These Are The Voyages-Star Trek TOS Remastered and Reconsidered

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917

Yes, it’s interesting to see that the Klingons are a fairly bald-faced representation of the perceived Communist threat, in opposition for all that the Federation stands for. The Klingons aren’t yet at the point where they stop making sense as a species, in that they love only war and openly disdain any of their fellows who do anything else. I have no idea how such a race could achieve anything, let alone progress beyond the stone age (see also Ferengi, and their single minded racial trait of the pursuit of all things trading).

At this point, the Klingons aren’t even as alien as Vulcans, and their main difference between themselves and humans seems to be cultural. It will be fun to see how they progress and get fleshed out over the series.

918

This. And it brings to mind one of the reasons TOS was so good: The quality of all of the guest stars each week was routinely very high. Were there any bad guest star appearances? Maybe Melvin Belli.

It may be that the resolution of this episode was deliberately designed to force the two sides into a Cold War detente. If they couldn’t fight a war, they could still mistrust each other and compete with each other and fight proxy battles and generally engage in US / Soviet style opposition. I haven’t read enough about this episode to know if that was deliberate, but that’s the way it worked out.

919

Yeah, we’ll definitely be returning to the theme of the Federation and Klingons fighting proxy wars against each other through less developed civilizations (I won’t go into details just in case anybody might want to be unspoiled, but you’ll know it when you see it). I don’t doubt for a moment that it was intentional.

920

Yeah, we get some good episodes out of it. Including a certain bar fight.

921

And a guy in a white Gorilla costume with a horn in its forehead.

922

Wow, I had managed to put that Melvin Belli episode completely out of mind. Thanks /sarcasm

923

It’s that time again folks! This week, we’re watching “The Alternative Factor”. I found it an interesting episode overall, mainly because it plays its cards fairly close to its vest for most of its runtime. Lots of episodes put the central conflict right out there pretty early - we know the stakes and the players, and just let the episode unspool how it will eventually play out. But there’s a central mystery in this episode, who is Lazarus? And we as the audience figure it out fairly quickly, it takes the crew a while to work it out. Although I was a bit off in my first assessment, I thought Lazarus was going to end up being a split personality kind of thing, not two actual beings.

We’ve heard talk of matter and antimatter relationships on previous Star Trek episodes, but not really any discussion of how it works, or really where antimatter comes from. The reaction between the two drives the Enterprise, along with the ubiquitous dilithium crystals (which we actually get to see in this episode!). Does the federation have to dip into this negative universe in order to obtain antimatter, and if so how does it do so at will, and safely? Or does antimatter occur normally in our universe as well somehow? Maybe it doesn’t pay to think too deeply about the details.

But Lazarus doesn’t come our universe. Well, I guess one of them does, but the non-crazy one doesn’t. He also doesn’t come from the mirror universe, though that’s also a topic for another day. But there’s a flip side, a negative to our positive. The idea that discovering you have a negative twin would drive you to murderous deeds is a little funny, but I guess everyone’s got their breaking point. Incidentally it reminds me of that Jet Li movie where he tracks down his counterpart in other parallel universes, getting stronger each time he does so. I guess that doesn’t happen in this episode.

Like I mentioned, I have mostly positive thoughts about this episode. While it did maintain my interest, I did feel like it dragged a bit. Watching Lazarus wrestle with his counterpart and the crew of the Enterprise wrestle with the central mystery went on just a bit longer than I would have liked it to. But the wrap-up was also interesting, with the two Lazaruses fist fighting throughout eternity in some existential doorway. That’s one hell of an afterlife.

925

Ha, I can’t argue with any of that, but it didn’t bother me nearly as much as it did you. I was sure at the beginning of the episode that this was going to end up being another all-powerful entity toying with the Enterprise and I think I felt such relief that it wasn’t that I looked on the whole thing a little more favorably than I otherwise would have. Even not really understanding how the interaction of matter and antimatter would work - they point out that Lazarus is only really a threat to the universe if he should come into contact with his anti-self - they leave themselves a lot of room to waltz over the details. And I was kind of disturbed by the implications of the climax of the episode, and that final reverse shot of the Enterprise leaving the dead planet in its wake, I may be guilty of being blinded by the form over the substance of the episode.

But man, Lazarus’s facial hair was really, uh, something -

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927

First of all we can create antimatter right now. In the world that we have right here. Antimatter can be held in a vacuum in a magnetic bottle. The issue is the amount of energy that it takes to create it. And the theory of one guy being antimatter is bullshit. The moment that they… aw forget it.

Bad episode.

Fuck me.

928

“Spock, I think that I’m in love with Edith Keeler.”
“Jim, Edith Keeler must die.”

Gather round kids, it’s time for another episode of Star Trek - in fact one might say that it’s time for THE episode of Star Trek: City on the Edge of Forever. This episode consistently ranks as one of the highest regarded episodes of the original series’ run, often considered the very best. Let’s talk about why that is.

First, it’s definitely got an interesting and dramatic structure. It starts off innocently enough, but soon enough the stakes grow immensely - Kirk and the landing crew are stranded in front of an ageless alien artifact, with no Enterprise in orbit. McCoy, in his cordrazine-induced madness, has managed to travel through time and change everything somehow. Kirk and McCoy must go back and stop him. But in order to stop him, they have to allow a terrible action to take place. The needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few.

There’s no real villain this time around - McCoy sets the action in motion, but he’s not at fault just under the influence of an accidental injection. Keeler herself has big dreams and could potentially put them into action, but she exists in the wrong place at the wrong time, ironically enough. Her death allows the Allied war efforts to continue so that they can beat the Nazis and one day, far in the future, the peace she envisions will come to pass.

Nice performances here too. I like what Kelley does with McCoy, and the makeup does a good job of making him look you know, unwell. Shatner displays enough doubt over Edith’s fate that you can wonder what might happen, though you know that duty will win in the end. The ending doesn’t show us a tidy wrap up, with a laughing bridge crew. Kirk is haunted by what he’s experienced, and just says, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

As mentioned upthread, Harlan Ellison wrote the story and it’s obviously an interesting story told well. Harlan has a lot of experience with time travel stories - I remember seeing an episode of The Outer Limits called “Demon with a Glass Hand” that totally floored me. Set me on the path of reading all his stories I could get my hand on. There’s another episode he did centered around time travel called “Soldier”, which he much later would accuse Jim Cameron of plagiarizing when he wrote “The Terminator.” But that’s another story. For this particular episode, Harlan carried a long grudge against Roddenberry for butchering his story, and it did have multiple credited writers. I plan to read this (I haven’t yet, because I wanted to see the episode without any influence) and I’ll report back on the differences in this thread.

929

This episode is great television, never mind great Star Trek. All the performance are terrific, and the guest star (Joan Collins) brings so much to the show. It’s an incredibly deep story for 50 minutes of run time, so the writing team did a great job getting it down to the essentials to fit into that format.

And yes, the Ellison story is different, and unfilmable as a Star Trek episode. I love Ellison’s stories, but he was wrong to hate this episode.

930

Agree with everything said so far. And this. So not to spoil, Scott and I pmed a bit when the Ellison hate of the changes in this episode were discussed last week. So the stuff that he hated seeing changed, were things like having Scotty be a drug dealer. Basically things that couldn’t occur for script editing/continuity reasons. Typical unreasonable Harlan Ellison.

931

Is there a bad scene, or an unnecessary one, in this episode? I don’t think so. It’s scriptwriting gold.

932

No, there is no “wasted motion” in this one.

933

I wouldn’t call it bad or unnecessary, but what was up with the bum that McCoy accosts? He steals McCoy’s phaser, cranks it up to overload and then just … dies?

934

I think it underlines, thematically, how history could be changed in the wink of an eye by their mere presence.

935

That, and it is setting the tone of the episode: People are going to die.

936

If that’s the intention, then I think the scene might undermine that intention. Edith Keeler’s existence and death have weight and consequence, but the bum’s does not?

937

Well, we don’t know that yet. Until “stone knives and bearskins.”

938

OK, now I’m imagining a new ending to the episode - the gang gets back up to the Enterprise and discovers that instead of phaser banks, they now have giant rock launching mechanisms. Everyone turns to look at McCoy, who says only “oh shit.”