Star Trek: Voyager’s 'Threshold' turns 30 — the Warp 10 episode fans still deride

On Jan. 29, 1996, Star Trek: Voyager’s Season 2 episode "Threshold" premiered; thirty years on the installment remains one of the franchise’s most divisive entries. The episode is built on the premise of breaking the Warp 10 barrier — Voyager had already been shown capable of short bursts up to Warp 9.99 — a move that challenged long-standing franchise limits set by Gene Roddenberry and later Trek storytelling.

The article notes that warp factors had been restructured after The Original Series, making the Warp 10 breakthrough a particularly notable beat. What provoked fan ire was less the speed than the biological consequences depicted. After reaching Warp 10, Lt. Tom Paris and Captain Janeway undergo an evolution‑like transformation into a salamander‑like form, breed in that state, and leave the babies behind.

The episode has an IMDb rating of just 5.3/10, and critics and viewers have singled out the implausible evolution and the characters’ behavior while mutated as major problems. Paris’s line after his first jump — "For a moment, I was everywhere" — also suggested a way to bypass Voyager’s central voyage problem until the Doctor reverted both officers to their original states.

The article argues the episode created a narrative oversight by briefly providing a potential shortcut home that Voyager never explored again, and yet the series managed to survive the backlash and continue finding new fans.

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