2x23 The Thaw

[5.8/10] An episode where Michael McKean basically plays Pennywise in space should be much more fun, and much scarier than this. But it isn’t, and it leaves me torn on this episode. On the one hand, I want this series to do big high concept swings like “What if we fought the personification of fear in The Matrix? I want monotony breakers that give us imaginative worlds beyond the staid gunmetal grays of a Starfleet vessel. At its worst, Voyager feels like the Star Trek equivalent of gruel, so throwing in some extra flavor, in whatever form, is always welcome.

But the execution here is just so off. Everything about it feels off brand. When Janeway and company encounter a frozen planet with a few survivors in stasis pods, I thought the show was running back “The 37s” or, god help us all, “The Neutral Zone” from The Next Generation. Instead, the story here is much weirder.

The planet’s survivors were kept in frozen animation so they could withstand the planetary disaster, but their minds were kept active and healthy via a virtual playscape that adapts to their wants and needs. Okay -- a little out there, but well within standard Trek tolerances. What could go wrong when B’Elanna and Harry try to delve into that virtual realm to ask the frostees why they haven't chosen to return to the land of the living now that their planet is thawing?

The answer is everything. What the pair find is not some refuge from a battered world. Instead, they enter some Seussian hellscape that tosses in tropes from everything from Stephen King’s IT to Alice in Wonderland to Freaks. Here are a bunch of goofy, supposed-to-be scary theatrical weirdos who have a cracked sense of humor and an off-kilter society that is garish on the outside but subtly menacing. That's not a bad concept (again, channeling Pennywise), but visually, the set and performers look like a community theater production of Cats with a dash of Cirque du Soleil.

The whole thing feels chintzy and, god help me, it’s nearly impossible to take seriously. Again, I want to give Voyager credit here. “Staid starfleet officers get trapped in a bizarre but colorful realm of the mind” is the kind of oddball stuff I love. And not for nothing, it feels like the kind of off-the-wall shtick The Original Series would pull on a regular basis. Plus, I can't deny that it got a reaction. When I saw Torres and Kim stumbling through this lower rent rendition of Zoobilee Zoo, my jaw literally dropped. This whole thing felt unhinged, which is not a mode you usually get from Voyager, and one that makes you want to figure out what the hell is going on.

But what’s going on is, in the end, corny mishegoss without much point or substance. This is where I admit that I’m a big Michael McKean fan. Between Better Call Saul, This Is Spinal Tap, and scores of other great roles, the man is a legend. But despite playing a harlequin character who lets him chew scenery and go wild, he never feels calibrated to the energy of the show. Surrounding him with rejects from Batman Returns doesn’t help, but McKean’s character, creatively dubbed “The Clown”, is never as gleefully entertaining or unpredictably scary as he needs to be in order to work.

The logistics of the thing don’t enjoy any greater success. I’m always inclined to, as (I believe) Harve Bennett once put it, “grant the premise.” A realm fueled by the minds of its inhabitants where “If you die in the Matrix, you die in real life”? Sure, I suppose. But in practice, it’s too cartoony and outlandish to be convincing. People having heart attacks in the real world after being guillotined in a fake one starts to seem silly. The inability to pull anyone out, even people who just joined, without causing brain damage seems convenient. And the Clown being able to put up a force field or otherwise stymie B’Elanna from shutting the thing down mechanically plays like a cheat.

The only clever thing here is using The Doctor to interact with his artificial counterpart, such that the Clown can't read his mind. But even there, the fact that Doc can plug into the circus plays like a bit of a shortcut. There’s no deft way out of this. Even Janeway using her brainwaves to placate the Clown but only “appearing” in the dreamscape via a harmless hologram scans as more of a bit of technobabble deus ex machina rather than a sharp ruse.

Still, implausible technological solutions to practical problems is nothing new in this franchise. It might be tolerable if “The Thaw” had anything novel to say with all of this. The attempt at a meditation on fear is trite and the dialogue is thudding. All of the pontificating back-and-forth about why people do things that frighten them and the way to defeat fear read like something out of a fifth grade notebook. And Janeway’s ultimate conclusion -- that fears only exist to be conquered, may as well come from a Disney Channel Halloween movie. Some of the narrative convenience could be ignored if it were in service of a better theme realized in better terms.

There’s a moment at roughly the midpoint of “The Thaw” where The Clown is legitimately scary. He stops making Harry old or young, and starts building on his genuine phobias. He ties Harry to a table, recounts a childhood experience at a radiation colony with a tone of alternating whimsy and terror that helps you understand why McKean was one of the illustrious talents to voice Joker. His minions undulate with creepy, clockwork movements. And for one small stretch, you can see the power of how unusual, unnerving, this whole thing feels.

Soon, though, it reverts back to being a low-key disaster. It’d be fair to wonder if the writers were on drugs, or if they’d at least just had a bad dream after watching an IT/Cats double feature. Not every Star Trek episode has to feel like Star Trek. Surreal imagery, colorful characters, and high concept premises that stretch the mind can all be a feature, not a bug. “The Thaw” has its merits and deserves points for ambition and ingenuity. Unfortunately, it’s also a clown car car crash of miscalibrated performance, trite messaging, and a bevy of choices that will leave viewers rubbing their eyes and scratching their heads.