“The Thaw”
Written by Richard Gadas and Joe Menosky
Directed by Marvin V. Rush
Season 2, Episode 23
Production episode 139
Original air date: April 29, 1996
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Kim is practicing his clarinet, but Ensign Baytart, whose cabin is next door, is not happy about it. Apparently the fluid conduits in the bulkhead transmit sound; also apparently, soundproofing is a concept that will disappear from human consciousness in the next three hundred years…
Voyager arrives at a planet that Neelix knows as a trading post from a couple decades ago, but it suffered a massive catastrophe thanks to solar flares. The biosphere seems to be recovering from the event, at least, but there are no signs of life. However, an automated signal hails the ship. It’s a prerecorded message from a native of the Kohl settlement, Viorsa, who says that he and some of his comrades are in hibernation and will come out of it fifteen years after the catastrophe, and please don’t interfere with the prearranged cycle.
The only problem is, it’s been nineteen years since they went into hibernation.
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Kim finds very faint lifesigns far underground. Tuvok is able to lock onto five pods and beam them up. Two of the Kohl are dead, having apparently died of heart failure, but the other three are showing brain activity, which doesn’t track with being in suspended animation.
They soon determine that the Kohl are in some kind of virtual reality simulation that keeps them occupied while they’re hibernating, and also that they can come out any time, but they have chosen not to for some odd reason. The EMH can’t just pull them out without their consent without risking serious brain damage—the machinery was set up to only allow voluntary revival.
Janeway decides to send Kim and Torres into the simulation via the two pods belonging to the ones who died and make contact.
Torres and Kim find themselves in the midst of a bizarre festival, full of people in costumes and masks and makeup and such. The guy in charge is a clown in gray-and-white makeup who welcomes them and seems to already know them. They take Kim to have his head chopped off, but Viorsa and the other two Kohl finally show up and convince them not to do that. Viorsa points out to the clown that if these two die, their ship will just send more people, and possibly just turn the whole thing off.
The clown is keeping them all there, refusing to let the Kohl leave. He cut off the heads of the other two, which is what led to their real bodies dying of heart failure—the fear of decapitation killed them. He’ll kill the other Kohl if Torres and Kim try to leave on their own.
When Janeway orders Kes to revive Torres and Kim from outside, Kim shuts it down from the inside. The clown wants him to remove the mechanism for reviving all together, but Kim talks him out of that—if Voyager doesn’t hear from Kim or Torres soon, Janeway will shut the whole thing down, even if it risks brain damage. Once everyone leaves the simulation, the clown will disappear, as he only exists because he’s tethered to the Kohl (and now Kim and Torres).
They learn that the simulation they’re in is adaptive, and linked to the minds of the Kohl. The clown is a manifestation of their fear—of dying, of the planet not recovering, of something going wrong—and it can read their minds. There’s a delay between what you think and when the clown reads it, at least.
The clown decides to let Torres leave in order to bring a message to Janeway: don’t mess with the simulation, or Kim dies.
While the senior staff of Voyager try to figure out how to negotiate with a manifestation of an emotion, the clown torments Kim for having thoughts of escape. The clown has long since beaten such thoughts out of the Kohl’s heads, but Kim is new and doesn’t know any better yet. The clown puts Kim through a mental wringer, aging him, reverting him to infancy, and reminding him of a traumatic experience from his youth.
That experience included observing an operation on a little girl who was restrained, and the clown’s reenactment of the surgery is interrupted by the EMH, who shows him how to wield the scalpel properly.
The EMH has been sent into the simulation to negotiate—since he doesn’t have an organic brain to read, the clown doesn’t have an advantage. Janeway has offered to create an artificial brain that will sustain the clown, but the clown can read in Kim’s thoughts that this is a dubious notion. Likewise, when Viorsa says it can be done by adjusting the optronic relays, the clown refuses to believe it. He tells the EMH to go away, which he does, after reassuring Kim that he’ll be back.
Viorsa was trying to send a hint back to Voyager. The optronic relays wouldn’t do anything to help create an artificial brain, but when Torres examines them, she finds that she can manually shut down the simulation—but it will take time, and the clown may figure out what she’s doing. Janeway decides it’s worth the risk.
While the EMH goes back into the simulation to distract the clown with talk of a cloaking device that will keep any other ships from coming by to disrupt things the way Voyager did, Torres starts disabling the relays, which causes various simulated characters to disappear.
Unfortunately, the clown notices before Torres can finish, and, realizing that Viorsa gave them the idea, cuts his head off, causing his real body to die. Horrified, Janeway has Torres restore the relays she disabled before anyone else is killed.
The EMH returns to the simulation, where the clown is leading a celebration (though he reassures Kim that he will eventually be punished for that attempt to shut things down). Janeway gives him an ultimatum, which the clown finds amusing, since losers don’t usually get to issue ultimatums.
But Janeway still has control of the “off” button. The EMH states that the clown has sixty seconds (he reminds him of the lessening interval periodically as they chat) to let everyone leave or Janeway will turn it off regardless of the risk. If the clown does allow everyone to leave, Janeway herself will enter the simulation, thus providing him with an organic brain to sustain him.
The clown agrees. Janeway climbs into the pod, and then the clown sees Janeway standing next to him. He can sense Janeway’s mind entering the matrix, though he won’t be able to read her thoughts for a bit. For a moment, the clown toys with the notion of keeping the hostages, but he lets the remaining two Kohl and Kim go.
Kim promises to find a way to rescue Janeway, but the captain assures him that won’t be necessary. The clown admires her courage.
Once the hostages are gone, Janeway explains that she’s not really the captain, she’s a simulation, similar to the EMH, which was inserted into the program. Janeway was hooked up to the pod so that the clown would sense her brain patterns, but not actually inserted into the simulation.
The simulation starts to fade slowly to black, and the clown admits he’s afraid, while Janeway points out that fear exists to be defeated. The clown’s last word is, “Drat.”
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The Kohl created a VR simulation that creates characters from their subconscious, which probably wasn’t the wisest course of action when you’re dealing with trying to recover from a global crisis…
There’s coffee in that nebula! The simulated Janeway tells the clown, “Starfleet captains don’t easily succumb to fear.” Damn skippy.
Forever an ensign. We find out that, as a youth, Kim traveled with his parents to a colony that was suffering from a radiation disaster. He’s also currently working with Lieutenant Nicoletti, who plays oboe, on a performance piece.
Half and half. Torres isn’t able to disable the simulation fast enough, though she does her best.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH proves to be the best possible negotiator, as the clown isn’t capable of reading his thoughts. He also makes it clear that removing the hostages without their consent could result in significant brain damage that he can’t guarantee being able to fix.
Everyone comes to Neelix’s. They only came to this planet because Neelix said he heard it was a good trading post. Said information is two decades out of date. Neelix also suggests confronting fear with laughter, a suggestion that is greeted with the eye-rolling silence it deserves.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Paris has apparently been pursuing Nicoletti for months, and finds her to be cold. Kim assures her that she’s not cold with the oboe, and Paris then makes a comment about learning the drums. It’s meant to be funny, but just makes Paris out to (still) be a creeper.
Do it.
“Doctor, if we do simply disconnect the hostages—”
“There would certainly be brain damage.”
“How much damage? Could you possibly repair it?”
“Possibly, yes. Would Mr. Kim still be able to hold his clarinet when I was done? Possibly. The brain is such an interesting organ.”
–Janeway looking for options, and the EMH shooting one down with supreme sarcasm.
Welcome aboard. Trek vets Thomas Kopache and Carel Struycken appear as, respectively, Viorsa and the clown’s very tall sidekick. Kopache previously played a Romulan and a holographic train engineer on TNG, and a communications officer in Generations, and would go on to play Kira’s Dad on DS9 and both a Vulcan and a Sphere-Builder on Enterprise. Struycken played Lwaxana Troi’s valet Mr. Homn in five episodes of TNG.
Genre vet Patty Maloney, an actor who also worked on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Far Out Space Nuts, and Star Wars, plays the clown’s very short sidekick. Viorsa’s never-named fellow Kohl are played by Tony Carlin and Shannon O’Hurley.
But the big guest is the great Michael McKean as the clown. McKean is a longtime Trek fan and jumped at the chance to guest star on the show.
Trivial matters: This was the first Voyager teleplay by Joe Menosky, who had been a co-producer on TNG before going freelance. He will join the staff of Voyager in season three, working his way up to co-executive producer.
The opening of the episode with Kim and Paris was filmed for “Death Wish,” but cut for time and reused here.
Besides Kim’s love of the clarinet, which was shown in the teaser, the clown also mentions how much he misses Libby, his girlfriend, whom we saw in “Non Sequitur.”
The clown mentions a Romulan named Chulak, who suffered a great defeat at Galorndon Core. Chulak’s campaign has been dramatized in two different tie-in works. The Enterprise novel To Brave the Storm by Michael A. Martin had Chulak fighting in the Earth-Romulan War that was first mentioned in the original series episode “Balance of Terror.” Star Trek Online states that Chulak was a 23rd century commander who lost control of a doomsday weapon he obtained from aliens and crashed on Galorndon Core, which is why the planet is now a wasteland ravaged by magnetic storms, as seen in TNG’s “The Enemy.”
Set a course for home. “Well, you certainly know how to bring a party to a halt.” This script is right out of Joe Menosky’s Metaphysics Is Awesome playbook, which is often a hit (“Darmok“) or miss (“Masks“) proposition.
This one hits for a couple of reasons. One is that the metaphysical notion actually makes sense in the context of what’s established: a VR simulation that is based on the thoughts of the people inside it. That it would make all five of their fears manifest is a side effect that works nicely.
The other is the same thing that makes, for example, “Darmok” so brilliant: fantastic guest casting. Michael McKean is simply superlative as the clown. He has the perfect mix of goofiness, menace, childishness, and, yes, fear.
He’s aided by excellent performances all around him. This is one of Garrett Wang’s better turns as Kim, as his earnest quotidian quality works in his favor here as the clown torments him and he tries to hold it together. (I would’ve liked it more if they didn’t fall back on two tired clichés from the mid-20th century for this 24th-century ensign to persevere to, the FDR quote about how the only thing you have to fear is fear itself and the line from The Wizard of Oz about how there’s no place like home.) Kate Mulgrew projects the determination (to save people), the anger (at failing to save Viorsa), and the cleverness (outwitting the clown) that are all befitting the captain. And Robert Picardo is superb, his sarcastic deadpan playing perfectly off of McKean’s rubber-faced lunacy.
The episode also has one of the most devastatingly effective endings in Trek history, as the simulation slowly fades to gray and then black as the clown and the fake Janeway exchange final words and the world vanishes before we see the executive producer credit over a black background. (I’d put this on the same level as “Necessary Evil,” “Blood Oath,” and Part 1 of “The Best of Both Worlds” for gut-punch endings in Trek.)
A point is knocked off for two reasons: One is that this feels way too much like a hastily rewritten TNG script. Voyager is trying to get home, and stopping at a planet that’s had a catastrophe is a bit contrived. (The business with Neelix saying it used to be a trading post feels pasted in awkwardly.) Swap out Picard for Janeway, Riker and La Forge for Kim and Torres, and Data for the EMH, and you’d barely change anything. And the other is the tired cliché of casting of the very tall Carel Struycken and the very short Patty Maloney as the clown’s sidekicks, which mostly served to remind me of this epic rant from Peter Dinklage in the 1995 movie Living in Oblivion.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be attending KAG Kon 2020: Home Invasion, an online event focusing on Klingon related stuff, this coming weekend. Keith will be doing a reading, which will be available throughout the weekend, and also doing panel discussions on his Klingon fiction and on Klingon religion. Here’s his schedule.
Was the VR simulation set reused from the Adam West Batman TV show? It kinda added to the bizarre feeling of this episode. I’m not sure what to think of this episode, though I liked Janeway’s solution at the end.
I remember this episode being poorly regarded by my college friends when it was new, but I always loved it. I’m a big fan of Joe Menosky’s trademark of pitting the characters against reified abstract concepts, and this is one of the best iterations, where the thing they have to fear is literally Fear itself. (Bonus points for recognizing that clowns are just plain scary.) It’s a delightfully surreal, Twilight Zone-y piece, and I love the theatricality of its ending, with the simple act of turning off the stage lights producing such a compelling result.
Also, it features the Doctor’s single best entrance ever, coming to the rescue at the perfect moment and with utter panache. It’s a true Crowning Moment of Awesome.
Is this Star Trek’s only Monster Clown story?
I’m reminded of the story (originally presented to me as a brainteaser, although I’ve seen it elsewhere as an urban legend) of the gentleman who dreamed he was being executed by guillotine- and died of fright when someone tapped the back of his neck to wake him up. In brainteaser form, it’s a wrongful death case, with the resolution being the realization that the plaintiff cannot reasonably present evidence of what the dead man was dreaming of. (Like many brainteasers of its type, this leaves one wondering how the matter ever got that far.) Clearly it wasn’t a dream so much as an apocalypse proof virtual reality hibernation pod!
I was almost nervous about the review to this one; I’ve been rereading the TOS Rewatch as a way to pass the time while the world outside is half-reopened and suffering from “riots” (not to get too controversial, but I swear you need the quotes when describing Orlando’s situation), and every so often I’m severely surprised at Krad’s opinion clashing with my memories of an episode. And this one is quite possibly my favorite episode of Voyager, definitely my favorite that I saw live on UPN 9 on Long Island.
So it’s a relief to my fragile psyche that we seem to completely agree on this one. I especially agree with the take on the ending, because I swear I had a nightmare at least once of Janeway going “I knoooow…“
@1 I feel like that’s so appropriate, considering the fact that Michael McKean has had a few appearances on the Batman animated series’.
Austin: I’m pretty sure you’re kidding, but just in case, um, no, as the Batman ’66 sets had long since been demolished thirty years on…. *laughs*
Also, a hat tip to fellow Trek scribe David Mack, who first showed me Living in Oblivion many moons ago, thus inspiring the final sentence of the rewatch….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@2 CLB: Agreed on the doctor’s entrance! It reminded me (deliberate callback?) of McCoy’s bit in “Space Seed”, which impressed even Khan.
One small bit of info. While this was technically Menosky’s first teleplay, it wasn’t his first episode. He shared story credit on Cathexis with Brannon Braga the previous season.
My first reaction to The Thaw was pure surprise and astonishment, especially given the surrounding season it’s in. This episode can easily be described as ‘Menosky on steroids’. He gets to cut loose and tell a story so out there, I’d argue he could never get away with it on TNG. The only problem of course, as Krad pointed out, it doesn’t feel like a Voyager episode either. You could swap any Starfleet officer in this episode, because the real focus is the Clown.
And the Clown is one the best villains they ever came up with. Plus, this character pretty much dethroned Q, redefining the role of the comical super being. No wonder the two following Q episodes fell so short. What’s even better is that since I only first saw this episode less than two years ago, I’ve come to know McKean for his non-Trek work, especially his stellar turn as Chuck McGill on the superlative Better Call Saul. So it was a delight to get such a versatile expressive performer playing this role. The Clown is easily the most daring creation for a show as conservative as Voyager. This was borderline surreal (the kind of surreal TNG could have attempted with Tormé’s The Royale, but chose not to).
And the ending is both devastating and smart. Devastating because we see the Clown’s world fading away along with him before cutting straight to credits. And smart because of the solution conjured up by Janeway and the EMH. Fooling the Clown with a simulation was grade-A brilliant.
I wouldn’t necessarily associate The Thaw with the best of Trek, such as Menosky’s own Darmok, but its premise and execution are as daring as any of TNG’s reality-mind-bending hours, such as Frame of Mind. And certainly a major step up from Menosky’s own recent two previous duds at that point, TNG’s Masks and Emergence.
I don’t think that this episode would have worked nearly as well as a TNG episode than it does here. The Doctor makes a much better foil for the clown than Data would have been. A sarcastic attitude can be the best weapon against fear.
Quoth Eduardo: “While this was technically Menosky’s first teleplay, it wasn’t his first episode.”
Um, yes, which is why I said it was Menosky’s first teleplay in the rewatch entry………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This is hands-down one of my favorite episodes of Voyager, and is probably the only one of my favorites that doesn’t lean in heavily to the premise of the particular show. This could have just as easily been a TNG episode, right down to Data taking the place of the EMH as someone the computer can’t read.
But the acting is splendid, and the EMH and the Clown’s snark-to-snark combat is one of my favorite things to see. He is played with the perfect mix of horror and comedy, so that every scene he is in is seeped with tension and terror- even if what is going on is objectively ridiculous. The technobabble is kept to a minimum (“Bad computer is on, need to turn off bad computer without losing our work”), and everyone does their job, and does it well. Torres’ plan is a solid one, even if it doesn’t work, and the end plan of tapping the real Janeway into the computer, while using a holographic projection of her body is a good one, and it nicely set up by the fact that there is a delay, as well as the ability of the EMH to exist in the simulation. Even Harry Kim gets a bit of a chance to shine, although it does somewhat highlight that there was so much more that could have been done with his character (seeing him become a little more war-weary and jaded, a la Chief O’Brien, would have been a nice development for him). Also, the “I’m afraid,” “I know” line from Janeway is just so coldblooded and good.
I wonder if this is an episode that you either love or hate because growing up I would buy those annual Cinefantastique magazine editions that would give episode reviews on the just concluded Star Trek (whether TNG or DS9 or VOY) season and the reviewer, Mark A. Altman, gave this particular episode 0 stars (out of 4). And while I generally agreed with his reviews, and he was very adamant in his opinion, it seemed a bit extreme because “The Thaw” has a lot of redeeming qualities. The guest casting of Michael McKean was one of them. I think the only thing I had previously seen him in was Laverne and Shirley which was a far cry from this, but he quickly proved to me what a talent he is and I’ve since become accustomed to his other fine work. I really enjoyed (or was creeped out by) the atmosphere of this episode and the Cirque du Soleil troop from hell. It really does reinforce that cliché that clowns are actually frightening characters. Regarding swapping out the VOY characters here for TNG characters and still making the story work, yes, on a general level, but I can’t see Patrick Stewart delivering the line “I know” to The Clown in quite the same steely whisper that Kate Mulgrew has down pat.
Love that ending. Maybe the most satisfying of the series. And yep, you can never go wrong casting Michael McKean in anything.
@11 Oh, I agree, it would be a totally different feel with the TNG crew, I just meant that most of my favorite episodes of Voyager have to do with them struggling to get home and having to rough it, and this is one of the few episodes I *really* like that sort of exist outside the idea of “we are lost and need to get home and the deck is stacked against us.”
@11: I was wondering why I remembered thinking this episode was bad. I missed it when it aired and probably read Mark Altman’s review and never went back to it. Tim Lynch’s reviews on USENET also gave it a 3 out of 10.
I’m happy to know there is a good “new” Trek episode out there for me to watch.
@14: I kinda wished I kept those special edition issues so I could read again what the exact wording of the reviews were but I’ve moved so many times over the years and probably was afraid of being a hoarder so I tossed them. Still, I think I recall the gist of Altman’s review was that he found the episode to be silly and I think looking cheap. And I remember the only other zero rating he gave that season was to “Threshold” so he must have felt they were equally bad. Incidentally, Jammer gives “The Thaw” 3.5 stars out of 4. I love reading reviews because I enjoy the deep analysis and seeing if the reviewer’s opinions line up with mine but I’ve learned no one’s opinion is ever “right” or “wrong”. If you personally get enjoyment out of it that’s all that really matters.
@12: Post-“The Thaw” I’ve seen McKean in This is Spinal Tap and Best In Show and thus recognize he’s a talented comic/improv actor.
@13: I actually wasn’t responding to your comment about swapping out the VOY characters with those of TNG’s but KRAD’s statement on it in his review. But regardless, I’m not arguing that it wouldn’t work because I think it would. It would just be a different feel. Though I think still works better with characters like the EMH because he’s more witty than Data, Kim being such a young and inexperienced officer, and also with Janeway’s particular “attitude.”
I guess I’m the designated contrarian because although I love Michael McKean (on some days, I would rank This Is Spinal Tap as the greatest comedy film ever) I’ve never been a fan of desperately surreal episodes like this one, and I found McKean just trying too hard. It was exhausting watching it. Took me a couple of days to finally get through this one… glad everyone else enjoyed it though. I’m familiar enough with the personalities here to know that this must be a good episode, it just didn’t ring my bell.
Definitely still one of my favorites from VOY. A genuine highlight of the series.
And of course, heh, forever associated with the “I’m Afraid” punchline Chuck Sonnenburg puts at the end the SF Debris reviews for VOY. :)
Tried to comment on this last night but I’ve got two browsers that aren’t displaying the site properly and making it impossible to do so. I’ve finally hit lucky with a third. Anyway, cautiously proceeding since this might be the most controversial review I’ve posted since I dared to criticise “The Visitor”. I may be the one person who neither loves nor hates it…
I enjoyed this one more than I was expecting to. It’s not that I thought it was a bad episode, just a rather frustrating one. But once I got into it and stopped listing the plot holes and contrivances, it’s a decent way to pass the time. It’s another one that lives and dies on the strength of its guest star and Michael McKean is superb as the Clown, managing to be playful while never once ceasing to exude menace and even having the odd little moment of vulnerability.
There’s a nice bit of bait and switch as the episode seems to set itself up as a Kim/Torres story, only to remove B’Elanna from the main action and substitute the Doctor. Whilst it would have been nice to see Torres a bit more, sticking the Doctor centre stage is a master stroke as the episode suddenly becomes a battle of the one-liners. (“How am I supposed to negotiate if I don’t know what you’re thinking?”/“I have a very trustworthy face.”) The Doctor seems to be seeing how many dramatic entrances he can make in one episode, with his casually interrupting the Clown’s operating fantasy and Terminatoresque “I’ll be back.” It’s a relief, because it looked like the Clown had no-one to play off except the rather bland Harry Kim and some even more bland guest actors.
Neelix gets his ego well and truly kicked when he suggests defeating the Clown by making him laugh and is rewarded by a series of exasperated looks. I’d forgotten which episode the opening scene was moved from: As it is, I think it doubles Paris’ dialogue for the week. Also, judging by Memory Alpha, it’s the last mention of Baytart, who’s been referred to quite a bit in Season 2. The death of Viorsa is one of the most gut-punching of the series, even if Voyager were so close to victory that they probably could have turned the Clown off before he had a chance to kill anyone else. And that final showdown between “Janeway” and the Clown is spine-tingling.
But…that ending is maddening and sums up a lot of maddening things about the episode. I get what they’re going for: The episode ends as the Clown’s world fades away and he ceases to exist. It’s poetic, it’s vaguely Stoppardesque, it’s fourth wall breaking…and it leaves the episode feeling incomplete. We’re told at the start that this was a settlement of 400,000. The big plan of one of the stupidest groups of aliens of the week we’ve seen apparently involved sticking a grand total of five people in stasis, to wake up in fifteen years and rebuild the settlement. (What happened to the other 399,995? Did they draw the short straw and get left to burn?) By the end, Voyager has saved a grand total of two (who don’t even get names!). Are the crew seriously going to drop them back on the surface to rebuild the settlement on their own? Are there others of their race out there (who apparently never popped by to check on them in the last nineteen years) that they can be delivered to? Or do they spend the next five seasons in guest quarters somewhere?
Incidentally, I remember when the show ended TV Zone published a Farewell Voyager special in which they nominated the five best episodes/stories and this was one of them. (“Deadlock” was another, by the way.) I’m not sure I’ve ever read a truly negative review of it but I might have to check around!
@18/cap-mjb: “Tried to comment on this last night but I’ve got two browsers that aren’t displaying the site properly and making it impossible to do so.”
Interesting. Last night the “My Conversations” index page displayed weirdly for me a couple of times, but it cleared up when I reloaded, and the actual posts showed up fine. And it was just a change in display format; the links still worked once I figured out where they were. I wonder if it was related to your problem.
As for the fate of the last two survivors, it would’ve been cool if this show had enough continuity to have them join the crew at the end, make them recurring characters. Voyager‘s had so many crew fatalities this season that it would’ve made sense if they’d recruited a few more people. (And at some point in the future, the producers will stop keeping track of the crew size and the stated number will fluctuate inconsistently. Ex Astris Scientia has a page where they try to estimate the actual numbers and rationalize the stated numbers.)
@19 I should probably make it clear that I can see the posts and comments, although they’re not displayed as normal, but there doesn’t seem to be a comment box at the bottom on those browsers, just a blank space.
It would indeed have been nice if the show had made a virtue of the existence of the two orphaned survivors.
I most definitely agree that this is superior STAR TREK – in fact it almost certainly has the very finest ‘out-think the Evil machine’ schemes in the entire franchise – although by this point the Clown Colleges of the World really ought to lodge a protest against various Hollywood (and other) studios for defamation of character (Honestly, being able to see a clown in any form of media and immediately KNOW they’re going to be Evil probably counts as some sort of profiling!).
@20/cap-mjb: Okay, that’s different from my problem. Have you tried clearing your cache? That sometimes works at clearing up this site’s software glitches.
@21/ED: Clowns are evil. That’s just telling it like it is.
I wonder if Stephen King single-handily introduced clown phobia into the modern consciousness.
@23/Austin: King just tapped into the fear that already existed. That’s how horror works. Many people have always found clowns creepy, as there’s an Uncanny Valley aspect to the distorted/concealed facial features that mask normal human expression. I’ve heard it theorized that the white faces might also suggest corpses or skulls to some people.
@@@@@ Scary clowns- apologies for the forthcoming ramble, but I see this question come up a lot, and I did a little digging on this at one point. I didn’t find any outright monster clowns before King, though there was a rash of sightings of Phantom Clowns, allegedly trying to lure or entice children, in the early eighties, which seems a likely influence (see also the similar phenomenon, albeit Post It (wait, not like a Post-It!) in 2016, and in Glasgow in the nineties, which placed the clowns in a blue transit van and occasionally had them disfiguring children they caught into clowns themselves).
Lon Chaney, who knew a thing or two about scary makeup, is supposed to have once commented “There is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.” You also have the distinctly sinister Joker from the Batman comics, dating back to the forties, and a murderous Jester in Poe’s Hop-Frog in 1849, and a murderous (and heartbroken) Pierrot
CLB, @@@@@ 24 mentions the Uncanny Valley, the instinctive fear of things that look almost, but not quite human, and I think that’s a big part of it. Also consider that clowns are often chaotic and transgressive figures, both in the sense of the role they play in an entertainment, especially the trickster clown archetype- another quote I found, from a French critic in the 1870s declares “”The clown’s art is now rather terrifying and full of anxiety and apprehension, their suicidal feats, their monstrous gesticulations and frenzied mimicry remind one of the courtyard of a lunatic asylum.” This perhaps hits it’s apogee in Punch and Judy shows, where Mr. Punch, descended from the Commedia dell’arte, but now in puppet form, overcomes, outwits, and sometimes just outright beats to death various figures signifying law and order.
Clowns could perceived as a threat to social order outside the performance, too- Frederick II, once decreed a law in Sicily that blasphemous or slanderous jesters could be assaulted and robbed without fear of legal punishment.
Throw in the travelling circus and clowns are now not only chaotic, uncanny figures, but they’re outsiders to boot.
Take it all together, and you’ve got a figure who doesn’t look quite right, doesn’t play by the same rules (behaviorally or, given that stage magic and slapstick often play into clown performances, even physically) as other people, and, not being from around here, has no roots or relationships in the community to humanize them.
I wasn’t very fond of this episode. I’ve never had much patience for “if you die in a dream you die in real life” storylines, which this is a variant of. If the mechanism of action is that the system causes a heart attack, that seems like something the doctor can revive people from easily enough. They’ve revived people before as long as its only a few minutes after death. It seems like the story operates by just accepting the childish ghost story rules as a given.
The setting reminds me too much of TNG’s Cost of Living, which I hated the decor of, so its fitting that its used as a nightmare scenario this time.
@25/CuttlefishBenjamin: Interesting analysis. One wrinkle I’d add to the Joker discussion: As originally portrayed, the Joker was based on Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs — a character whose face was disfigured into a huge grin but was actually quite solemn and tragic. Initially, the Joker was cold, saturnine, and extremely serious, so what made him scary was the contrast between his personality and his clownish appearance, rather than his clownish aspect itself being scary. It was only over time that he started to get written as a laughing, darkly comic figure befitting his appearance.
@26/karey: Maybe they were already so weakened by their years in stasis that they couldn’t be revived after a heart attack.
@27- Good point. And much the same is true of Pagliacci in the opera of the same name, which I see I didn’t quite manage to mention- that’s the source of our murderous Pierrot. The sad or gloomy clown is a whole other subject that runs alongside the scary or murderous clown under the greater heading of “Clowns: Not Always Funny?” See also the joke made by Rorschach in Watchman, but originating, in its outline, at least a century before it.
I liked the story and acting in this episode a lot, but I felt like it was brought down a little by the set design in the “dream” world. The design looks outdated, even for 1996 standards, and not up to the same level as the normal set design for the show. And am I the only one who kept thinking of juggalos every time Michael McKean’s character was on-screen? Anyone? No, just me? Okay, I’ll see myself out.
@29
Interesting take on the set design. I liked its simplicity and ’60s look. I wonder if it was in any way inspired by Patrick McGoohan’s cult series The Prisoner?
@26/@27
I was so frustrated while watching that they didn’t even try to revive Viorsa. (That & Janeway ordering Torres to stop when she was ‘this close’ to finishing her work…) Thinking about it later, I wondered if since Viorsa was never properly ‘released’ from the simulation, there would have been brain damage if they tried to revive him? I still would have liked it addressed in some manner in the show instead of ‘oh he’s dead, so sad we can’t do anything about that!’.
@30 I’m not familiar with The Prisoner, so I can’t comment on that. And really, it was the discontinuity that jarred me watching it recently — it felt like I was watching two different shows every time they would go from the dream world to Voyager. I think this might have even bothered me more back in the 90s, though I don’t remember my reaction to this particular episode. However, I struggled trying to watch TOS at the time partially because it looked so dated. That’s one benefit to the resurgence of the mid-century aesthetic, it makes TOS look more “modern” now than it did twenty years ago.
@31 yeah, given how close B’elanna was surely the guillotine would have disappeared before they could kill another hostage. Also once Viorsa was dead you may as well just keep going, you won’t get him back by restoring the program. Fear’s threat to kill more people also seems like an empty threat because he can’t kill everyone. He introduced a stalemate over not wanting to lose even 1 person.
I get that they can’t unplug the system while people’s minds are connected. But death seems like an effective way to disconnect your brain from the system, then you can go about normal resuscitation procedures without concern for the brain scrambling issue.
The Clown here was almost like and older and more bitter Trelane
Incidentally, my page view returned to normal yesterday but this episode still isn’t showing up on the series index.
@22. ChristopherLBennett: Oooh, you deserve to have so many PRIDE & PREJUDICE jokes poked at you for that little bit of cartoon prejudice! (I’ll allow that clowns are unsettling-to-creepy, but uniformly EVIL … tsk tsk). (-;
Tuvix delayed?
37. Eduardo Jencarelli: Tuvix only half Vulcan, so clearly he can only be meticulously punctual half the time. (-;
Tor.com was devoting today solely to works supporting Black voices in solidarity with the protests going on around the country. The rewatch for “Tuvix” will go up tomorrow.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That’s more than fair. More power to these voices and the protests.
Tuesday it is.
I’m pretty sure this episode is why my wife tells me “Don’t be a poop!” when I’m grumpy. Thank you, Patty Maloney.
That fuzzy fleece onesie looks SO stupid. And I have almost no memory of this episode, although I generally hate “mindscape” stories.
@42/MaGnUs: Clown wardrobe is supposed to look stupid, isn’t it?
I hated this episode. It felt like it was 50 years out of date and came straight out of bad 60s TV. There were so many cliches pulled straight from old Lost in Spaces or other sf series where they’d have the surreal “hippie” episode, and there was always a clown just like this one. It was so trite. There was nothing original in it.
@Krad/gut punch endings.
I’d like to add DS9‘s “Children of Time” to your list. Odo’s revelation that his future self was responsible for arbitrarily erasing our heroes’ decedents from time was so chilling. The implications were just so uncomfortable coming from a future version of a character who always seemed to be the embodiment of decency.
Excellent episode in my opinion. Michael McKean’s performance really elevated it from a good to a great watch. The story line itself wasn’t bad, but it was the acting that made this one. In addition to McKean, Kate Mulgrew was very good. Her Janeway is impressing me more and more with each episode. Early on, the main thing she was called on to do seemed to be her surprised/shocked faces, and she still hauls them out from time to time. But she is definitely developing a gravitas and panache. Picardo was good, but I’ve been kind of spoiled by his acting and am now expecting it from him.
One of the best episodes of Voyager. The story is easy to understand and makes sense, the Clown was frightening, and the twist ending is just pure Janeway class. It’s been 25 years and I still remembered this episode as soon as I saw the thumbnail on Netflix. So good.
I actually hated this episode. It felt like one cliché after another, and I was rolling my eyes enough while watching that I feared I might do myself an injury. Lenny (Michael McKean) just bored me solid. My biggest problem with it, though, was – what the hell is the point of five people going into hibernation to come back after the apocalypse, out of an entire population? Did I miss something about the billions of other people being stashed somewhere? What were five – now two! – people going to do all alone on a planet? How did Voyager just … leave them there? It’s ridiculous.
@48/tracet: I got the sense that it wasn’t an organized plan, just a last-ditch desperation move — these five were the only people able to get themselves to safety/frozen in time.
As for how they hoped to rebuild, this was a colony world with only a few hundred thousand people, suggesting there’s a homeworld somewhere that they came from. They could’ve turned there for help, perhaps.
The Thaw is the second episode in a row where we get de-ageing. First, it was the Drayans and now it’s Harry Kim’s worst nightmare. As clever as the ending is, how did they create the Janeway hologram so quickly? Remember the trouble they had fine tuning new holograms in Message in a Bottle and Nothing Human? You could be right Krad, but I always thought the Clown’s last word was “dread”, because that’s exactly what he’s feeling right before he winks out of existence. Did Neelix direct them to this planet or was it on they’re way home? And Kes does look rather embarrassed for Neelix after he makes maybe the lamest suggestion of the entire series (although it gets stiff competition from Tuvok entrusting a phaser to a child in Innocence).
Patty Maloney always reminds me of Zelda Rubinstein (and Poltergeist also had a scary clown). The Clown’s tall sidekick is called Spectre, I’ve heard. I wonder if the Red Dwarf episode Legion was an influence on the Clown, since he’s also a composite of the people around him and he’s similarly defeated when they’ve all been removed one by one. Garrett Wang would also do well in The Chute when placed under similar trying circumstances. And yeah Krad, to make it more weird just throw in a dwarf (that’s what Twin Peaks did).
1: The Joker is definitely an influence here and Michael McKean voiced the role in Batman: The Animated Series once. 4: Janeway’s “I knoooow!” is just as chilling as Henry Kane’s “Because I’m smaaaart!” 7: VGR’s storytelling is rather more adventurous towards the end of it’s second season. 15: I don’t mind views that are mixed because it forces you to reevaluate your own.
18: The surviving Kohl don’t make much impression but Trek veteran Thomas Kopache manages to make Viorsa’s death affecting. The Kohl had a settlement here which is not the same as a homeworld so Voyager probably tracked it down after reviving the last two survivors because they could never rebuild their home all alone. I’m not sure how much of the population perished in the disaster but I assume only the best and the brightest citizens were chosen for this escape plan.
33: If Fear gets too carried away, he might wind up killing them all, and how do you know they can be resuscitated after being forcibly disconnected? 36: Clowns have they’re own phobia – coulrophobia, because they’re scary in everything. 43: Is the Clown really a clown or a harlequin? 44: Didn’t Doctor Who do an episode about a scary clown?
@50/David Sim: “As clever as the ending is, how did they create the Janeway hologram so quickly? Remember the trouble they had fine tuning new holograms in Message in a Bottle and Nothing Human?”
Presumably they used the VR system’s own built-in character generation engine and fed it a scan of Janeway and some behavioral algorithms. Emulating an existing person who’s available as a template is easier than creating a new EMH from scratch. And they didn’t have that much trouble creating the Moset hologram in “Nothing Human” — it was quicker than the creation of the Leah Brahms hologram in “Booby Trap.”
This is what I hoped Voyager would be like when I heard the original premise of a Starship trapped on the other side of the Galaxy stranger than usual Trek but entertaining as well, as opposed to Threshold which was Weird and unwatchable. The great central performance from Michael McKean is amongst the very best one off Characters ever to appear on Trek.
@52/Chadefallstar: I hear what your saying, but as krad pointed out in the review, this episode could have been easily been done on any other Trek show. Personally, I don’t think Voyager needed to be “stranger than usual Trek” to have been a better show than it ultimately was.
53: But none of the other Trek shows have a regular who’s a hologram. And it was through this novelty that they were able to come up with the idea that defeated the Clown.
@30 a-j – aesthetically, Voyager’s set for “The Thaw” does trigger contemplation. Is it a disguised and opaque replica of various sets on The Prisoner? Was The Village seminal in their design choices for the virtual world? Had they consciously filmed in a more somber tone than that 60’s series? Beyond the incongruity with The Village being the Clown’s virtual world, I’d personally attempted to extrapolate my memories of “Dance of the Dead”, “Checkmate”, and “Fall Out” (specifically, No. 1, the clown), and graft them onto this Voyager episode, but I could not. There’s an idiosyncrasy with the characters – as much as I would like to say, “No. 6 is Janeway, The Butler is Little Woman, or The Clown is an aspect of Janeway’s psychological make-up”, I cannot. I’m a bit numb to the possibility that it could’ve been conceived from The Prisoner.
Lastly, I have a nagging feeling that I’ve seen this story outside the Trek universe. “The Thaw” always leaves me cold.
@32 brightbetween – The Prisoner is arguably one of the greatest TV shows written. You either get it or you don’t. It has its own cult following or fandom. Most of the population won’t get it with psychedelics, let alone without. I would even hazard that McGoohan was more forward thinking than Roddenbury.
Michael McKean was also Mr. Green in Clue. In the hall, with the revolver.
This episode has some atrocious dialogue: “With us, he practices his ghastly art.” Ugh. That’s awful.
I really loved this episode. Mostly due to the acting and the ending. To be honest, the episode made a horrible first impression whenever Kim and Torres first entered the VR sim. It almost lost me right there. However, once the premise was further fleshed out, and Mr. Green (I mean Michael McKean) started to shine, I got really hooked. The rest of the episode did not disappoint.
@50/David Sim – Doctor Who did scary clowns in “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy”, and the spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures did “Day of the Clown”, where the titular clown was played by later companion actor Bradley Walsh.
Also, I’m surprised that no comment has been made on the parallels with Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, an embodiment of fear who kills you in reality by killing you in your dreams. He was the first thing this reminded me of.
Further to my prior comment, Doctor Who also did episode 3 of “The Deadly Assassin”, set entirely in the Matrix: a virtual world based on a neural network where users can be killed in reality by dying in the virtual world, and nightmare images include a clown and a masked doctor. So, yeah…
I feel like this story never gets its proper due, so thank you. It’s one of the creepiest episodes of Star Trek ever made.