I remember this episode used to scare me shitless as a kid, gave me nightmares for weeks. It eventually became my favorite episode aside from 'Blink of an Eye'.
I have a feeling that it''s thanks to Chuck that this episode is gaining recognition, because I recall that The Thaw wasn't really all that well-liked before.
Context is king. Retrospective reviews tend to be very harsh, and why wouldn't they be? Looking back with around 25 years of 20/20 hindsight, it's so easy to take cheap shots at Voyager. It's not as good as I remember watching it in my teens, but Voyager was a very widely watched and anticipated show that was considered pretty good by most Trek fans. At least, all the ones I knew. I remember The Thaw getting middling to decent reviews at the time, 2/4 or 3/5 stars. It does pop on some (retrospective) reviewers' 'worst' lists too.
I finally got to see this episode after having it hyped up by Chuck. It lives up to they hype! I especially like that the episode ends on the Mulgrew/McKean scene. Shivers!
I actually really love this episode, and "Masks." Not too surprised to find that they're written by the same person. I can see the storytelling links between them.
I always really liked this episode, I actually like quite a lot of voyager but this episode always stuck out for me. I love all the scenes with the clown especially with the doctor or janeway, That final scene and janeway's response to the clowns fear is so great that woman knows no fear.
Me too. Voyager was far more well-liked than retrospective reviewers ever admit, and that's part of the problem with retrospectives. You will never, ever get an unbiased retrospective because the exercise of looking at things 20-25 years old is that they cannot live up to your memory of them. This is one of those episodes where Chuck actually gives the show a fair swing at things, and doesn't go in automatically sighing about how bad Voyager is in the opening (watch the S1 reviews...most of them open with a definite 'this show is shit so prepare to hear about it' vibe to them).
You should have so many more subscribers its sad that people who copy and steal from the you have more subscribers please keep doing the outstanding work
I think the main problem is the user name. It's all in lower-case, and it's basically meaningless. It's unprofessional and it doesn't sell. I nearly passed on this video.
How did i ever miss this episode? (Well, I was a little kid in the 90's and mom and dad never let me stay up that late) I literally never heard of it until now! I thought it was _VERY_ TOS in its vibe. I mean the wit felt like something Kirk and Spock would have come up with, the ending, the revenge, you really want to do this kind of thing to every bully you've ever met. Gawd I need to go back and binge watch this series now. (I guess I shoulda watched the whole vid lol, i just type this and what does the guy say? lmao)
This episode is part of why I'd never consider "uploading" my mind into some simulation... Yes death is an awful thing but can you imagine being tortured over and over for millions of years in some simulation gone wrong ????
the reason that Voyager beamed up the stasis pod in the first place, is that they realized that it had been much longer than 15 years since that message was recorded. Therefore something was obviously wrong. I don't deny Janeway recklessly breaks the Prime Directive and assorted other Star Trek laws any number of times, but in this case she had just cause.
I feel like being in the completely new part of the galaxy Voyager could have done more stuff like this Harlan Ellison fever dream or even Lovecraft inspired. The Thaw particularly I always thought was inspired by I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and given Harlan Ellison writing an episode of TOS I don’t think it’s a far stretch.
It's more a long series of decisions that could easily be considered evil throughout the series... this is just one of the few places where it could arguably be considered her showing her true colors because there aren't any witnesses.
Kerta Losataure I know but the evil Janeway(EJ) has always been really add hawk. To be clear I love it when EJ voice shows up but I feel that we’ve never got a full primer. I have been watching sf debris for 4-5 years and I’m still not clear on the full story for the inside jokes.
@@FreeJaffa92 'Evil' Janeway is just a parody that grew out of a perceived (but exaggerated) take on her attitude to certain things. Obviously they did not write Janeway that way...they just embraced the 'woman as character attribute' too much. Really, it was because she can draw a line in the sand on an issue in one episode and then criticise someone to death for not crossing that same line in another. She was written inconsistently. Archer was written far worse. For a start, many people did and still do like Voyager...I've only met a single Trek fan that praised Enterprise.
This is confusing. If everyone loves you, but no one likes you, it's a lonely existence according to Bojack Horseman. But here, it's OK if only few people love you?
Huh, I guess those guys behind Magic: The Gathering had the same philosophy as Rian Johnson. After all, The Last Jedi is ALSO rated with ones and twos in addition to bones and tens.
I watched the review of Dr. Who 'Utopia' earlier today. A show that features more ''bad science'' in one episode than in a dozen of Voyager, and that was free passes all round! The human race looks the same in 100 Trillion years? No issue. The Time Lord that resurrects himself (until also herself) upon death? No issue. Time travel? No issue. Yet in every Voyager (in particular) there is a tirade against some scientific crime that usually (but not always) misses the point entirely. My favourite just from today was Learning Curve - if you're going to criticise the 'bio-neural gel packs get an infection' idea, at least when watching the episode don't assume that they meant a viral infection when the episode states outright 'the cheese is full of harmful BACTERIAL spores'. If I was to be equally harsh, I'd throw the word 'stupid' around just as much when someone confuses bacteria with viruses. Since I'm also someone from a scientific background, that's pretty silly to me but I accept some folk would make that mistake. More than that...ease up on the critiquing of the ''science'' in SF. There's always going to be something fanciful even in the hardest of hard SF. Even Dragon's Egg, a work that got high praise...is about life existing on the surface of a neutron star. An actual fucking neutron star. It's okay to posit that life can exist at 600,000 Kelvin and billions of times normal gravity...but make up a word like 'photonic' for Heroes & Demons or suggest cells could undergo fission (which simply means 'divide into two or more parts...that cells do a hell of a lot...'fission' doesn't mean NUCLEAR fission) in Jetrel? That's apparently ''stupid''. The point is, there's always something that has to be handwaved in SF. The hardest Speculative Fiction is often a very different beast, especially in literature. I've read too many 'Hard SF' stories involving 3-D printers, drones, climate change and random tech showcased at Burning Man...in the end the best SF is still more ambitious (to me). I really enjoy all SF Debris reviews, they're great and when talking about ST an interesting alternative look at something many people still love and enjoy today. I think Voyager was the worst of the TNG-era shows too, but the reviews of those in particular suggest you had it out for that show in particular; having watched all of B5 as many times as Trek, that show gets WAY more of a light ride in comparison despite its (incredibly) overlooked flaws.
KRSsven Well, to be fair there’s no reason the human race couldn’t look exactly the same in the distant future. Even at this point evolutionary pressures are not significant to the race as we are able to readily adapt environments to suit us rather than breed our selves to better suit some environment. There’s not a lot of cause to think that we would evolve any further beyond where we are now short of self induced augmentation. We know THATS a thing that happens in WHO in all sorts of ways, but it’s just as likely that some version of humanity will simply continue on essentially as we are now content to live on the odd earth like planet or more likely and certainly more commonly IN our self made earth like habitats. Places meant to replicate what we consider the ideal environment now.
@@DrewLSsix Actually, that's a common misconception about evolution. Evolution via natural selection is all about an organism's fitness to exist in its niche - if that niche subtly changes, the organism will change as well, gradually selecting for certain characteristics over others. 100 trillion years remember is more time than the age of the UNIVERSE. The universe is only 14 billion years old...that means Utopia is set six orders of magnitude of time into the future than the age of the universe itself. Consider then that most of the evolution of life on earth happened over just 4 billion years and you can see the problem with Dr. Who's science. In short, evolution never 'stops'. It's not a force like gravity or electromagnetism, it's a process of adaptation. It's naive to think we're above biological processes just because we have technology.
Dr Who however always had a loose approach to real world science, as the "reversed the polarity of the neutron flow" line use as more of a catchphrase demonstrates. The IP is basically dead on its feet now though, after having finally committed condinuity harikiri, in the hands of a talentless hack. Ironic really; as the first DW showrunner was a woman, whom put a great deal into making the series work because she felt it was worth it... whilst the last showrunner is an ugly, fat, infantile manlet, more interested in pushing an unpopular agenda than making good tv.
It's established in Doctor Who that there are always humans or people who look like them. The Master also establishes why he can regenerate: the Doctor was able to do so in the TARDIS, so why shouldn't he? And of course time travel is established--it's the premise of the show. So none of those would be valid complaints.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself. And that guy's afraid of Janeway, so we should be REALLY afraid of her!
I agree with Chuck, The Thaw is the MOST underrated of all the Voyager episodes but I love it.
Clown: I'm afraid.
Janeway: I knooow. 😈
"....drat"
this show completely changes when you realize janeway is a psychopath burning her way across the delta quadrant
wasn't it already obvious?
I remember this episode used to scare me shitless as a kid, gave me nightmares for weeks. It eventually became my favorite episode aside from 'Blink of an Eye'.
I've always loved this episode. The ending is what makes it great as opposed to just good.
It's odd, in hungarian the episode is called "fear's wage" and I fairly enjoyed the episode personally.
I have a feeling that it''s thanks to Chuck that this episode is gaining recognition, because I recall that The Thaw wasn't really all that well-liked before.
Context is king. Retrospective reviews tend to be very harsh, and why wouldn't they be? Looking back with around 25 years of 20/20 hindsight, it's so easy to take cheap shots at Voyager. It's not as good as I remember watching it in my teens, but Voyager was a very widely watched and anticipated show that was considered pretty good by most Trek fans. At least, all the ones I knew.
I remember The Thaw getting middling to decent reviews at the time, 2/4 or 3/5 stars. It does pop on some (retrospective) reviewers' 'worst' lists too.
All hail Lord Janeway. Destroyer of worlds.
Lady Janeway, of the death stare.
I love Michael McKean. Such an underrated actor IMO.
Agreed. I loved him in Smallville and Short Circuit 2.
I'm afraid....
I know.....
@@darknightdetroit2006 ...Drat.
@@Jygerthe2nd the best last line
I finally got to see this episode after having it hyped up by Chuck. It lives up to they hype! I especially like that the episode ends on the Mulgrew/McKean scene. Shivers!
But it's the EMH as Janeway though
There is nothing to fear, but Janeway herself
Wow, you really hate Harry. What are you, one of the VOY writers?
That would actually explain quite a lot...
Actually a really good episode
I love this format
I actually really love this episode, and "Masks." Not too surprised to find that they're written by the same person. I can see the storytelling links between them.
The decor in this episode always reminds me of ToS!
I always really liked this episode, I actually like quite a lot of voyager but this episode always stuck out for me. I love all the scenes with the clown especially with the doctor or janeway, That final scene and janeway's response to the clowns fear is so great that woman knows no fear.
Me too. Voyager was far more well-liked than retrospective reviewers ever admit, and that's part of the problem with retrospectives. You will never, ever get an unbiased retrospective because the exercise of looking at things 20-25 years old is that they cannot live up to your memory of them.
This is one of those episodes where Chuck actually gives the show a fair swing at things, and doesn't go in automatically sighing about how bad Voyager is in the opening (watch the S1 reviews...most of them open with a definite 'this show is shit so prepare to hear about it' vibe to them).
I love this ep, it really cemented Janeway as a badass to make fear itself fear her/lose to her
Michael McKean to Janeway: “He defecated through a sunroof!”
You should have so many more subscribers its sad that people who copy and steal from the you have more subscribers please keep doing the outstanding work
I think the main problem is the user name. It's all in lower-case, and it's basically meaningless. It's unprofessional and it doesn't sell. I nearly passed on this video.
How did i ever miss this episode? (Well, I was a little kid in the 90's and mom and dad never let me stay up that late) I literally never heard of it until now! I thought it was _VERY_ TOS in its vibe. I mean the wit felt like something Kirk and Spock would have come up with, the ending, the revenge, you really want to do this kind of thing to every bully you've ever met. Gawd I need to go back and binge watch this series now.
(I guess I shoulda watched the whole vid lol, i just type this and what does the guy say? lmao)
This episode is part of why I'd never consider "uploading" my mind into some simulation... Yes death is an awful thing but can you imagine being tortured over and over for millions of years in some simulation gone wrong ????
Thaw was one of the best Voyager episodes.
They're basically in The Matrix and the keanu reeves reference he makes is from Speed? Trololololol
the reason that Voyager beamed up the stasis pod in the first place, is that they realized that it had been much longer than 15 years since that message was recorded. Therefore something was obviously wrong. I don't deny Janeway recklessly breaks the Prime Directive and assorted other Star Trek laws any number of times, but in this case she had just cause.
I loved this episode
I miss the old standard ending to SFD Voyager reviews using the conclusion of this episode
He still uses those.
I feel like being in the completely new part of the galaxy Voyager could have done more stuff like this Harlan Ellison fever dream or even Lovecraft inspired. The Thaw particularly I always thought was inspired by I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and given Harlan Ellison writing an episode of TOS I don’t think it’s a far stretch.
Fear; BWHAHAHAHA
Janeway:
Fear: I'm afraid...
I knoooooooow
So is your stuff coming back to youtube?
So is this where evil Janeway comes from?
It's more a long series of decisions that could easily be considered evil throughout the series... this is just one of the few places where it could arguably be considered her showing her true colors because there aren't any witnesses.
Kerta Losataure I know but the evil Janeway(EJ) has always been really add hawk.
To be clear I love it when EJ voice shows up but I feel that we’ve never got a full primer.
I have been watching sf debris for 4-5 years and I’m still not clear on the full story for the inside jokes.
@@FreeJaffa92 'Evil' Janeway is just a parody that grew out of a perceived (but exaggerated) take on her attitude to certain things. Obviously they did not write Janeway that way...they just embraced the 'woman as character attribute' too much.
Really, it was because she can draw a line in the sand on an issue in one episode and then criticise someone to death for not crossing that same line in another. She was written inconsistently. Archer was written far worse. For a start, many people did and still do like Voyager...I've only met a single Trek fan that praised Enterprise.
Evil = the word Live, spelt forwards ;-) .
@@KRSsven I like ENT and Jonathan Archer .
is cbs still giving you trouble on youtube for making reviews?
I ask because I'm making my own reviews and want to know how safe is it
I would guess it is unsafe. Very unsafe.
CBS is notorious for cracking the whip when it comes to their copyright unfortunately.
I always liked this one
For a second I thought you were reviewing the 2009 Val Kilmer film.
The best Voyager.
This is confusing. If everyone loves you, but no one likes you, it's a lonely existence according to Bojack Horseman. But here, it's OK if only few people love you?
did you upload another video by mistake
There always a bigger fish...
Janeway is the only thing that Fear its lf fears - crazy.
Who else but Janeway? is gonna conquer fear Picard got assimilated, Janeway kicked the crap out of them, etc etc..
Huh, I guess those guys behind Magic: The Gathering had the same philosophy as Rian Johnson.
After all, The Last Jedi is ALSO rated with ones and twos in addition to bones and tens.
Should've renamed the video, Chuck.
I watched the review of Dr. Who 'Utopia' earlier today. A show that features more ''bad science'' in one episode than in a dozen of Voyager, and that was free passes all round! The human race looks the same in 100 Trillion years? No issue. The Time Lord that resurrects himself (until also herself) upon death? No issue. Time travel? No issue. Yet in every Voyager (in particular) there is a tirade against some scientific crime that usually (but not always) misses the point entirely.
My favourite just from today was Learning Curve - if you're going to criticise the 'bio-neural gel packs get an infection' idea, at least when watching the episode don't assume that they meant a viral infection when the episode states outright 'the cheese is full of harmful BACTERIAL spores'.
If I was to be equally harsh, I'd throw the word 'stupid' around just as much when someone confuses bacteria with viruses. Since I'm also someone from a scientific background, that's pretty silly to me but I accept some folk would make that mistake.
More than that...ease up on the critiquing of the ''science'' in SF. There's always going to be something fanciful even in the hardest of hard SF. Even Dragon's Egg, a work that got high praise...is about life existing on the surface of a neutron star. An actual fucking neutron star. It's okay to posit that life can exist at 600,000 Kelvin and billions of times normal gravity...but make up a word like 'photonic' for Heroes & Demons or suggest cells could undergo fission (which simply means 'divide into two or more parts...that cells do a hell of a lot...'fission' doesn't mean NUCLEAR fission) in Jetrel? That's apparently ''stupid''. The point is, there's always something that has to be handwaved in SF. The hardest Speculative Fiction is often a very different beast, especially in literature. I've read too many 'Hard SF' stories involving 3-D printers, drones, climate change and random tech showcased at Burning Man...in the end the best SF is still more ambitious (to me).
I really enjoy all SF Debris reviews, they're great and when talking about ST an interesting alternative look at something many people still love and enjoy today. I think Voyager was the worst of the TNG-era shows too, but the reviews of those in particular suggest you had it out for that show in particular; having watched all of B5 as many times as Trek, that show gets WAY more of a light ride in comparison despite its (incredibly) overlooked flaws.
KRSsven Well, to be fair there’s no reason the human race couldn’t look exactly the same in the distant future. Even at this point evolutionary pressures are not significant to the race as we are able to readily adapt environments to suit us rather than breed our selves to better suit some environment. There’s not a lot of cause to think that we would evolve any further beyond where we are now short of self induced augmentation.
We know THATS a thing that happens in WHO in all sorts of ways, but it’s just as likely that some version of humanity will simply continue on essentially as we are now content to live on the odd earth like planet or more likely and certainly more commonly IN our self made earth like habitats. Places meant to replicate what we consider the ideal environment now.
@@DrewLSsix Actually, that's a common misconception about evolution. Evolution via natural selection is all about an organism's fitness to exist in its niche - if that niche subtly changes, the organism will change as well, gradually selecting for certain characteristics over others.
100 trillion years remember is more time than the age of the UNIVERSE. The universe is only 14 billion years old...that means Utopia is set six orders of magnitude of time into the future than the age of the universe itself. Consider then that most of the evolution of life on earth happened over just 4 billion years and you can see the problem with Dr. Who's science.
In short, evolution never 'stops'. It's not a force like gravity or electromagnetism, it's a process of adaptation. It's naive to think we're above biological processes just because we have technology.
Dr Who however always had a loose approach to real world science, as the "reversed the polarity of the neutron flow" line use as more of a catchphrase demonstrates.
The IP is basically dead on its feet now though, after having finally committed condinuity harikiri, in the hands of a talentless hack.
Ironic really; as the first DW showrunner was a woman, whom put a great deal into making the series work because she felt it was worth it... whilst the last showrunner is an ugly, fat, infantile manlet, more interested in pushing an unpopular agenda than making good tv.
It's established in Doctor Who that there are always humans or people who look like them. The Master also establishes why he can regenerate: the Doctor was able to do so in the TARDIS, so why shouldn't he? And of course time travel is established--it's the premise of the show.
So none of those would be valid complaints.
Drat.
The Ensign Kim character was so badly written for the entirety of the show