I mean . . . why didn’t Michael McKean ever play the Joker?
This is a review of my favorite episode of Star Trek: Voyager, “The Thaw.” If you
have not seen this episode, and you don’t want to know what happens in it, be warned:
spoilers beyond this point!
Michael McKean did play the Joker, once — he provided the voice for the Joker in the
New Batman Adventures episode “Legends of the Dark Knight” during the segment
that was styled after the Silver Age. But, I’m talking about live action. He’s got impeccable
comic timing and he’s a fantastic actor. And is he physically suited to the role?
Look at this man’s face and tell me we weren’t robbed of a fantastic Joker.
Anyway, never happened, never gonna happen, the closest we’ll ever get to Michael McKean
playing the Joker in live action is this episode of Voyager, where he plays a clown
who is the embodiment of fear and in doing so becomes one of the most memorable villains
to ever appear on Voyager and anchors what I think is the best episode Voyager ever made.
Voyager is my least favorite Star Trek show — that’s a fact. But that fact doesn’t detract
from my enjoyment of this episode — in a way my appreciation of “The Thaw” is amplified by it,
because the episode manages to work in such a way that the weaknesses of Voyager as a
series don’t really matter. Additionally, this episode does two things that I really,
really love when Star Trek episodes do. But I’ll get to those in a minute.
One of the biggest problems with Voyager, for me, is weak characterization. The regulars on
Voyager are all identifiable types, but in terms of their individual personalities they
just never seem to pop. There are exceptions to this — The Doctor being the main one,
and also Seven of Nine, but “The Thaw” is a second season episode, so she’s not here yet.
In general, though, the main characters of Voyager come across as out of focus,
difficult to get a handle on. Harry Kim is the youngest officer on the senior staff,
he plays the clarinet, he’s best friends with Tom Paris, but I never really feel like I know Harry.
Harry is featured heavily in “The Thaw,” and the way he’s used, that weak characterization
doesn’t really matter. This isn’t a character driven episode — this is a plot driven episode,
rooted in a very strong, very compelling premise.
The ship arrives at a planet that used to be a busy trading post, but is now uninhabited and
virtually lifeless after being struck by a solar flare about twenty years ago. The crew discovers a
small group of survivors who went into hibernation to wait out the damaging environmental effects of
the flare. They were supposed to be woken up five years ago, but they’re still asleep. So, Captain
Janeway beams the whole hibernation system aboard Voyager so they can figure out what’s wrong.
There’s more to this hibernation system than meets the eye — the hibernators not only sleep,
their brains are connected to each other and to a computer system that generates
a kind of shared dream, a virtual reality environment to keep the
brains of the hibernators active during their long stay in suspended animation.
Two of the five hibernators are dead from a mysterious cause, so Harry and B’Elanna
make use of their hibernation pods to enter the shared dream. Once inside, they meet the Clown,
who was created by the computer system to represent the fears of the hibernators.
Once created, the Clown kinda took over and now he rules this virtual world. He
reluctantly agrees to allow B’Elanna to leave, but insists that Harry remain with him and the others.
Because Harry’s brain is connected to the system, the Clown knows all about him, what he thinks,
what he feels, what he knows. When the Clown torments Harry — because tormenting people is
kinda what the Clown does, it’s what makes him happy — he plays on fears that are specific to
Harry. We don’t know Harry well enough to be able to guess what those fears might be,
but it doesn’t matter because the episode keeps it pretty basic:
Harry is the youngest officer in Janeway’s senior staff, so first the Clown goes the
opposite direction and makes Harry an old man, then makes him a baby — pretty
obvious stuff that makes use of one of the few solid character traits Harry has.
Presumably, had Harry been unable to escape, the Clown would have eventually gotten around to
subjecting him to some clarinet-based torments, but it’s probably best not to go there . . .
Eventually, the Clown gets around to preying on Harry’s worst fear, which is based on an
experience Harry had in a hospital as a child. This is all stuff we learn through exposition
as the Clown is doing it, and it feels kinda random — as most characterization in Voyager
does, frankly — but that’s okay, because the medical-themed torment of Harry is actually there
to provide a clever way of introducing the Doctor into the Clown’s world — he interrupts the Clown’s
attempt to perform surgery on Harry and critiques his grip on the scalpel. It’s very nicely done.
The whole episode is like that. The story doesn’t unfold in a way that’s all that surprising,
the structure is, broadly speaking, formulaic, but it’s so well put together and so well executed
that it doesn’t really matter. The Clown’s torments, and the surreal nature of his world, are
presented and established almost entirely through editing and practical techniques rather than
obvious special effects. I love the subtle but very creepy detail of having all of the Clown’s
people suddenly wearing plastic clown masks when they’re about to help him do something awful.
I also love the way the episode is able to create anticipation for a showdown between
the Clown and Janeway despite them having no direct interaction before they meet in
the final scene. Janeway is able to communicate with the Clown by using the Doctor as a proxy,
sending his holographic program into the Clown’s virtual world. So, Janeway is on the outside,
the Clown is on the inside, and they spend most of the episode trying to outsmart
and outmaneuver each other, until finally coming face-to-face in the end — sort of.
The solution to the problem of how to free the remaining hibernators, and Harry, from the
Clown’s virtual world without the Clown killing them leans a bit too heavily on technobabble,
as Voyager episodes often do, and feels like a bit of a cheat because it has the characters
doing something which we didn’t even know was an option until after they’ve already done it,
but the Janeway/Clown showdown is so good that I’m happy to forgive that.
Because the Clown is the embodiment of fear, Janeway’s approach to the problem boils down
to “how do we overcome fear?” It’s the sort of simple theme Star Trek has always loved,
presented as not only a practical problem to solve
but also a philosophical one. And what is it that ultimately conquers fear?
Reason. Janeway outsmarts the Clown by connecting her brain to his computer system, but not actually
allowing herself to enter hibernation. Instead, a hologram of Janeway is sent in. Since he can
sense the real Janeway being connected to the system, the Clown assumes the hologram is the
real Janeway, and when the hibernators have been evacuated from the virtual reality and the Clown
realizes too late that he’s been tricked, he finds out what it feels like to be afraid.
And he fades into blackness, and that’s it! Credits! Endings are another thing Voyager
struggles with quite a bit — many Voyager episodes end abruptly, like they just ran out
of time and tried to wrap things up in a hurry. But “The Thaw” ends on just the right note. The
hostages are saved, the Clown is defeated, he dissolves into the dark, and there’s no reason
to linger any longer. His frowning, fearful face slowly melting away is the perfect final image.
I mentioned that this episode does two things that I really love for Star Trek
episodes to do. The first one is that it reminds me of an episode of Star Trek:
The Original Series. All of the spin-offs of Classic Trek, from TNG onward, have shows
like this, where there’s something about the premise or the style that makes it feel like,
with a few minor changes, this could have been a Classic Star Trek episode.
“The Thaw”? The ship visits a planet that is unexpectedly deserted,
and discovers a small group of survivors trapped in a false reality being tormented
by an evil clown? Tell me that’s not the TV Guide summary for a Classic Star Trek episode.
Janeway even gets to play Captain Kirk in this one — her choice to get involved in this situation at
all is a total Kirk move. Think about it — this is really none of their business. Voyager visits
this planet expecting to find a trading post, presumably so they can barter for supplies or
something, but instead they find a dead, frozen world. That’s a mystery for sure, but this isn’t
a Federation planet, and investigating what happened isn’t their job. Even after they
get the automatic hail from the leader of the survivors telling them what the situation is,
and they realize that the sleepers are a few years late waking up, Janeway could have just said,
“Oh well, I hope they’re okay, but this isn’t our problem” and left.
But if she’d done that, they wouldn’t have found out about the Clown,
and we wouldn’t have this great episode. So, she does what Captain Kirk would have done,
and sticks her nose in someone else’s affair. And they find people who need their help,
and they nearly get Harry killed but eventually they help the people and save the day!
So, the moral is . . . mind other people’s business? Probably shouldn’t overthink
that. The point is: this could have been a Classic Star Trek episode, and I dig that.
The other thing I dig about it is that, in addition to feeling like a Classic Trek episode,
it also feels like a Twilight Zone episode — I love when Star Trek episodes feel like
Twilight Zone episodes. It’s like watching two of my favorite shows at the same time.
The thing about the best Twilight Zone episodes is, they all have strong concepts at their core.
There’s always a point to be made, or a clever trick, or something that you can see and touch
that pulls the episode together. “The Thaw” is like that. Plus, the Clown’s reality, populated
by costumed acrobats, dreamlike and whimsical but capable of turning into a nightmare at a moment’s
notice, really feels like the sort of dream world Charles Beaumont, or Richard Matheson,
or maybe even Rod Serling himself would have come up with for a classic Twilight Zone.
And trust me, when it comes to favorite TV shows ever, Star Trek and the original Twilight Zone are
both right at the top and they are neck and neck, so when I say something feels like it could have
been a Twilight Zone episode, there are few higher compliments than that coming from me.
Those are my thoughts on “The Thaw,” my favorite episode of Star Trek:
Voyager. What’s your favorite Voyager episode? Please share it with me in
the comments. If you’d like to support this channel — and I sure wish you would,
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Don’t forget to watch for my review of the fourth episode of season three of Star Trek:
Picard coming this weekend. I’m teaming up with my best friend and podcast co-host Jason Harding
to review this final season of Picard, and our next review should be up sometime this weekend,
hopefully on Saturday. And please join me again at this time next week for another retro review.
Next time it’ll be my favorite episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, “Breaking the Ice”!
I’ll see you then. Thanks for watching and take care, everybody!