-Fi, where to find more Sci-Fi? In a quite unlikely place.. CBS.
I recently listened to the Chase show over on thefandom.com where Chase was interviewing Brannon Braga, the producer for the show. Observers will note that Braga is 50% of the suck that ran Enterprise into the ground.
So anyway, I thought I'd give Threshold a chance. Maybe Braga just really couldn't write for Star Trek. Meybe it wasn't his cup of tea, and he'd be better in an X-Files type situation.
Nope.
The show is written by stupid people to be watched by stupid people. It's thrown together haphazardly, and makes sense if you don't think about what you're being shown, and just accept whatever the characters say as fact.
Threshold follows a small team of government agents. Their leader, a woman I like to call "UnJaneway" is a consultant at a think-tank and she designs plans to cope with worst-case scenarios. One of those plans involves the crashing of an alien spaceship, so when an alien spaceship lands on the deck of a ship at sea, a black helicopter shows up and abducts her into the world of the NSA. The guy picking her up exclaims that she's "The world's most important person".
This brings me to a whole slew of problems with the core plot of the show.
1. The world's most important person? I don't think so. The woman is a planner for goodness sake! You mean nobody else on earth can read the plan she wrote 5 years ago? Why did she write it all down anyway?
2. The guy who picks her up is the deputy director for the NSA, and the lady and her team are incorporated into the NSA as a special task force. Only problem: In real life, the NSA decrypts radio signals, and hacks computers.. that's about it.
3. The "alien spacecraft" lands on a Navy Ship. The CGI model they use is of a civilian freighter. The crew aboard the ship does not wear uniforms, except for one guy (and you only see him because he's dead).
4. In the briefing, the big cheese says "The Coast Guard has reported that a navy ship has gone silent". Bzzzzt.. Wrong! Why would the Coast Guard report that a Navy ship had gone silent? It wouldn't. The Navy would almost instantly know that their own ship had lost communications, and would have sent someone to investigate of their own volition before anyone else would have even figured it out.
5. Our heroes are on a time table because "the north koreans have detected the alien craft". Excuse me what? The map displays the location of the ship as being off the coast of Maryland. How the crap did the North Koreans detect it?
6. The NK's send a submarine to investigate the area.. but if the Coast Guard is involved, then the crash site is in US Territorial waters, and the NK wouldn't go near it, especially in the ATLANTIC OCEAN. Even if they did try to enter US waters, the Navy could blow them to bits legally. Where's the problem?
7. When the team arrives aboard the doomed ship, a neat alien pattern is blinking on all the electronic monitors of the ship... This is explicitly stated not once, not twice.. but no less than 5 times! (It's the logo for the show). The team searches for evidence aboard the ship, and finds a video camera. Obviously, they're going to play the tape back.. on a TV.. which DOES NOT HAVE THE LOGO BURNED INTO IT. Neither does the video camera's LCD screen have the logo burned into it. Whoops! I guess we didn't count TV's as electronic monitors.
8. They play back the tape and see the alien spacecraft. It takes about 10 seconds for the video nerd character to say "Oh, that's a ship that uses 4th dimension technology, that's why we can't see it all". Wow, I guess they picked him for a reason. He can look at a VCR recording and instantly tell that the aliens are using trans-dimensional technology. Fascinating.
9. Likewise, the linguist looks at the pattern burned into the screens and instantly recognizes it as a mathematical formula that represents DNA in the form of a Triple Helix. Wow, he's smart!
Oh, and also.. this one is particularly stupid because you remember in Star Trek: Generations what made the suns explode? TRI-Lithium. Braga likes to take stuff that was two (Double Helix, Dilithium) and make it into THREE for super excitement! (Triple Helix, Trilithium)
10. While the team watches the video tape of the alien craft, they get nosebleeds because of the sound coming from the TV. We later learn that the aliens can generate sounds that reprogram human DNA into alien DNA. The Video Nerd states later in the episode that the "sound has so many layers" that "We don't have the means to analyze the entire signal". He is mistaken, because a Camcorder can obviously RECORD ALL OF THE ALIEN GENE-ALTERING SOUNDS with no problem. Why don't you just plug that camcorder back in there, genius.
11. Unjaneway is attacked by one of the ex-crew of the Navy ship (who wasn't wearing a uniform) They struggle in her house. He causes her to bleed, and her blood forms the "cool alien logo" all by itself. Problem: Blood cannot move itself. That's why we have hearts to pump it all around, it just floats there otherwise. blood can't form shapes unless someone moves it.
12. The NSA cheese constantly expresses a need for secrecy, and a desire that no other government know about the aliens. Problem, though. In his mission briefing, he says that the alien craft was detected by NORAD. NORAD is a joint Command with the Canadians.. because it's NORAD and not USRAD. In fact, the commander of NORAD is a Canadian. I think it's safe to say the Canadians know.
13. And if the NORTH KOREANS can pick up something on the other side of the world with 50 year old radar technology stationed inside their own country, then you know that the British and everyone else with a tin can and a battery could pick it up.
But anyway, I could continue to shred Threshold into a million tiny pieces and then spit on them and throw them into oblivion. It would be so easy, but I really don't think it deserves more of my time at this point.
There are 3 Highlights to the show as I see it:
1. Brent Spiner is cool. I just like him. I'm not going to say he is brilliant or anything, he is basically playing Dr. Soong in the present day, and whenever he says Jargon, he removes all contractions automatically. In other words: He's Data with a cigarette.
2. The Lead chick is supposed to be like Janeway, but is about 3 trillion times better than Janeway ever thought of being. I like her character even better than Dr. Weir from Atlantis. Too bad they didn't find this lady for Voyager, it might not have sucked so bad.
3. One of the main cast members is a midget. There's just no way you can go wrong with that.
Overall Score: 2 of 10
Dear Brannon Braga,
You can't write worth a crap. People give you jobs because you are good at kissing the butts of VIP's. You have no creative talent whatsoever and should stop writing everything immediately. As a producer, you're alright, but keep your nose out of everyone's business and just give the talented people money. I think that would be best. Oh, and please take Berman with you. He sucks even more than you do.
Sincerely,
Klaitu
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