Star Trek 028: The Alternative Factor

28. The Alternative Factor

WHY WE LIKE IT: The final explanation holds some interest.

WHY WE DON'T: The worst beard in television history, and a story that's a mess across the board, from plot to effects.

REVIEW: I find it very difficult to watch this episode and care. The principal reason is that the main characters are little more than bystanders in this one. They experience the problem, but an explanation AND a solution are finally offered by the anti-Lazarus, and Kirk and Spock are basically relegated to pushing buttons and putting that plan into action. Aside from a good scene where they work out the twin universes theory, and Spock calling Lazarus a liar to his face, there's little for them to do.

There could have been more, but they're all on auto-pilot, letting an obviously deranged Lazarus wander through the ship or the planet surface unwatched, or in the final fight, watching Kirk wrestle the baddie without so much as moving to help. The whole plot is in fact a mess. Hard to understand until the final minutes, and meandering way too much. We travel to the planet and sickbay a couple times without adding anything to the storyline. And where's Scotty in this? I don't mind the character of Lt. Masters who got all his lines, but it's just odd that an important member of the crew would go missing like this, and be replaced by someone in blue (sciences).

To make matters worse, the special effects, while numerous, are terrible and confusing. The overlayed picture of a nebula that sometimes means we're "winking out", sometimes not; the blurry effect; the polarized figures fighting in the corridor; the spinning newspaper transitions... I kinda found interesting the idea of making the real universe location shooting, and making the anti-matter universe studio-bound, but with som many other things representing the clash between universes, you just don't know what's what anymore. The make-up isn't much better, with Lazarus sporting a terribly fake beard, a beard that can't even remain consistent from scene to scene, going from thick to thin and back again. Even the ADR is noticeably messy.

LESSON: I learned what to do next time I have a bout of insomnia.

REWATCHABILITY - Low: It might make a passable episode of the Outer Limits, but lack of focus on the Star Trek characters sinks this one even before you consider its other failures. Probably the only real turkey from the first season.