Star trek's most psychedelic foray, by far.
The Alternative Factor
- Thread starter Terok Nor
- Start date
You know, I'm wondering if that was an intentional change instead of a mistake. Maybe someone was afraid that a casual viewer would mix Lt. Masters up with Lt. Uhura if they put her in red.
That's very interesting. I didn't know that!
Yeah, the design of that ship was really not up to TOS standards.
I have been rewatching Series 1 and some of 2 and this is the only episode I literally fell asleep during. Even so it does have its haunting ending , which I could remember from years ago as the Good Lazarus is locked into eternity fighting the Bad Lazarus in order to save the universe. Which opens up ideas about what sacrifice would someone be willing to make for others?
Yes his ship looked like a convertible bubble car from the 60s.
I know it's sacrilege, but City of the Edge of Forever is the one I get sleepy in. Seriously, all they do is wash dishes and build a radio in Mayberry for the entire episode. Only the last five minutes of the Episode have anything. Even then it's just Kirk having his moment and then they jump back through the Guardian. In all honesty it really is a boring episode.
No, see, one of the things that makes AF good is that it's not about good and evil twins. Mirror Mirror may be good entertainent, but what a ridiculous science fiction idea, a "good" universe and an "evil" universe, as if physics cares about human morals. No, in AF, it's physics. Matter vs. Anti-matter. The only reason one of the Lazaruses was crazy and hostile was that he couldn't handle the idea of there being a second him. He snapped. It wasn't the particles he was made up of-- he just cracked, as people sometimes do.
I love the fact that the paranoid, destructive Lazarus was "ours", from the matter universe. It goes against the human prejudice of assuming the "other" is "evil", and that we are "good". And if you think anti-matter Lazarus should be the "evil" one, then you're forgetting how many nasty characters our (matter) reality has in it. When did our universe become "good"?
Anti-matter is really just like matter, except that the "protons" are negative and the "electrons" are positive. There's nothing twisted or wrong with anti-matter. Being made up of anti-matter wouldn't make you a fiend.
I actually completely agree with you on this. It interesting hear Kirk trying to explain the "minus universe." because positive and negative are all relative to reference. If I have a voltage source and measure it different ways it can measure as positive or negative. So it's really based on whatever reference your using. So depending on how you look at it "ours" could be the "minus universe."
Yes, but "Mirror, Mirror" at least has the virtue of a plot that you can follow. When it comes to a choice between those two episodes, I know which one I'm going with.
Yeah, but the science is still rubbish, because it's silly that if these two meet two universes go kerplewie. Antimatter and matter annihilate one another on contact, no matter of it's in two identical/opposite beings.
Well, Spock does mention the two-identical/opposite-beings-meeting scenario under the specific title "under certain conditions". He gets cut off in mid-sentence, so we never learn what those conditions would have been, and how they would have affected the situation.
We're free to speculate here, just like Spock does, just like Kirk does. Apparently, stuff coming from the anti-universe becomes ordinary matter when making the transition - but there's something special about stuff from there meeting its exact counterpart here, something that doesn't merely annihilate about 80+80 kg of flesh, but annihilates everything that exists, and we just don't know what this special thing is. By Spock's caveat, though, it isn't covered by the "it's antimatter" real-world physics part, and thus doesn't contradict the non-rubbish part of the science as such.
Timo Saloniemi
We're free to speculate here, just like Spock does, just like Kirk does. Apparently, stuff coming from the anti-universe becomes ordinary matter when making the transition - but there's something special about stuff from there meeting its exact counterpart here, something that doesn't merely annihilate about 80+80 kg of flesh, but annihilates everything that exists, and we just don't know what this special thing is. By Spock's caveat, though, it isn't covered by the "it's antimatter" real-world physics part, and thus doesn't contradict the non-rubbish part of the science as such.
Timo Saloniemi
"If the episode writer says so."
There were a lot of kiddie toys that looked like it back in the sixties as I recall!
JB
I did say MM was good entertainment. And when I said AF was a better SF episode, I didn't mean the science was accurate. But look how far they were willing to try to take a mainstream prime time audience, scientifically. Think about that Kirk-Spock Briefing Room scene. They were definitely throwing real scientific concepts at us, but they were mixing it all up into a big stew, so that it's all misleading and inaccurate (which I found out as a kid when I looked into anti-matter etc), for the sake of the very large scale apocalyptic story they wanted to tell.
First mention of a parallel universe. It actually occupies the same space at the same time. This was fascinating to me and got my imagination racing. Parallel universe stories too seldom deal with this, not saying where the other universe is, expecting the audience not to care. It's "somewhere else" for mainstream viewers, sort of like Heaven.
Just spending time talking about anti-matter was something. And identical particles meeting and annihilating? Accurate. This was prime time, where Gilligan and Bonanza were the usual, and they're telling us what happens when an electron and positron meet, though they don't name any particles...
They took some true stuff, and led us by the nose to a conclusion that sounds good but which is ultimately nonsense... they did it gradually and well. Identical particles eh? Well two Lazaruses, I guess those are two really big particles! Tiny particles are totally annihilated... Two people are MUCH bigger... so the contact does MUCH more damage.
Sorry, the premise is so overwhelming dramatically that this justifies it as a great (though very flawed) episode just based on that. It may b e impossible to appreciate if you already know the physics is m is-used. It left a lifelong impression on me though, when I was nine.
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I don't care about the pseudo-science one way or another...the episode is a meandering snoozer.
You make a good case, UnknownSample. Heck, the episode you describe sounds lot more interesting than the one we got. 
This was the first TOS episode I ever watched, and I absolutely loved it. It got me into the show. Fantastic plot, awesome fight scenes, and very thought provoking.
I must confess I am angered by the negative reviews this episode has been getting. I've read the online reviews for this episode, and the thing that really gets me pissed more than anything, is that the number 1 criticism people are making is that they didn't understand the episode. You've got to be fucking kidding me. You don't have the brains to make sense of the storyline, and that's your basis for saying it sucks? Don't watch science fiction then. People who think like you do are the reason Star Trek got cancelled. I bet you are the same people who think that "The Trouble with Tribbles" is the greatest Star Trek episode ever.
The story in this episode was very cerebral and brilliant, and honestly, I feel sorry for you if you couldn't grasp it. One of my best friends is a huge trekkie and he ranks this among his top 5 favorite episodes of all time. We both are pretty pissed off that it's so poorly rated.
I must confess I am angered by the negative reviews this episode has been getting. I've read the online reviews for this episode, and the thing that really gets me pissed more than anything, is that the number 1 criticism people are making is that they didn't understand the episode. You've got to be fucking kidding me. You don't have the brains to make sense of the storyline, and that's your basis for saying it sucks? Don't watch science fiction then. People who think like you do are the reason Star Trek got cancelled. I bet you are the same people who think that "The Trouble with Tribbles" is the greatest Star Trek episode ever.
The story in this episode was very cerebral and brilliant, and honestly, I feel sorry for you if you couldn't grasp it. One of my best friends is a huge trekkie and he ranks this among his top 5 favorite episodes of all time. We both are pretty pissed off that it's so poorly rated.
I can see I won't be hiring you to do any electrical work for me.
While I have a similar story to Kevin's above, I won't go so far as to deny anyone their loathing of this episode.
I was a teenager in high school during that first STAR TREK season. Elsewhere I've mentioned that I was conflicted about watching this new sci-fi series or sticking with my tried and true BEWITCHED comedy, and that often I'd watch half of STAR TREK and then switch to BEWITCHED.
By mid-season, ABC had moved BEWITCHED up a half-hour to 8:30 and followed it with another similar comedy that I also liked called LOVE ON A ROOFTOP. So in the latter half of that first season, I was driven farther away from STAR TREK, now missing all of the episodes.
One of my lunch-room buddies in school and I used to discuss some of the TV shows we watched, and we were both drawn toward science fiction. And he was watching STAR TREK all along. The day after "The Alternative Factor" aired, I recall him telling me just how fantastic the science-fiction ideas were in this show, with positive and negative universes and how they were clashing in this episode.
Well, in those days before DVRs and VCRs, you watched what you watched - and missed whatever else was on, so there was no going back to see this show. Still, I filed it away in my brain, and the very next week, I abandoned BEWITCHED and LOVE ON A ROOFTOP and gave STAR TREK another try. I'd also read in that next week's paper that the next episode would be a good one for fans of THE TIME TUNNEL (which described me to a tee). So eagerly I watched "City On The Edge Of Forever" and became totally sold on STAR TREK and watched it through it's first season summer reruns.
It wasn't until STAR TREK went to syndication though that I got to see "The Alternative Factor" for the first time. And I enjoyed it, and still enjoy it today, even though I see its weaknesses with more adult eyes and with the 20/20 hindsight of understanding the episode's history.
Harry
I was a teenager in high school during that first STAR TREK season. Elsewhere I've mentioned that I was conflicted about watching this new sci-fi series or sticking with my tried and true BEWITCHED comedy, and that often I'd watch half of STAR TREK and then switch to BEWITCHED.
By mid-season, ABC had moved BEWITCHED up a half-hour to 8:30 and followed it with another similar comedy that I also liked called LOVE ON A ROOFTOP. So in the latter half of that first season, I was driven farther away from STAR TREK, now missing all of the episodes.
One of my lunch-room buddies in school and I used to discuss some of the TV shows we watched, and we were both drawn toward science fiction. And he was watching STAR TREK all along. The day after "The Alternative Factor" aired, I recall him telling me just how fantastic the science-fiction ideas were in this show, with positive and negative universes and how they were clashing in this episode.
Well, in those days before DVRs and VCRs, you watched what you watched - and missed whatever else was on, so there was no going back to see this show. Still, I filed it away in my brain, and the very next week, I abandoned BEWITCHED and LOVE ON A ROOFTOP and gave STAR TREK another try. I'd also read in that next week's paper that the next episode would be a good one for fans of THE TIME TUNNEL (which described me to a tee). So eagerly I watched "City On The Edge Of Forever" and became totally sold on STAR TREK and watched it through it's first season summer reruns.
It wasn't until STAR TREK went to syndication though that I got to see "The Alternative Factor" for the first time. And I enjoyed it, and still enjoy it today, even though I see its weaknesses with more adult eyes and with the 20/20 hindsight of understanding the episode's history.
Harry
