Fact-Checking Inside Star Trek: The Real Story

[MGagen]

If they were blown out, though, then their light would spread well beyond the window frames and obscure a fair portion of the image around them.

Not necessarily. I used the term "blown out" in the general photographic sense of overexposed. I can shoot a night shot of a building and expose it so the moon, stars and sky glow make the structure visible and the windows are lit brightly enough that you can't make out interior details -- only brightness; yet the windows don't bleed over enough to obscure the building. Why nit pick what was merely a casual suggestion that could help what we saw onscreen make a bit more sense?

 

[Christopher]

Not necessarily. I used the term "blown out" in the general photographic sense of overexposed. I can shoot a night shot of a building and expose it so the moon, stars and sky glow make the structure visible and the windows are lit brightly enough that you can't make out interior details -- only brightness; yet the windows don't bleed over enough to obscure the building. Why nit pick what was merely a casual suggestion that could help what we saw onscreen make a bit more sense?

Because I don't think it would work in this particular case. If we're talking about deep space -- which would have far, far less ambient light than an Earth city at night -- then the sensitivity needed to make the stars and the hull visible would be overwhelmed by bright window and engine lights. Really, a nighttime city shot doesn't make a good analogy here, because modern cities at night are really extremely bright places compared to anywhere genuinely dark. Particularly since you're including the Moon in your example and adding even more ambient light to the scene.

Let's say, instead, that you were out in the middle of the desert on a moonless night, far enough from any city that there was no ambient glow on the horizon, and with no clouds in the sky to reflect ambient light from some more distant city. There's no campfire, and you only use a flashlight as much as you need to. Say that the starlight is the only light source at all. To your naked eye, you can hardly see a damn thing. You open your camera's iris as wide as it can go to get a shot of your car so that its surface is visible in that dim starlight.

And then you turn on the headlights and take a photo without changing the camera's settings. Can you really tell me you'd see anything in the photo other than the blinding light from the headlights?

 

[MGagen]

Whatever.
You've never experienced similar effects firsthand while shooting nighttime photos.
I have.

 

[Christopher]

^And deep interstellar space is different from nighttime conditions on Earth. It is, at best, an imperfect analogy.

Which is really my whole point -- that most screen-SF depictions of space fall short on realism because the designers make Earthbound assumptions that don't reflect how things look or behave in outer space.

 

[Harvey]

I've re-posted Mr. Eversole's script review of "The Alternative Factor," with a few additions and notes of my own (thanks to the Pepperdine University special collections, where Don Ingalls donated his personal papers, I was able to identify this as Ingalls' second draft, dated November 7, 1966 -- but don't tell Mr. Cushman, as this information would require him to junk several pages of his book and issue yet another edition).

http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2016/11/unseen-trek-alternative-factor-second.html

The plan is to post at least three more items about this episode, two of them in-depth pieces, before the end of 2016. We'll see...

 

[Tallguy]

So much work. Such a terrible episode.

 

[J.T.B.]

That was great, thanks! It does read a lot like McGivers in "Space Seed." The right hawk- and/or eagle-like man comes along and her brains fly out. The flirting scenes... maybe the performers could have made something of them but they seem pretty clunky.

BTW: "Under-research officer"! Now who does that remind me of...

 

[Ssosmcin]

I don't think this episode ever actually had a chance at being "good."

 

[Harvey]

I don't think this episode ever actually had a chance at being "good."

Every story and script I've read was terrible - and I have read every one at this point. The story was never very well-defined, and the Lazarus/Masters romance was never believable . This needed a major rewrite, but there wasn't time.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Every story and script I've read was terrible - and I have read every one at this point. The story was never very well-defined, and the Lazarus/Masters romance was never believable . This needed a major rewrite, but there wasn't time.

That's a shame, because the concept was excellent. I always loved the set up. Everything efter the main titles...not so much.

 

[johnnybear]

I've never really minded the episode, it's never been one of my favourites as such but it's still part of the Trek legend!
JB

 

[Christopher]

I've never really minded the episode, it's never been one of my favourites as such but it's still part of the Trek legend!

Barely. It was the first use of the word "dilithium" (though it portrayed it as an actual energy source rather than just the power-channeling crystal it's been in every other portrayal), but aside from that, nothing at all from "The Alternative Factor" has ever been acknowledged or followed up on in any other episode or film, and it's probably the one TOS episode (other than "Spock's Brain," maybe) that's had virtually no followup in any tie-in novels, stories, or comics -- there's one Strange New Worlds story that featured Lazarus, a novel or two using Charlene Masters as a supporting character, and that's about it. I think it's largely considered apocryphal because of its continuity-violating portrayal of antimatter as well as its general incoherence.

 

[johnnybear]

I always wondered what The ISS Enterprise was doing at the time that our Enterprise was dealing with the Lazarus boys? But maybe it was yet another separate universe again...
JB

 

[Harvey]

I always wondered what The ISS Enterprise was doing at the time that our Enterprise was dealing with the Lazarus boys? But maybe it was yet another separate universe again...
JB

In the first outline of the episode, Kirk actually takes a brief journey to the anti-matter Enterprise.

 

[johnnybear]

Wow! That would have been good! Maybe that's where they got the idea for the Mirror universe in the next season perhaps?
JB

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I doubt it. Parallel universes are an old, old science fiction trope.

 

[Christopher]

Wow! That would have been good! Maybe that's where they got the idea for the Mirror universe in the next season perhaps?
JB

No, that was probably from Harlan Ellison's initial "City on the Edge of Forever" draft where the Enterprise became a pirate ship. Actually, Jerome Bixby's original "Mirror, Mirror" outline called for an alternate universe that was just subtly different from the main universe -- Kirk was married, and phasers hadn't been invented, allowing the Federation to be conquered by an alien nation that was neutral in the main timeline. The idea of it being an "evil twin" universe was added in revisions, and may well have been influenced by the "City" script drafts.

 

[johnnybear]

Sounds different but I'm glad we had Mirror, Mirror as it is all the same!
JB

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Jerome Bixby had also written about parallel universes before, in his 1953 story "One Way Street":

http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/one_way_street.htm

 

[Spock's Barber]

I doubt it. Parallel universes are an old, old science fiction trope.

You mean...*gulp*...there is a parallel universe with an evil version of Trump and Hillary in it?!?!?