A ship encounters a mysterious UFO leaving the crew dead. The US government calls in a team of experts based on the Threshold Protocol. Scientists Dr. Molly Anne Caffrey (Carla Gugino), Dr. Nigel Fenway (Brent Spiner), Lucas Pegg (Rob Benedict), and Arthur Ramsey (Peter Dinklage) are pull together with J.T. Baylock (Charles S. Dutton) from the NSA and military muscle Sean Cavennaugh (Brian Van Holt). The show starts with a lot of promise. The premise was very compelling. It has a lot of mystery and even some action. The group of actors are compelling but the potential is never truly fulfilled. I wish they at least finish a season but only 13 episodes were made.

Our TV world revolves around three main types of show - hospital dramas, crime dramas and sci-fi dramas. Some of them are corkers (there are corkers in all three categories) whereas some of them are total cr*p. Threshold just is. It serves no real purpose and is really just made to try and hook a few more people who were going off Sky a bit. But it didn't hook me. I watched about five minutes of it before I switched over - it is mundane and uninspired. The Threshold logo looks interesting and the trailer is superbly gripping, but all trailers for crime/sci-fi series try to put in as much action as possible to get you into them, when all you're really going to be watching is a group of boring old gits talking to each other in buildings rather than blowing things up. At least Doctor Who is enjoyable and action-packed. This is just boring and shows a lack of imagination and ideas. My review can't be very detailed because I've seen so little of it, but that helps prove my case even further, if you get my drift. 4/10

...which is to say, if this somewhat promising series hadn't had the plug pulled on it before even a single season had aired.My brother turned me on to this one courtesy of the spiffy 4DVD set from Paramount/CBS, and his recommendation was certainly a point in its favor, but I can't say that "Threshold" will be a repeat viewing favorite. The premiere episode was well done, very promising in a high-tech "Amazing Stories" sort of way, but as the series unfolded, I found myself increasingly frustrated with the limitations and demands of serial commercial presentation. This could well be a reflection of the weaknesses of creativity by committee, or more simply the fault of the premise itself.This is not to imply that the series was bad; far from it. The concept was reasonably solid, if somewhat derivative (but what isn't these days?): alien invasion via genetic manipulation, complicated by spreading the "infection" via multiple vectors, all of this told primarily from the viewpoint of a top-secret think tank assembled to deal with just such a contingency. Take a little "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," mix in elements of "The Invaders," John Carpenter's "The Thing," and "The X-Files," season with a generous helping of decent actors and quality production values, and you have "Threshold." Unfortunately, it didn't quite work. The cancellation of the series was certainly less of a surprise than that of, say, "Firefly," another (much better) short-lived sci-fi series.I think the problem was that the creators of "Threshold" couldn't decide if their show was to be character-driven or idea-driven, and as a result, it wavered between both to the detriment of both. The leads are reasonably engaging actors, but the writing fails to establish them as anything much beyond typical TV stereotypes, with the possible exception of Peter "The Station Agent" Dinklage and esteemed stage and screen character actor, Charles S. Dutton. Carla "Spin City" Gugino is somewhat unbelievable as the hyper-intelligent theorizer, although she does her best with what she's given by the scriptwriters. Brent "Star Trek" Spiner reprises his Data persona sans funky make-up, Rob "Felicity" Benedict tackles the computer geek role, and Brian "Black Hawk Down" Van Holt provides the black ops muscle. Unfortunately, they all add up to less than the sum of their parts.The writers are careful to not reveal too much too quickly, but also fail to reveal enough of consistent substance. And they cheat. Case in point is the premiere-ending image of a city full of traffic arrayed in the shape of the signature alien fractal. It runs completely counter to the premise of alien infection; it simply hasn't spread that far yet. One of the featurettes on the DVD even admits this.I watched all thirteen episodes over the course of about three days, including extras. I don't feel that my time was wasted, but I also know that I won't be returning to the show anytime soon, nor am I overly heartbroken that it died at the relentless imperative of Nielsen. "Threshold" just wasn't as smart as it wanted to be.

CBS demonstrates over and over why it has no evening viewers after the 6 o'clock news. Get viewers interested in a new series (i.e. "Threshold")and just leave them hanging. What a bunch of stuff. The program managers of this network should forget competing with cable networks and just go to all news if they are going to keep doing this kind of stuff."Threshold" is a cheap production but has an excellent story line so I do not see why the "Sci Fi Net" wouldn't pick them up. They are notorious for cheap (Like killing FarScape because it cost too much and keeping StarGate SG1 because it is cheap).I just don't know why the three big networks keep doing this to viewers. Look at "Space above and Beyond" and "Surface". Get the viewers interested and kill it. Mash was really bad but look how long it ran. Why can't good Sci Fi series on the big networks have and good run or at least give closure? Do they just not have any Sci Fi writers?