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Star Trek Voy - Season 2 - Episode 23

Star Trek Voy - 2x23 - The Thaw

Originally Aired: 1996-4-29

Synopsis:
Kim is held hostage by fear. [DVD]

My Rating - 5

Fan Rating Average - 6.1

Rate episode?

Rating: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
# Votes: 14 5 5 8 5 12 20 7 24 22 17

Problems
- Tom claims the ship was built for combat performance, not acoustics. Voyager is a ship of combat, and not a ship of exploration?

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- The Clown's ridiculous behavior.
- The doctor's sudden appearance in the dream world.
- The doctor providing a distraction while Torres disrupts the clown's environment.
- Holographic Janeway kicking fear's ass.

My Review
You have to overlook a few things to appreciate this episode. Firstly, why did Janeway even bother beaming up the stasis pods in the first place? Isn't that a whole Prime Directive violation type thing? Well, maybe not as there was evidence of advanced technology. But why send crewmembers in there when it's very obviously dangerous from the beginning? Why not send in the doctor *before* crewmembers are in danger? Also, you have to overlook the general silliness of the episode too, because it's intentional. Personally, I found this episode hilarious and the clown a great guest star. The doctor and Janeway both put up fantastic performances against our antagonist. If the writing were a bit more careful, it'd most certainly be an above average episode.

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From rpeh on 2010-08-19 at 3:08pm:
    "Massively irritating" about sums it up for me. This episode doesn't advance the story, doesn't contain anything interesting and just annoyed the hell out of me.
  • From Nick on 2010-08-31 at 10:23pm:
    A fantastic episode. One of many overlooked gems from Voyager's long run, and easily the best from season 2. Great performance by Robert Picardo and Kate Mulgrew on this one. The real treasure though is Michael McKean's guest appearance.

    Stylistically, I love the homage it pays to the original series of Star Trek. It could easily be an episode from TOS.

  • From These are the voyages on 2013-03-15 at 4:33am:
    This episode creeped me out, and the fact that the villain was a sadistic clown made it even creepier. I can even understand why people didn’t like it, was bleak and frustrating and made you feel very, very uncomfortable to share the helplessness of the captives. It was imaginative, I don’t think many people could have anticipated what they found when they went inside. It looked hopeless, I really couldn’t see a way out for them, which made the ending a delightful surprise. If you’re looking for action and phaser fire, then yes this is a bad episode, but if you’re looking for a gripping situation, this is a winner. It totally sucked me in. I give in an 8 for being so different. BTW thanks for you wonderful website.
  • From TheAnt on 2013-10-09 at 1:17pm:
    This is truly a great episode, not dealing as m,uch with spacephenomenons, planets or the other items we expect from the ST type of Science fiction but the kind we find in written SciFi.
    More specifically archetypes.

    I agree with Nick, the way they treat the subject visually is indeed reminiscent on how it would have been handled in TOS.

    And I rather find it liberating, that things were done this way with jugglers, Fear, his sidekick with the grinning mask, the executioner and all else depicted as a closed in carnival gone mad.

    (Instead of a VR or MMO type of environment - which we are treated with on so many other times here in Voyager anyhow.)

    The feeling of a theatre stage, and having the actors carry the weight (Picardo, Mulrew and "Fear" McKean) were the right chose for this episode,
  • From TiduZ on 2016-05-19 at 7:22am:
    I agree with Nick. This episode stood out in a good way for me. I liked the general idea of fear itself as the main adversary and the actor did a great job. This episode is one of the ones that sticks with you years later so for me this is a 9.

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