The New, Improved Alternative Factor
- Thread starter Spock's Barber
- Start date
You'd never get Kelly as McCoy if we type casted.
Before TOS, Kelley wasn’t on the tube in a series every week like Montgomery and Jones, so he wasn’t a familiar face.
What if Bad Lazarus dragged a main character into his matter/anti-matter purgatory and Kirk had to rescue his crewmember?
Not like the weekly in-your-face television series actors/actresses. “That’s what’s-his-name. He always plays a bad cowboy.”
Which never made sense to me. So they’re immortal, have infinite energy to keep on fighting without a moment’s pause, and also don’t need either food or sleep, ever? So, like, if either one had stayed (in either universe), they’d basically be that universe’s Ultimate Warrior?This whole episode gives me a headache.
I’m guessing the 2 Lazarus are still fighting each other in the corridor as we speak.
I never thought about that, even though Kirk says they’d be at each others throats for all eternity.
He's a time traveler. Other Lazarus is also a time traveler. But Lazarus 1 found out about Lazarus 2 and went crazy. Their battle destroyed their worlds.
LAZARUS 1: My spaceship is more than just that. It's a time chamber, a time-ship, and I. I am a time traveller.
KIRK: And this thing you search for is a time traveler, too?
LAZARUS 1: Oh, yes. He's fled me across all the years, all the empty years to a dead future on a murdered planet he destroyed.
later
KIRK: Surely Lazarus must realize what would happen if you should meet face to face outside the corridor.
LAZARUS 2: Of course he knows, Captain, but he's mad. You heard him. He's lost his mind. When our people found a way to slip through the warp and prove another universe, an identical one, existed, it was too much for him. He could not live knowing that I lived. He became obsessed with the idea of destroying me. The fact that it meant his own destruction, and everything else, meant nothing to him.
The time travel thing doesn't have to be there, the plot doesn't hinge on it, it just adds more sci-fi shtick to the story and shows us a dead planet or two as a way to illustrate the threat.
I never felt this episode was a dire as others say. Sure, the story is disjointed, repetitive, rushed and at times confusing. But it's never, ever boring, has great, robust performances, and some classic, melodramatic Star Trek dialog. Even better, as a kid, I loved those nearly dialog free scenes where we just heard Alexander Courage's pilot music. I used them in my mixtapes a lot in the 80's.
It’s not so bad as a drama, but the matter/antimatter misunderstanding (that only exact duplicates would mutually annihilate) understandably kills the story’s idea for many.
(Tangent: I’ve always found Lazarus very TOS-Klingon looking, and idly wondered how the story might have altered had he in fact been Klingon, in both universes. Among other things, the time-travel dead-future element would have left [even more of?] a cloud of gloom hanging over the Empire.)
(Tangent: I’ve always found Lazarus very TOS-Klingon looking, and idly wondered how the story might have altered had he in fact been Klingon, in both universes. Among other things, the time-travel dead-future element would have left [even more of?] a cloud of gloom hanging over the Empire.)
An Alternative "Alternative Factor," you say?
For those who have not read it, there is a great three part series on the production of the episode titled "The Alternative Factor" - What the Hell Happened?
Well worth the read!
Part 1:
startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com
Part 2:
startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com
Part 3:
startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com
Well worth the read!
Part 1:
"The Alternative Factor" — What The Hell Happened? (Part 1)
A blog dedicated to untangling 50 years of fact and legend about the making of the original Star Trek (NBC, 1966-69) using primary sources.
startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com
Part 2:
"The Alternative Factor" — What The Hell Happened? (Part 2)
A blog dedicated to untangling 50 years of fact and legend about the making of the original Star Trek (NBC, 1966-69) using primary sources.
startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com
Part 3:
Star Trek Fact Check
A blog dedicated to untangling 50 years of fact and legend about the making of the original Star Trek (NBC, 1966-69) using primary sources.
startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com
That's the part I remember from watching it when I was growing up: you tend to lose track of your Lazaruseseses. (Also the repeat falling-off-the-cliff thing.)
It wasn't until years later that I learned about what a mess production of the episode had been, and how that may have contributed to the confusion we saw on the screen. I didn't worry about it back then, though--I just thought the uncertainty was intentional--and it still doesn't bother me to watch the episode now.
I already cited the 1966 Batman movie. The Penguin reconstituted his dehydrated goons with heavy water. And as a result, instead of dropping dead from pure heavy water's incompatibility with complex biological systems (which is what would have actually happened, were the movie's premise of reducing human beings to a powder that can be reconstituted alive, any less absurd), they became unstable, and punching them turned them into antimatter, instantly removing them from the universe.
That's arguably more ridiculous than what Lost in Space did (although I never saw that episode, or any other episode, so I only have the hearsay cited above).
Memory Beta said:
I find the episode wildly entertaining. I wouldn't change a thing.
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