Attention on heck! Don’t try to adjust your viewscreens, person-hell and boo-tenants! What you’re seeing isn’t a creepy clone, a hellish hologram, or a strangely specific alternate universe! For the month of October, we’ll be taking a spine-chilling stroll through Trek’s most horror-iffic outings and spooky adventures! Now why don’t you sit back and try not to let that green blood of yours run cold! If things get a little too intense, don’t hesitate to ask Scotty to SCREAM you up! Hehehehehehehehehe!
Star Trek: Voyager – Season 2, Episode 23
Clowns are a staple of horror due to their… I mean, just fucking look at them. If anything, clowns seem like they’re primarily a horror concept instead of their original role of being silly, mirthful entertainment (or fast food mascots). That polarity flip is at the heart of one of Star Trek: Voyager’s most effective episodes and one of the most memorable horror-themed Trek adventures ever, “The Thaw.” Its killer clown wasn’t meant to be a sadistic dealer of death, but was accidentally given that power by the inhabitants of a shared dream device. “The Thaw” also taps into the blood-curdling theme of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series by trapping the characters into a deadly dream that they can’t escape from.
The episode benefits immensely from its special guest star Michael McKean as the gleeful, murderous dream clown that tortures his victims. McKean channels his natural comedic gifts to give his clown a compelling and entertaining edge. It was the same blend of genuine funniness that Mark Hamill imbued his iconic version of Batman’s Joker with. I’d argue McKean’s Clown is on the same tier as Hamill’s Joker – they’re both entertaining to watch, funny as hell, and absolutely terrifying psychopaths you can’t turn away from.
The story begins in pretty typical fashion with Voyager discovering a deserted planet that was once a busy trading port. But 19 years ago, a powerful solar flare decimated the planet’s ecosystem and seemingly wiped out its inhabitants. However, the ship receives an automated message from one of the members of the colony named Viorsa explaining that they’ve gone into a deep hibernation to survive the disaster and plan to emerge and rebuild in 15 years. Scanning below the planet’s surface, Kim locates a set of stasis pods with life signs. Janeway orders the pods beamed to the ship (for some reason) to see what has become of the planet’s survivors.
Of the five pods they beam aboard, they find three that are alive (including Viorsa), and as is tradition, the others filled with skeletons. Seriously, I think this is like a writer’s guild bylaw – if your characters discover stasis pods, at least one must be filled with a skeleton. Otherwise, you’re going to be hearing from the union chair, and you definitely don’t want to deal with that guy. He forces me put in at least one tasteless sexual innuendo per write-up. I don’t want to do it, he makes me! 😭
Anyway. The crew analyzes the pods, and discovers that the three people inside are mentally linked into a shared dream program. Not only that, but the program contains a termination function and a real-time look at what the environmental conditions of the planet are (I wonder if it has intrusive Temu ads like my weather app). Not only that, but the two that died seem to have shuffled off the mortal coil due to fear. All of which deepens the mystery of why they have not chosen to exit stasis and rebuild their colony as per their plans.
Because shutting down the system from the outside would be deadly to its users, the crew decides the only way they can properly investigate is to enter the program and contact the people. Plug into an alien network in which two people have already been scared to death? Ha ha, why not. Please everyone, don’t all rush in at once! Let’s form an orderly line to enter the death machine; you’ll all get your turn.
Torres and Kim use the extra two stasis pods to enter the program (presumably after tilting them like a wheelbarrow and shaking out the bones of the previous inhabitants). Janeway gives them five minutes before they activate the recall program that will pull them out. Torres and Kim enter The Scaretrix to find a bizarre and brightly-colored environment inhabited by a weird carnival of dancing figures. My favorite is the 7+ foot deep-voiced skull guy. In true horror movie fashion, Torres and Kim are absurdly nonplussed by this clearly menacing place and its terrifying inhabitants. Seriously, it’s like Cirque du Soleil, except a third as sexually charged and just slightly more deadly for visitors.
Torres and Kim get caught up in a gaggle of dancers and everything seems lighthearted and silly until they’re led to a big pink guillotine manned by the least kinkiest guillotine operator to have ever served. Finally realizing that they’re in mortal danger inside the death machine that they voluntarily entered, Torres and Kim try to escape, but the circus mob led by the Clown overpowers them and places Harry’s head (the name of my Trek-themed 90’s pop-psychology sitcom) into the guillotine. Uh-oh, this is unexpected somehow, I’m sure!
They’re stopped by Viorsa and his two companions as Viorsa tries to reason with the Clown. If they kill these new aliens, the ship they came in on might respond by shutting down the system and killing them all. The Clown seems to listen and addresses Torres and Kim, revealing that he knows what’s in their heads by spouting some personal details about them. McKean speaks in a high, squeaky voice as he pokes and prods the Voyager crew. The makeup and costuming of the Clown is visually different than the others, and his more drab and grey coloring conveys a deathlike pallor. Viorsa begs him to stop, and the Clown’s bluster drops as he shoots back a silent, murderous glare that seems to chill Viorsa’s blood. The way McKean flip-flops from silly to scary is a treat to watch and his unstable, mercurial demeanor makes for a truly terrifying villain.
The Clown knows that Torres and Kim are here to rescue the colonists, but states that if they do him and his terror troupe will cease to exist. The background extras are wonderfully staged throughout the episode and it makes for one of the most visually expressionistic hours of Star Trek. Because the other figures are extensions of the Clown, there are several shots in the episode where they all fill up the space behind him and physically mimic his mannerisms as some sort of insane, macabre chorus. It makes for several absurd, funny, and disturbing frames throughout.
The Clown confirms that he doesn’t really exist, but is being generated by all the brains hooked up to the system. Torres and Kim’s escape hatch appears as a control panel on the wall, but as they rush to it, the Clown tells them that if they leave he’ll kill one of the colonists. Viorsa confirms that he did it to the other two in their group, for if you die in The Flaytrix, you die in real life as well!
Back on Voyager, Janeway watches in confusion as their termination protocol to wake Torres and Kim is deactivated… from inside the program. Having complied with the Clown’s demand, Kim urges him to let one of them go, lest Janeway shut down the entire thing. As the Clown considers this in a cartoonish huddle with his entourage, Torres and Kim learn from Viorsa and his group that the system was designed to learn and adapt from their brains. But as their fears and anxieties about their survival steadily grew, the Clown began to take shape and eventually took hold of the entire program. Because the system reads their thoughts, it meant that the Clown had access to all of that. But there is at least a slight delay as to when he becomes aware of their thoughts.
It’s such a ghastly nightmare scenario. These pour souls have been trapped in a dream 24/7 they can never wake up from for years, all while being tortured by a sadistic manifestation of fear that knows their deepest and darkest secrets. Like, holy shit, it’s the most visceral hell Star Trek has ever cooked up.
The Clown decides to let Torres exit the program and delightfully chuckles about his new best friend Harry before barking “GO!” at her. McKean is so nuts in this episode. His decision is no doubt based upon the fact that Harry is younger and more vulnerable to fear than B’Elanna; he’ll make a much more enjoyable victim.
Janeway and the staff consider their options. The Doctor can bring them out of stasis safely but the fastest he can do it is in 10 minutes, a virtual eternity that the Clown could kill them in. Janeway realizes that they’re negotiating with an emotion – fear itself. When fear holds you hostage, how do you make it let go? LITERALLY.
Viorsa and the others despair about their situation, but Kim is steadfast in his crew’s ability to overcome this ordeal. He wonders why the Clown tortures them, and one of Viorsa’s people says “We’re his canvas, his blocks of marble. With us he practices his ghastly art.” Which is a pretty hard piece of dialogue. And a pretty good description of what I do here!
The Clown senses Harry’s thoughts of escape and turns his sick attention towards him. This whole extended scene of the Clown trying to break Kim is such an effective and memorable self-contained horror movie. On one hand, it’s not nearly as gruesome or graphic as anything you’d see Freddy Krueger do. But on the other, what Freddy does is pretty to the point – he kills you (in visually inventive ways), and that’s that. What the Clown does here is more disturbing as he turns Kim’s anxieties against him, as well as the most visceral memory of fear he’s ever had. Like with the Batman animated series did with Joker, I think the limitations of the TV medium/content rating force some more creativity out of the character and squeeze a lot of terror out of suggestion rather than graphic visuals.
The Clown transforms Harry into a weak old man, cackling about the indignities of age and loss of independence before turning him into a baby and cruelly taunting him as he bounces him up and down in his arms. Back as an adult, Kim tries to put on a brave face until the Clown brings out the big guns and recalls Harry’s worst memory. Wang is really great here as we see his facade of strength crumble as the Clown digs into him. He gets strapped to a gurney as the Clown recalls when he visited a radiation disaster colony and saw some horrible shit he wasn’t supposed to see.
Now with black leather gloves and a surgical mask, the Clown drills into the painful memory of seeing an injured girl undergoing surgery as he holds a scalpel in his hand, inching closer to Kim. “Fear… fear… fear!” the Clown repeats gleefully before screaming “DO YOU REMEMBER?!” Kim can’t help but scream in terror.
It’s so, so, fucked up and intense. The terror is steadily heating throughout the scene until it boils over completely here. It’s almost too much.
But fortunately the tension is broken in hilarious fashion by the Doctor reaching down to correct the Clown’s scalpel grip in that wonderfully deadpan way of his. Sent in to deliver Janeway’s terms, he offers a simulated brain for the Clown to be wired into. The Clown balks at that, as it wouldn’t be as delicious as a real one.
Janeway and co. plot a rescue mission, and realize that Viorsa gave them a hidden message about how to get them out, possibly because the Clown’s attention was fixed on the Doctor. Torres decides that since they can’t yank the people out of the program, then they can yank the program away from the people by manually disassembling it piece by piece. Like putting too much yankee into a doodle dandy!
The Doctor interrupts the Clown in one of his insane little games to deliver another distraction disguised as a counter offer. As he talks to the clown, Torres starts deactivating the little lights that power the simulation. But unfortunately, the Clown sees the environment start disappearing around him and calls for a red alert to rally his gang to fight it. He calls out Viorsa, now realizing that it was him who engineered this. The rest of the circus grab him and lead him into the guillotine despite Kim and the Doctor’s attempts to stop them. It’s hard to watch. The blade slams down, and in the cargo bay, Kes and Janeway watch as Viorsa flatlines and dies.
As the Clown prepares to execute another of Viorsa’s colleagues, Kes detects her stress levels elevating. Janeway admits defeat and has Torres restore the simulation. The Clown triumphantly gloats as his followers dance around while Kim and the rest sit utterly defeated. It’s pretty fucked up.
A visibly infuriated Janeway tries to come up with a new way of defeating this sadistic motherfucker. She begins to ponder the nature of fear, why people willingly seek it, and asks herself what fear wants at the end of the rollercoaster ride.
The Doctor interrupts the Clown’s celebration, and it’s fun to see how much of a party pooper he is as his deadpan stoicism crashes against the Clown’s manic-depressive energy. He delivers Janeway’s ultimatum that in 60 seconds she will shut down the program, hostage brain damage be damned. As he counts down the time remaining, the Clown becomes visibly agitated. Fearful even… Well, ya should be, Ronald MacabreDonald. Kathryn Janeway is not someone you want to aggravate and then try to play chicken with.
The Doctor informs him that Janeway’s offer is that she will take the place of all the hostages, and that seems to pique his interest. As the 60 seconds elapse, the Clown happily agrees to the terms. As his minions prepare the stage for her arrival, the Clown shudders as he feels Janeway’s brain being scanned by the system. Soon all the other figures vanish as she appears to face the Clown with the steeliest of looks. He seems so bowled over by her presence and impressed by the trust she’s placed in him. Janeway admits that she’s learned to trust fear over the years. I enjoy the episode’s ruminations on the nature of fear and Janeway’s dialogue reminds us that above all else, fear is a good and healthy thing to have.
The Clown is so pleased to hear this, and happily allows the other three hostages to go. They seem in disbelief that the nightmare is finally over as they disappear from the virtual world. Facing Janeway, the Clown all but licks his chops at the prospect of digging into her brain to see what terrifies her. Janeway asks the Clown for honesty, who replies that fear is the most honest emotion of all. She wonders if deep down he wants this to end as much she does, and reveals that she’s not actually Janeway, but a holographic projection of one. The Clown is confused, as he can feel her brain. But she explains that they just modified one of the pods so that her brain could be scanned by the system without actually being sedated or put into the simulation itself. OH SNAP.
As Janeway’s thoughts finally enter the Clown’s program, he fully realizes the double-cross pulled on him. The background pattern swirls around his head, visually communicating his control of the situation spinning away, as well as the stomach-churning feeling of how thoroughly he’s been beaten. I just love the visual artistry at work in the episode. Director Marvin V. Rush drew inspiration from Federico Fellini’s expressionistic films, and his choices here bring such visceral life to the surreal nature of the story.
The ending of the episode is such a masterpiece and quite possibly my favorite of any Star Trek installment, period. It’s equally so satisfying and disquieting, filmed with style and delivering such a haunting final punch. As the simulation shuts down, the Clown is now alone with the simulated Janeway in a black void. The way McKean’s face droops almost looks like it’s going to slide right off of the Clown’s head. His expression of anguish and defeat is visceral and so deserved! He looks like he’s going to throw up.
Janeway pontificates that fear only exists to be conquered, and wonders if there was a part of the Clown that wanted to be defeated. Perhaps because he was so omnipotent and in control of his sick little world, he yearned for someone with the stones to actually beat him? The Clown can’t accept this, and is adamant that she tricked him. Janeway reminds him that Starfleet captains don’t easily succumb to fear (well, sometimes they do in special circumstances).
Each successive shot of the Clown is darker as the emptiness of nonexistence eats him up. “What will become of us… of me?” he asks her, realizing that he’s already completely alone and talking to a figment. Like all fear, he’ll eventually vanish. “I’m afraid,” he whimpers. “I know…” Janeways whispers. “Drat,” he mutters before completely fading to black.
Ugh, it’s so good it almost brings me to tears. Despite how much of a murderous psychopath the Clown was, it’s still disturbing to watch him fade away into nothingness. Somehow it’s much scarier and haunting than seeing someone die – being unmade or dissolved into nothingness. The existential dread of it all. And it raises some weird questions about his nature. Was he an actual being? McKean of course imbues him with so much personality, but did he have thoughts and feelings of his own? Or was he purely a reflection/manifestation of his subjects’ fear?
The easiest answer is that he was, and Star Trek almost always errs on the side of “if they seem real, they are real.” Which means that Janeway just straight up murders Latinumwise while looking him in the eye with a smirk. Which is such a Janeway thing to do! And it’s not like he didn’t so totally deserve it. And it didn’t even need to happen at all if he had just accepted their initial offer of being placed in an artificial brain. Despite how much of an asshole he was, they probably would have continued to let him exist in a simulated environment (a la Moriarty), but he had to push his luck, and Janeway. Not a good idea, John Wayne Graycy!
As much as I like the writing and its examination on the nature of fear – especially in Janeway’s conclusion as to what fear actually wants – I don’t know if it completely passes logical muster for me. Tuvok points out that fear is the basest and most primal of all emotions, which I agree with. Every animal feels fear as a means of ensuring its survival and avoiding danger. The idea of fear “yearning” to be conquered is a supposition that I can’t quite square. I think if anything, it would be more accurate to imagine that fear perhaps craves nonexistence/an ending for the benefit and continued survival of its subject – as in “I’m going to make your heart beat faster and break out in a cold sweat so you’ll run away from this tiger and get your ass somewhere safe.” Fear shouldn’t exist for too long, since it’s ultimately an emergency condition that’s injurious to beings, biologically speaking. Excessive release of stress hormones, additional strain on the heart, emotional damage, etc. – these all potentially shorten our lifespans. But it’s a tradeoff intended to be beneficial – a huge spike in adrenaline may not be healthy, but if it helps you avoid imminent death, so be it.
I’m really overthinking this, and I don’t actually fault the script at all. I think its ideas are fascinating, nuanced, and play into the themes of Star Trek really well. And I do agree with Janeway’s assessment about the Clown – he seems enervated at the challenge a Starfleet captain would provide. But what good is a challenge if it doesn’t contain the possibility of defeat? So on some level he had to have known – as Janeway says – that she had the ability to beat him. And I think this all proves that although he may have started out as a simple manifestation of fear, he grew into a more complex individual with a range of emotions and desires of his own. And thus less “pure” as an emotion and more fallible as a person (which Janeway exploits). Sadism and torture aren’t really connected to fear, but come from something else entirely – the frailties and damage of the abuser. Why did those arise in the Clown? Who knows.
ANY-FUCKING-WAY.
“The Thaw” is a wonderful horror story that draws from some existing motifs to create a uniquely terrifying and queasy ordeal. The Clown has some of Q’s (and other God-Like Being’s) appeal as an all-powerful force, but ends up being a villain that’s not quite like anything seen on Star Trek before. McKean’s maniacal energy gives a tour de force performance, and his Clown shows that having nothing to fear but fear itself is still pretty damn bad.
Stray Observations:
- The particulars of the ill-fated colony get lost in the jumble, but the crew estimates that around 400,000 people lived on the planet. They obviously discover the three survivors, but are these the only ones that made it? There have to be more; five people couldn’t have rebuilt a planet.
- It’s a little odd that they beam the pods up instead of just beaming down to investigate them. Was the cave set being re-spraypainted this week or something?
- If the crew can easily send holographic characters into The Dismaytrix, why not just flood that fucker with like 1,000 simulated Starfleet security officers?
- Thomas Kopache, who plays Viorsa, has had a very healthy Star Trek guest career throughout TNG, Generations, and Enterprise. And oh hey, he was Kira’s dad!
- The Clown is similar-ish to Armus from “Skin of Evil.” Both are nightmarish coagulations of pure evil, technically real but also kind of not. At least not in a three-dimensional character way.
- The texture on the Clown’s costume is kinda… eeugh. Looks like brain coral or something. Metaphor!
- Presented without context:
