That's the only way I'd be in a fit state to watch that episode.My controversial opinion: The Alternative Factor is a great drinking game; take a drink every time Lazarus changes places, and if you're not sure, take a drink anyway.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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I'll go a step further and say drinking while watching it is the only way "THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" makes any sense.My controversial opinion: The Alternative Factor is a great drinking game; take a drink every time Lazarus changes places, and if you're not sure, take a drink anyway.
Every time Lazarus' beard switches from wispy to thicker and then back, take a shot of whiskey. You'll be dead of liver poisoning by the third commercial break!
Controversial opinion: I fully enjoy Alternative Factor.
Or every time Lazarus says 'the thing' or 'terrible monster'.
And that, my friends, wins this thread.
It's not even in my Bottom 5 TOS Episodes. I'll take Lazarus anyday over "Catspaw" or Melvin Belli in a puffy mumu.
I'll definitely take it over "AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD". But certainly not "CATSPAW"... I love that one! (To be fair, Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I love the mood of the episode.)
The biggest problem with "THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" is it's an incoherent mess of a script. I'd probably call it the third worst of TOS, with "THE WAY TO EDEN" being second and "AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" being the worst. (Also a strong contender for worst in the franchise.)
"And the Children Shall Lead" is just the absolute nadir of TOS. I can't think of worse, even "The Mark of Gideon" has a creepy, interesting atmosphere and moments where the faces are seen outside ship's windows and it becomes truly unsettling. The rest of the episode makes little sense or is boring as can be, but at least that one isn't the insult to the senses that the Belli episode is.
When I was young, I always had a crippling fear of someone looking in at me through a window at night. Don’t know why that is, as that’s never actually happened to me in my life, but it still freaks me out. I’m a firm believer that all irrational phobias have a distant source in reality and buries itself deep in the youthful subconscious. Now I’m thinking that perhaps it was “Gideon” that planted the seeds of that phobia. Damn…
Of course not: Those shows don’t make effort to do so. Doctor Who (for example)is happy with saying various alien invasions have taken place, whilst still playing within a recognisable setting. It doesn’t have to justify something happening or not happening in our real world because (like most fiction) it recognises that it is not.
Audiences are actually fine with the whole idea of suspension of disbelief.
It’s only Star Trek that seems to play this game of make it all match up. It could just have it’s own timeline and whatever like any other show, but somewhere, somehow the Great Bird’s vision crept into the works and now Star Trek is something special… we have to pretend that the pretend thing is less pretend than the other pretend things… why?
In the future, when First Contact Day turns around and no Vulcan’s come… Will they kick the can 50 years down the road because it doesn’t line up with what actually happened?
The Star Trek universe is necessarily different to our own. Like every other fictional universe is. The process of trying to warp the events of the Trek timeline onto our own cause exactly the kinds of debates we see above.
It’s fiction. Let it be fiction. Even if you say it’s not and that somehow we live in the same universe where Star Trek takes place, you’d still be wrong. It would still be fiction.
I just don’t get why writers (and fans) somehow think the Star Trek timeline should be deformed and altered, just because it should all line up with our world. No other fictional universe places these demands upon themselves.
There were no Vulcans at Carbon Creek and they did not invent Velcro.
Yes they will. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s contact with Vulcan that’s important not the date.
No it’s “necessary “. Yeah there are fictional elements in fictional universes. That’s not the the debate.
Again, not the debate.
My original statement (hence my debate, to which you responded) was that it’s completely futile and of no benefit to the show itself to attempt to hammer it’s distinct timeline into our own.
I stand by that. It’s fiction. Let it be fiction.
"Dilithium Plot confuses in the dark....all the universes RUNNING WILD...."
I like imagining we'll have a future like that someday, but I'm also under no illusion that the real future we're going to have will either be depressingly bleak, or so incredibly alien to us that the very idea of uniform-clad humanoids walking around a starship would be considered archaic by the end of this century.
Will we still be walking? Will that still be a thing? Think about how much communication has changed us since star trek began and consider if we'll even talk with words by 2266. I can't quite picture the world of tomorrow without feeling uncomfortable, that's why I like the Star Trek world, it's familiar and comfortable to people from the 20th century.
Will we still be walking? Will that still be a thing? Think about how much communication has changed us since star trek began and consider if we'll even talk with words by 2266. I can't quite picture the world of tomorrow without feeling uncomfortable, that's why I like the Star Trek world, it's familiar and comfortable to people from the 20th century.
THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK.
Just don't send us home. We've got no place else to go.
I'm a credit-man to some degree, but what was memorable with ALTERNATIVE's?
UHURA: Fire, Captain! Section Level Ten! Plus a burning cake left out in the rain!!!
SPOCK: Surely you jest, Lieutenant. In the future we have no reed for raindrops.
KIRK: Spock! Bones! Retrieve that cake and take it to sickbay!
McCOY: Dammit, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a---
KIRK: Mint Julep flavor---
McCOY: C'MON, Spocky!!!!
SPOCK: Ow, my arm!!!!!
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