"The Alternative Factor" - Why is it so universally hated?

[Botany Bay]

I've always felt a there are a few more aspects to this shambles of an episode that we've never found out.

Perhaps it was the last minute wholesale script changes that had Barrymore heading for the nearest bar.

For those unaware, Lazarus was set to have a Khan/McGivers style relationship with Masters, but for reasons still unknown, this aspect was excised at the last minute in favour of a scene where Kirk and Spock talk about absolutely nothing for ten minutes in the briefing room, and the infamous multiple cliff dives.

Would love to dig around in those UCLA archives to find out more - Harvey, get back there and do some digging for us

 

[AtoZ]

but as poorly done as The Alternative Factor is......at least Shatner isn't on all fours naying like a horse with a midget on his back riding him.

Wasn't the point of that scene humiliation? It it bothers you to see Kirk forced to become a horse for a midget, then it works.

Wrong.


It was foolishness, plain and simple. Another thing, it doesn't so much as "bother" me as it looks ridiculous to the casual fan, and very much it underlines many of the negative things people say and think about Star Trek without giving it a chance on its best foot. It perpetuates that negative misconception, similar to the one about Japanese food being simply "raw fish".

Further, Unlike The Alternative Factor, it comes across as a lazy effort - falling back into the Roman/Greek sets and props already previously overused in the series. The whole interracial kiss is the only thing they had worth hanging a hat on, and even then....

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, it was foolishness, but that was the point -- the Platonians were a decadent culture who got their jollies by forcing people to humiliate themselves with absurd antics. They see it as comedy and fun, but they're violating people in order to make it happen, and that makes it sadistic and cruel. It's that dark, horrific undercurrent beneath the low comedy that makes it potent.

 

[mos6507]

^Yes, it was foolishness, but that was the point -- the Platonians were a decadent culture who got their jollies by forcing people to humiliate themselves with absurd antics. They see it as comedy and fun, but they're violating people in order to make it happen, and that makes it sadistic and cruel. It's that dark, horrific undercurrent beneath the low comedy that makes it potent.

This is topic drift, but what I like about Plato's Stepchildren is that it is, like you say, a parable about bullying, a topic that is of particular relevance today with school shootings and the like. That society did in fact operate like immature and amoral children.

Also, I found it poignant that the midget, in the end, who was lowest on the pecking order, was the one to finally realize how abusive his society was, and turned around and fought back and won.

It reminds me of Sally Kellerman's final redemption at the end of Where No Man has Gone Before.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

About the only problem I had with this episode is that it is impossible, at any given moment (until the very end, when we find ourselves in the antimatter universe) to tell which Lazarus we are looking at. They both act equally nutso.

That being said, I rather like the literary resolution to this episode. I think it might have been a SNW story:

Spoiler: sequel

Somehow the Lazari are both freed from the antimatter 'corridor' and their endless combat. Each Lazarus is deposited onto his universe's version of Bajor, where they start new lives.

 

[scotpens]

. . . Yes, it was foolishness, but that was the point -- the Platonians were a decadent culture who got their jollies by forcing people to humiliate themselves with absurd antics.

Yes, I think we all understood that. But we didn't need to see Kirk and Spock forced to perform degrading antics for 45 goddamn minutes. "Plato's Stepchildren" was another example of barely 30 minutes' worth of story padded out to a full hour.

 

[erastus25]

To add to all the points others have made: TAF is really fucking confusing. Half the time you can't tell which Lazarus is which and the plot is clearly just slapped together.

 

[Caligula]

. . . Yes, it was foolishness, but that was the point -- the Platonians were a decadent culture who got their jollies by forcing people to humiliate themselves with absurd antics.

Yes, I think we all understood that. But we didn't need to see Kirk and Spock forced to perform degrading antics for 45 goddamn minutes. "Plato's Stepchildren" was another example of barely 30 minutes' worth of story padded out to a full hour.

Yeah, "Plato's Stepchildren" is absolute trash. "And the Children Shall Lead" would be another example of an episode I find painful to watch. Just deplorable on every level. "The Alternative Factor," for all its flaws, is still an episode I can get behind. I don't even consider it the weakest Season 1 episode. That dishonor goes to "Operation: Annihilate!" and its fake vomit monsters on strings.

 

[Maurice]

HERB: ...the morning he was scheduled to begin work, November 16, 1966, John Drew Barrymore disappeared...

...I see Brown was saying that Barrymore went to lunch on his first day and never came back. That's in accord with Justman and Solow.

Which is not "in accord" with Solow's account. Leaving after a morning of shooting isn't the same as "the morning he was scheduled to begin work."

From reading the call sheets at UCLA, I recall that Barrymore was a no show on day one.

Yep.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

....but as poorly done as The Alternative Factor is......at least Shatner isn't on all fours naying like a horse with a midget on his back riding him.

[sarcasm]Thanks for the reminder![/sarcasm]

Re: The Alternative Factor: the one saving grace is the one-shot role of Lt. Masters (the lovely Janet MacLachlan), portrayed as capable and assertive in a way not seen in Uhura, Rand or Chapel in that season. She would have made a fine addition to the regular cast. Big missed opportunity.

EDIT: another saving grace was the 2nd act exchange between Kirk and Spock. Requests for accurate science be damned there, because they play the estimated threat so seriously/well, that it is a memorable scene of strong effect. They could have been discussing the weather, and the exchange would still work.

 

[scotpens]

. . . "The Alternative Factor," for all its flaws, is still an episode I can get behind. I don't even consider it the weakest Season 1 episode. That dishonor goes to "Operation: Annihilate!" and its fake vomit monsters on strings.

Hey, I liked the flying fake vomit. At least they were a credibly "alien" lifeform and not a celebrity lawyer wearing a shower curtain.

 

[Christopher]

I always called them "flying pancakes."

 

[Nerys Myk]

I always called them "flying pancakes."

My sisters and I called them "hotcakes" (With an "Eva Gabor" accent)

 

[Christopher]

When my sister and I were kids, we referred to "The Galileo Seven"'s giant anthropoids as "gorilly-monsters."

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

I always called them "flying pancakes."

My college roommate called them "flying pizzas."

. . . Yes, it was foolishness, but that was the point -- the Platonians were a decadent culture who got their jollies by forcing people to humiliate themselves with absurd antics.

Yes, I think we all understood that. But we didn't need to see Kirk and Spock forced to perform degrading antics for 45 goddamn minutes. "Plato's Stepchildren" was another example of barely 30 minutes' worth of story padded out to a full hour.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh..... bitter dregs.

 

[scotpens]

I always called them "flying pancakes."

My college roommate called them "flying pizzas."

If those things were pizzas, they must have been made by a drunken pizza chef.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

I always called them "flying pancakes."

My college roommate called them "flying pizzas."

If those things were pizzas, they must have been made by a drunken pizza chef.

Well, my roommate wasn't very bright.... Otherwise he could have annihilated them.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Which is not "in accord" with Solow's account. Leaving after a morning of shooting isn't the same as "the morning he was scheduled to begin work."

"HERB: ...the morning he was scheduled to begin work, November 16, 1966, John Drew Barrymore disappeared, ignoring his role, his moral obligation, and his contract."

It is in accord. You can't disappear unless you have first appeared. Brown's "after lunch" phrasing might be incorrect, but both accounts indicate that Barrymore reported to the studio that morning. Both accounts might be wrong, of course; I wasn't there.

 

[Maurice]

Too easy.

disappear |ˌdisəˈpi(ə)r|
verb
• (of a person) go missing or (in coded political language) be killed : the family disappeared after being taken into custody.

But I'm done arguing with you, because you're more interested in being "right" than being correct.

 

[Ovation]

This episode is what an Ed Woods directed episode would have been like.