Cool New York Times article on the upcoming Threshold DVD

The New York Times
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November 12, 2006
Dvd
They Fought the Aliens, and the Viewers Shrugged
By JON CARAMANICA

NETWORK shows die all the time, though few have died with less fanfare than “Threshold,” which ran for eight episodes on CBS in the fall of 2005. An astutely written, legitimately spooky sci-fi drama that played like the early “X-Files” with better lighting and makeup, and vivid (if sometimes cartoonish) computer-enhanced special effects, it was a ratings dog, canceled with its final four episodes unshown. An online petition to save the show didn’t even draw 1,000 signatures.

On “Threshold” an elite team is convened to fight a mysterious alien infection transmitted through sound, food, sex and myriad other avenues. True, it’s a dull conceit, except that the casting — some of the most eclectic in recent television memory — appeared to have been done by blind dart toss. There was Brent Spiner, a k a Mr. Data from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”; Charles S. Dutton, the star of “Roc”; Peter Dinklage, the little guy from “The Station Agent”; and Rob Benedict, formerly that irksome kid from “Felicity.” Justifying and holding together this motley crew was Carla Gugino, late of the short-lived “Karen Sisco,” a much-liked actress who has yet to meet the TV series she can carry.

As Dr. Molly Anne Caffrey, she headed an unusually jovial crew, the most compelling member of which was Mr. Dinklage’s Arthur Ramsey. A linguist and mathematician with a booze-and-strippers problem, Ramsey was utterly lewd and snarky, the rare unsympathetic character who didn’t inspire pity or revulsion. Instead, his peculiar combination of id and self-loathing felt honest and unsentimental, refreshing for a show in which aliens spend each episode trying to find a way to infect all the humans on Earth.

Why the show’s final four episodes didn’t merit even a Saturday-night burn-off is a mystery unanswered by the recently released DVD box. Was it the throwaway joke about Iraq? Or maybe the cockamamie story line about how two neutron stars will collide, creating cosmic radiation that will irreparably damage Earth and its population, a fate the aliens are trying to prevent? Did they fear broadcasting the scene with a shirtless, postcoital Mr. Dinklage (coincidentally, one of his best performances in the series)?

The show was only getting better. (“Threshold” began reruns on the Sci Fi Channel last week. The channel will present all the episodes, including the four unshown ones.) In the episodes that were never broadcast, a new character — a renegade semi-infected doctor who metes out genetically enhanced vigilante justice against the alien infectees — captures the interest of Dr. Caffrey. Additionally the premises of the episodes, which appeared loose at the season’s outset, were beginning to cohere, even as they became more audacious. Which is to say the show’s core mystery was becoming less of a crutch, making “Threshold” a science-fiction show decreasingly interested in science or fiction, without sacrificing its intensity, or its weirdness.

In the bonus interviews packaged with this set, the show’s creators reveal that they learned of its impending cancellation while shooting the final episode, leaving them barely enough time to scribble out a clean resolution to the series. But if the bulk of that episode is any indication, they had at least an inkling that the end was nigh while writing it. A slapstick comedy hour that somehow evokes “Three Men and a Baby,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Night of the Living Dead,” it is remarkably self-aware television. Either the creators sensed doom was around the corner and responded accordingly, or they were just finding a comfortable stride, and had plenty more tricks up their sleeves.

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