The Lights of Zetar good or bad episode

Had we seen this during the first season, we'd probably be praising it to highest heaven. It sports all the classic elements: a personal revelation makes one of the main characters behave in an annoying manner that contributes little to the jeopardy of the week; a gorgeous guest star contributes even less to the jeopardy of the week; a budget-minded expansion of the Trek universe shows a small corner of what's said to be a vast and important location; a few minutes of superfluous and boring star navigation and space battle fill the gaps; and it comes all packed in crappy yet perversely fascinating VFX where psychedelic colors replace competent miniature work.

It's no more or less realistic or exciting an episode than, say, "Man Trap" or "Mudd's Women". It's one of those where we lack a strong villain character - but some of the best Trek is of this type, including ST4:TVH.

Disagree. Humans can easily take dozens of atmospheres - how else could we scuba? Sixty just calls for the proper gas mixture to keep our metabolism going (it's the rough equivalent of diving down half a kilometer, which isn't practical in real life for a variety of reasons, but as long as the pressure inside us is the same as the pressure outside us...). We're versatile critters who already exist under a crushing pressure in conditions of extreme chemical and mechanical stress (aka the surface of the Earth). It sounds perfectly natural that a flimsy lifeform used to the unchanging nothingness of space would be torn to shreds by the horrid threats our skins and skeletons easily shrug off every day.

The part that doesn't ring true is that our heroes would first subject Romaine to reduced gravity in the process of smoking out the Zetars. Why would zero gee be needed for a simple pressurization process?

Did they do it in order to better imprison Romaine's body, so that she could not be wielded as a weapon by the Zetars? Doesn't sound too good: why would zero gee stop Romaine?

Did they think it would further discomfort the Zetars? Illogical, as they were creatures of zero gee to begin with.

Did they want to make Romaine more comfortable in the middle of all this discomfort? Sounds unwise when considering the price of making the Zetars even more comfortable.

Any other ideas? I'm sure that in the past decades, somebody has rationalized this one away, too...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Nope.

“The Alternative Factor” was a first-season episode, and it's bad. Crap is crap.

 

I have a soft spot of this one. Like most third season episodes, I find they are more enjoyable when I don't compare them to the prior seasons. I have an adjusted perspective of "good" for this season. With that in mind, I find this one to be effective. It's spooky as all hell, with the score from WNMHGB reused to very good advantage. My only real grip is one I level at the entire season: the overuse of love stories. Kirk had one (not including his usual flirtation), Spock had one, McCoy had one, Scotty, and even Chekov had one. This wouldn't be quite so bad if these people fell in love in character, instead of smacking of Mary Sue fan fiction. Kirk had to lose his memory. Spock had to regress in mental evolution, McCoy had a fatal disease, Chekov was suddenly a rigid establishment type, and Scotty just became a sap. And, as others have pointed out, he was completely unprofessional. Scotty seems to be unhinged by romance (note his ridiculous charge against Apollo which nearly got him killed), spouting awful "romantic" lines with his goofy grin. The guy needs to act his age. "When a man of Scotty's years falls in love…" Kirk puts this in his LOG? Romaine is grating with no real personality. Every time we saw a close up of her eye, I expected her to turn into a tiger or some "wild creature from far out space."

Otherwise, I found this to be a creepy tale of possession. Again, the music helps a lot. So do the precog shots of the corpses on Memory Alpha. Some have complained about the gurgling, but it works in sustaining the atmosphere for me. I've found the overall atmosphere in the third season to be one of general spookiness. The scenes of the lights entering the ship in the corridor is really cool.

However, the final lines, with Kirk unsure if he can "stand the strain" of Spock, McCoy, and Scotty in complete agreement to be pretty funny. Not a favorite, but a serviceable time passer with some cringe-worthy dialog.

The current record for human tolerance is 2300 feet of simulated sea water (68 atmospheres) by persons in a hyperbolic chamber.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_...tolerate_before_the_human_is_crushed_to_death

 

It could have been the effects of the 'lights'...or the atmospheric changes....

Nevertheless, Scotty continued to have an eyeful....

Yeah, this one and 'Who Mourns for Adonis...'*

I didn't even realize that TAF was a first season episode. Not one of my favorites either...









*Don't point it out. I know....

 

I realize you were only quoting directly from the linked article, but the author of that piece meant a hyperBARIC chamber.

However, some posts here on Trek BBS do tend to get a bit hyperbolic. Especially on Miscellaneous and TNZ.

 

There's an (old) article about a hyperbolic chamber here:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/amazing-new-hyperbolic-chamber-greatest-invention,1321/

 

LOL yup, all I did was cut and paste. Pretty funny now that you point it out.

 

Scotty's puppy dog attitude is kind of odd for a grown man...otherwise the episode isn't bad. The TOS-R version single-handedly makes the episode better with its interpretation of Memory Alpha!!!

 

Just how big are those domes supposed to be? For that matter, how big is the Memory Alpha planetoid?

 

Well planetoid would make it seem quite small...possibly bigger than Earth's moon I would say...those domes are still huge, and would have to be! There are supposedly OTHER memory planets, so this isn't the extent of all.

RAMA

 

Well, he was no prize. Whut with those nasty teeth and missing finger.


Anyway, it was nice to hear the reuse of some WNMHGB music.

 

Awfully bad, as i recall. So bad as to not warrant a second chance. So bad as to not even warrant remembering. Not only bad, but forgettable.

 

hate it. Should never have been approved.

 

“The Lights of Zetar” was written by puppeteer/ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her husband Jeremy Tarcher. Shari was known for writing children's books, not science fiction. Furthermore, according to IMDb, Shari wanted to play Scotty's love interest herself. Maybe she would have had the disembodied Zetars speaking through the puppet Lamb Chop.

 

Awwww, it was a good ep, quit your whinin'.

 

So apparently, Okuda says the domes are Superdome sized..so the planetoid is more of an "asteroid".

 

"It's a small moon..."

Sorry, wrong franchise.

 

"That's no moon....It's a space station."

(Couldn't resist)

 

So bad I think it was actually written by Lamb Chop.