Opinion: Bride of Chaotica is so much worse than Threshold

There has been ongoing dissent between Star Trek: Voyager fans as to whether or not Threshold is the worst episode of the series

As a first-time view of Star Trek: Voyager, only beginning this year, I went into the series with an open mind. In fact, I hadn’t read much about Voyager, not even the episode descriptions. But it was difficult to miss the complaints about Threshold so I expected to hate the episode as well. I’ve previously shared my thoughts on that episode, and I remain convinced that it wasn’t that bad. Now ask me about Bride of Chaotica.

The 12th episode of season five, Bride of Chaotica has been rated as one of the best holodeck episodes of Star Trek by CBR.com. But as I watched the episode, I could only see the campiness of the old science fiction shows in black and white, and since I’ve never been a fan of those, it did color my opinion.

Holodeck episodes have been used with great success on shows that didn’t venture into ridiculous. Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Ship in a Bottle and Deep Space Nine’s It’s Only a Paper Moon are two of the best instances with It’s Only a Paper Moon coming out on top as my all-time favorite holodeck episode on any Star Trek series.

Believing the “villain” of the episode is a hammy character from 1930s science fiction is asking a lot of fans, and I realize I might be in the minority here, but watching the entire crew of Voyager try to figure out how to defeat Chaotica and photonic aliens was a little too absurd. With all the knowledge the crew had and all of the dangerous situations they’d gotten out of with the Hirogen, Species 9472, and the Borg, it’s really difficult to believe that the only way they could get out of this one was to let a science fiction episode play out so they could defeat the evil Chaotica. At least, in Threshold, the entire episode wasn’t rife with such absurdity.

Undoubtedly, this is episode is loved by many, but this fan will never see the allure of it and will be adding it to my “never to be watched again” list.