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.
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.
