"The Alternative Factor"

So I watched "The Alternative Factor" today on 03-15-2022.

So the second sentance in the episode claims that there is no discernible life on the planet.

But whenever they beam down to the planet's surface we see sparse vegitation similar to that in some parts of southern California. Bushes are life. And the plants probably require some forms of bacteria to live, such as nitrogen fixing bacteria in os the soil, and are probably preyed upon by various disease organisms, all of them counting as life.

So apparently in 23rd century English the word "life" has been restricted to animals, and plants, bacteria, fungi, viruses, etc. are not included in life, and presumably called soemthing else like "biloogical organisms" or "semi life" or "pseudo life" or something.

There are other worlds in various Star Trek productions said to havr no life despite macroscopic life, plants, being clearly visible in scenes set on their surfaces, so restricting the meaning of the world "life" to animals might be a thing in.

An "alternative" explaination could be that the planet - I think I will call it "Tormes" after the famous Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) - used to have life but all the life was killed. If the plant life died bacteria and fungi would soon break down the dead plants, unless the bacteria and fungi also died and couldn't break down the plants. In some cases protected plant matter such as wood has been preserved for many thousands of years on Earth. I expect that the dead plants exposed on the surface of Tormes would be gradually broken down into dust by wind and wind borne dust and rain and ultra violent ultraviolet light over decades, centuries, or millennia.

So in that theory, all life on the planet would have been killed gradually or suddenly, by some event or events which would have happened comparatively recently in the lifetime of Tormes, which is presumably billions of years old it woudl take for land plant life to evolve naturally.

At first, one of the Lazaruses says:

Later:

So now one of the Lazaruses says that he came from the planet below, sometime in the past, and that the other Lazarus killed all life on that planet sometime in the past. If - a big if - that story is true, there must be a limit to how long ago the destruction of all life on Tormes was, since as I wrote above the surface plant life would gradually decay and erode to dust.

And if, on the other hand, 23rd century Starfleet tdoesn't consider plants "life", possibly that Lazarus has learned that swiftly and so claims that the planet once had animal life which was then destroyed by the Other Lazarus.

 

You're way overthinking this unholy mess of an episode.

 

Imagine how boring Star Trek would be if it were 100% accurate...

 

That should be the official motto of this board

 

What would we have to talk about ?

 

Just tonight at work, some guys were raving about The Expanse, and their whole thesis was how amazingly thought-out it was, and how the show stuck to hard science with no inventions we couldn't figure out today. I've never seen it, but apparently a show can be done that way and be really good.

 

Sane Lazarus never says he is a time traveller, only insane Lazarus makes that claim instead of the truth that he actually portals between parallel universes. Even the space/time effects don't read "time travel" rather a winking out of existence of local space:

My conclusion: no time travel.

 

Read the books and watch the first three seasons and, while it definitely is harder SF than Trek is, the universe does have a fusion drive (the Epstein drive) that does a lot of propulsing for very little fuel. But I long ago accepted that telling space stories within human time scales really requires the caveat of a propulsion cheat like warp drive (or the Epstein drive.)

 

When I watched "the Alternative Factor" the other day, I also noticed that the transporter chief knocked out by one of the Lazaruses looks sort of like a teenage boy. The actor in the role sort of reminded me of an actor who portrayed a teenage boy ins some other movie of tv show I watched sometime.

Maybe that actor also portrayed the teenage boy in question?

According to Memory Alpha, the transporter chief was portrayed by a Christian Patrick:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Alternative_Factor_(episode)#Starring

And Memory Alpha says the transporter chief was the only role of Christian Patrick:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Christian_Patrick

And that is the only role listed for Chrisitan Pactrick in IMDB:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2006449/?ref_=tt_cl_t_9

So unless someone else also thinks that Christian Patrick looks family, and can actually remember a charactor or actor he resembles, I will probably never know why he looks a little familiar.

 

It's a nebulous term I know, but Fusion Rockets are in active development.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Fusion_Drive

 

I haven't had a chance to see it, I'm sure it's great, but my love of Star Trek comes not from scientific accuracy but from the fun space opera and mostly intelligently written stories within the admittedly fantasy science they use to make their point.

Also Shatner.

 

I wonder if Don Ingalls ever tried to explain what he was getting at in this episode. He also wrote “A Private Little War” (under a pseudonym)—never liked how that one ended, but at least the story made sense. Maybe “Alternative Factor” is basically about the multiple-universes theory.
I guess there are novels and movies about doppelgangers, maybe even myths, but I can’t think of any parallel to a being who prevents the annihilation of all existence by eternally wrestling his evil twin. The name Lazarus implies something totally different.

 

My condolences to you and your loved ones!

I write it off as their looking for only sentient critters and not vegetable matter stuck in the ground as potted as can be. It's not the most nuanced scripting, but considering the episode in question...

 

I know. I keep up with stuff to a certain degree. The introduction of the Epstein drive from Leviathan Wakes:

"A hundred and fifty years before, when the parochial disagreements between Earth and Mars had been on the verge of war, the Belt had been a far horizon of tremendous mineral wealth beyond viable economic reach, and the outer planets had been beyond even the most unrealistic corporate dream. Then Solomon Epstein had built his little modified fusion drive, popped it on the back of his three-man yacht, and turned it on. With a good scope, you could still see his ship going at a marginal percentage of the speed of light, heading out into the big empty. The best, longest funeral in the history of mankind. Fortunately, he’d left the plans on his home computer. The Epstein Drive hadn’t given humanity the stars, but it had delivered the planets."​

The Expanse is still very good at paying attention to orbital considerations but the time scales are measured in days and months instead of years and decades for the most part. Because of a bit of magic-tech that is still fusing a hundred and fifty years after it was turned on.

 

I think he was getting at about $4,500 for story and teleplay.

(None of Ingalls' treatments or teleplays for this one ever worked. "A Private Little War" isn't very good, either, but at least it's coherent.)

 

I considerThe Alternative Factor to be the absolute worst TOS episode for many reasons, however I will still watch it about once a year, it has an odd “so bad that it’s good” quality that I enjoy.

 

I have read a lot of science fiction, and I have read a lot of hard technical stuff. Star Trek is the one that keeps me in line with the fun part. Hard SF is just not fun. It's cool, and interesting, and fascinating to see the tech needed and how it could work. But there's no fun there.

 

A problem not helped at all by the inconsistent beards!
During my last series rewatch I think I worked out the timing of the switches. Basically, Kirk & co stumble into a situation caused by the tinkering of Alt-Lazarus. He says it is his people who discovered how to bridge universes, which in turn drove his counterpart mad. Since then Alt-Laz has been trying to trap Lazarus in the magnetic corridor, in order to prevent the two of them ending up in the same universe as this would be "very bad". However, Lazarus keeps escaping the corridor and each time he does so it is accompanied by a "winking out" effect. Eventually Alt-Laz works out a way to exchange himself with Lazarus without the colossal side effects, but only for short periods of time. The switches themselves only actually happen twice:

• In Sickbay. McCoy notices the difference but then Alt-Laz escapes and learns about the presence of dilithium crystals on board this strange ship he finds himself in, but slips back to the magnetic corridor before he can take action.
• Near Engineering. Alt-Laz sneaks in and steals 2 crystals, with the help of his pocket sleep-needle. It is not known when he slips back, but it seems he took the time to hack into the ship's computer and familiarise himself with the ship's captain at least
• In Sickbay, a third attempt is made but Lazarus is able to fight it off (just after his second fall off the mountain)

It seems that the dilithium crystals will allow Alt-Laz greater control on drawing Lazarus into the magnetic corridor. Dilithium may indeed have been a vital component in the original technology required to connect other universes.

Of course, we only have Alt-Lazarus' word for much of this; he may well be a lying sociopath for all we know.
But then this is a story that raises far more questions than it answers!