Threshold ongoing thread (1 Viewer)

The premise was kinda interesting, but as the 2 hours (with tons of commercial breaks) unfolded, the show had me scratching my head in terms of moving the plot along for the red team trying to engage the crew that made it to shore.

Also, I'm not as crazy with "The 4400" angle that seems that will be used to propel the show in terms of dealing with the extraterrestrial incident at sea, and now on shore.

At worst, Fridays will be only "Numbers" night for me if "Threshold" starts to run in place after a while. Plus seeing "Braga Production" at the end kind of horrified me too.

ditto patrick..

I posted my thoughts on another site, but I basically thought it was an amalgamation of the 4400(glad to see i wasn't the only one who recalled this) and the xfiles(the refinery scenes were all classic x-files)

It was okay, but nothing great...I'm left scratching my head as to how they're going to extend this beyond half a season. It gets 4400ish from next week on.

I did get a kick out of Ethan though..seems the poor guy will be typecast as the creepy tall, muscular white guy.

I had a massive brain fart and forgot this was on tonight. Does anyone know if CBS will rerun the pilot anytime in the near future?

I don't see anything listed in the next week or so in the online listings, but keep your eyes open. If the network smells a hit, they'll repeat it.

I watched the premiere last night and thought it had some decent thrills, but we'll see how it goes. It's not as instantly likeable as LOST was last year so I'll give it a few more chances.

Harry

What bothered me most was an appalling lack of attention to little details: for instance, Richmond is at least 90 minutes from DC, so going home to get some sleep and being back in eight hours meant only sleeping, at most, five. I know: not a big deal but they could have done better. Likewise, what are the North Koreans doing 80 miles from our Eastern Seaboard? Even if they have a navy capable of reaching there, there's no way we let them get that close even without an ET.

Threshold has potential but I'm afraid that, as a Washington Post critic said, CBS may not have all that much confidence in the series seeing as they're airing it on Friday nights. I give "Ghost Whisperer," the show that precedes it, at best 7 weeks. It's a blatant "Medium" me-too and even with JLH's, err, qualities, even the previews look boring.

Can some one give me a synopsis of what happened in the first 30 min. i hate my comcast DVR unlike my old tivo it isn't smart enough not to record reruns despite my telling it first one only, hence it was recording Rome last night and cancelled my threshold record. I was able to record it but a half hour into it. I'll watch it later this week. I'm gonna have to check the DVR everyday from now on.

Patrick the Braga stuff horrifies me as well but I'm mainly gonna try this for Carla Guigano, any Sin City type shots

I thought it was pretty good but nothing great. I share the opinion of others. They going to find someone different each week that may have been affected?
The dialogue was not that great either. It reminded me of one of those Sci Fi original movies on the Sci Fi channel.

It's funny. Yesterday, I got a new widescreen monitor for my ATSC tuner, so I was watching some marginal shows to "break it in", as it were. I came to the conclusion that TV is going to be really quite stuuupid this season. Oh well. An episode of Threshold interspersed with CSI-Miami promos might just do that a person. Overall, a fun, somewhat mindless show, though at times I did root for the aliens...

I'm probably going to stick with my old CBS favorites: CSI, NCIS, and Numbers

I enjoyed the show. Not having watched any eps of The 4400, I'm not seeing something that's already been done in another show. The part that really bothered me though was, as was already mentioned, a North Korean sub in north Atlantic waters. Didn't make alot of sense, but I guess they needed something to propel the incentive to finish operations on the ship. The Brannon logo at the end also startled me, but if I like a show, I'll keep watching it 'til I don't. I hope it finds an audience, 'cause I'm curious to see the story unfold. Sorry you guys didn't enjoy it as much as I did, maybe it'll get better for you as it goes on if you give it another chance.

I liked it too, but having Carla in it helps! The only question I had with it was why didn't they tow the freighter back to the US?

Glenn

It is off to a rocky start..Ratings indicate that more people watched Dateline NBC and a rerun of L&O SVU over the premiere of Threshold.

I'll give it till mid-season, but who knows - if the ratings dip drastically over the next week or two it could be toast in a hurry.

I don't think the red team and company were in position to tow anything of that size (the naval vessel) back to shore.

First 30 minutes:

Gunnerson got a "dear John" letter, commiserates with the captain about it (who's had his share as well). Then in the comm center on board, you see the fractal pattern on the radar screen, and then you see fish swimming in the same pattern, and then you see the Christmas ornament, er, alien multi-dimensional vessel/beacon/etc.

Molly is then shown to talk about contingency planning to a group of people, and then goes home, where we are introduce to Monster, her pug, and her fridge is stocked with take-out food. Then she walks the dog, and a helicopter descends upon them, and she is informed that one of her contingency plans has been activated, "Threshold".

Cavanaugh and the government guys take Molly to the HQ for crisis management, meets the Charles Dutton character. They cover a heat signature that entered the earth's atmospher, and it was moving in ways that suggested intelligence was guiding it. Molly is brought in to lead the effort in a first contact situation. Then Molly assembles her red team, Nigel (Spiner), Lucas (rocket scientist), Arthur (math guy, short).

Dutton's character, J.T., impressed upon the red team the need for getting to the aliens first. The red team members aren't happy about being "recruited". Arthur is given 2 choices: red team, or prison. Arthur picked the red team scenario.

The red team is taken to the location of the naval vessel out at sea. The ship has a lot of roaches, and they all travel in the fractal pattern on deck as well.

On the way to the ship, Arthur and Lucas "bond" and Arthur makes a groan-worthy quip after Lucas is discovered to be reading the New Testament with "I don't remember reading 'on the 8th day the Lord created Klingons'" with a quick cut to Brent Spiner (Data on Star Trek the Next Generation).

Cavanaugh and Molly do some small talk, he notes the watch she wears and deduces that it's her father's watch, and she confirms it, and reveals that she has no idea where her father is at the present time.

The red team makes it to the naval vessel, they walk all over the corridors, see some scary looking dead sailors. All the crew they encounter are dead, but some are unaccounted for. Gunnerson surprises one of the red team muscle, but he is subdued, and Nigel is tasked to find out what's going on with Gunnerson. Arthur is tasked with looking at the radar captures. Cavanaugh, Molly and Lucas look at the video they found, and it shows sailor hi-jinks, and then it focuses on the alien vessel, which flashes them (like x-rays or something) as it morphs/folds itself. The more it flashes them, they convulse and have bloody noses until Cavanaugh shoots the TV to stop the flashes. Molly says that confirm extraterrestrial intelligence.

J.T. (along with Angela - Molly's former advisor in college) leans on Molly and her team to quicken the pace of the investigations because the North Koreans were on the way. J.T. talk about how the world don't know what's going on as they go about their mundane activities. Angela put J.T. as the go-to guy for this crisis.

Nigel has Gunnerson up and Molly interviews him. Gunnersen said that the captain and others changed. The equipment acted strange. The alien vessel sounded like knives sharpening, and kept flashing them, and they all went down from the flashing, bloody noses and all until the crew all collapsed. The crew got sick, had weird dreams. The captain was unresponsive to Gunnerson's concerns about the crew, and noted that he had a dream of a forest made of glass, and then he attacked Gunnerson and they make it to the deck where Gunnerson tries to avoid all the wild axe swinging by the captain, and then knocks the captain out with a big wrench. Then he's shown to drop the wrench, but doesn't know where the captain's body went. The crew went nuts. Molly asks about the missing crew members, Gunnerson has no idea what's going on, makes a lurch at Molly but the restraints did their job.

Molly and Lucas talk about the Christmas ornament and its means of transportation, and he suggests that it's a multi-dimensional vehicle or weapon. Arthur shows Molly the fractal pattern on the radar screens, Arthur also makes a pass at Molly, but she shoots him down. Molly takes photos of one of the crew member being moved, and she gets spooked by the eyes opening at her, and then it convulses and scares her. Nigel tries to explain why it could have happened. Cavanaugh and Molly make more small talk about how she came to be involved with contingency management, and she alluded to having being in a crisis in the past.

Nigel and Lucas have a talk about what this means to the average person, and it's not about the thrill of discovery, but about pop cultural events. Cavanaugh and Arthur talk about the fractal pattern, and Arthur suggests that the alien DNA is in the form of a triple helix (human DNA is in the form of a double helix). Then a bound Gunnerson, and a quick flash of a close-up of his eye closes out the segment.

That's about it.

I think towing would have worked. You quarantine the vessel, and call the Coast Guard up and tell them to 'protect it' until an ocean-going tug picks it up. they could have sent a few tow lines over the bow so that the tug crew wouldn't have to go on board. Then just quarantine the dock when it arrives.

Ok, so they didn't work that one into the plot!

Glenn

I forgot this was premiering on Friday. I set the DVR to the Sci-fi Channel! Fortunately a friend taped it, so I'll be able to borrow it. Too bad I missed it in HD!

Okay... Invasion is on Wednesday, right?

If you watch LOST, I bet there will be no loss of ads proclaiming what the show following will be! But I will be watching that as well as SURFACE, because so far the genre shows have been better than I expect...at least until NIGHT STALKER arrives.

I thought it was okay. The dialogue was pretty potboilerish in the beginning. I was expecting more from David Goyer, though maybe those expectations were misplaced. I'll probably keep watching for a little while. So far I'm disappointed in this season's new shows.

I think I'm giving these shows a little more slack because this is the first year that my HDTV has gotten a serious workout from something else besides football.

I had high hopes for his but I was a bit diappointed. The script was pretty bad and I'm a little tired of the new cliche of having a woman as the "savior of the human race" that seems to be prevelent these days. I mean one woman is gonna come up with all the contingency plans to protect the country in case of catastrophic events? she should of been in Louisiana a couple of weeks ago they sure could of used her.

I'm not really sure about the 4400 comparison. From what I remember about that show didn't the aliens return 4400 abductees to earth? I didn't see anything like that in Threshold. I can see the comparison to certain X Files shows.

As far as new shows I watched Supernatural on WB and I thought that was OK. I've added it to my Tivo list I'll keep watching to see how it pans out.

Gotta love DTV with Tivo, set it to record and watch when YOU want to. Plus skip through all the commercials.

With that said I enjoyed the show even though it has some quirks. The North Koreans for one. Why the hell didn't they have U.S. Navy war ships or planes out there protecting Navy property? A few torpedoes and sonobouys would have kept those pesky critters away.

How was it Molly is taken to D.C. by helicopter from the Richmond area but then drives her vehicle home?

MikeS.

The "The 4400" comparison comes from whether or not the show will deal with (on a weekly basis) those who are attuned to the sub-harmonics that the glass crystal thingy was emanating and show up acting like Gunnerson and company in a congregatory manner. It's like "The 4400"'s super-powered person of the week from that standpoint.