"The Alternative Factor" admittedly lacks the confident charm, military hierarchy humor and sailing-ship-days sense of adventure that made the Star Trek TOS shows so much fun, like Raoul Walsh's Warner Brothers war films, with interesting characters & conflicts but also with what playwrights call intellectual "thought content"as well. (How different a cultural attitude from our fearful times!)
And, admittedly, the special effects in this episode made me cringe in their crudity, the worst instance being using the start of a "newspaper headline" effect--in a montage supposed to represent an outer space, inter dimensional corridor. And yet the same montage interested and impressed me!--
In its resemblance to the non narrative montages put together by contemporary 1960s Underground Filmmakers such as Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage. The other filmmaker of that times it resembles are the art-house films of the Spanish socialist surrealist, Luis Bunuel with its repeated frustrated actions by "doubled-up" characters. The 1960s saw people who believed their white, masculine identity was being threatened by African Americans, hippie youths & feminist women. Like Bad Lazarus, they had to kill their Double.
The Enterprise left behind the super criminals on planet Botany Bay. Good riddance! But couldn't they have rescued poor Lazarus, With a Madman At His Neck Eternally? I always find the ending disturbing and sad and, therefore, a welcome change from the usual "Well we got the Captain or Spock or the crew back safely again."
In fact you can't understand the mad atmosphere of paranoia in The Alternative Factor outside of its 1967 historic context. When Spock warns Kirk that Lazarus presents the danger of Complete Annihilation & The Destruction of Civilization & Existence, for the folks at home watching NBC, this was no Sci Fi plot but in the Cold War reality of their lives when, as JFK put it a nuclear sword was dangling over all our heads by a thread
And, admittedly, the special effects in this episode made me cringe in their crudity, the worst instance being using the start of a "newspaper headline" effect--in a montage supposed to represent an outer space, inter dimensional corridor. And yet the same montage interested and impressed me!--
In its resemblance to the non narrative montages put together by contemporary 1960s Underground Filmmakers such as Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage. The other filmmaker of that times it resembles are the art-house films of the Spanish socialist surrealist, Luis Bunuel with its repeated frustrated actions by "doubled-up" characters. The 1960s saw people who believed their white, masculine identity was being threatened by African Americans, hippie youths & feminist women. Like Bad Lazarus, they had to kill their Double.
The Enterprise left behind the super criminals on planet Botany Bay. Good riddance! But couldn't they have rescued poor Lazarus, With a Madman At His Neck Eternally? I always find the ending disturbing and sad and, therefore, a welcome change from the usual "Well we got the Captain or Spock or the crew back safely again."
In fact you can't understand the mad atmosphere of paranoia in The Alternative Factor outside of its 1967 historic context. When Spock warns Kirk that Lazarus presents the danger of Complete Annihilation & The Destruction of Civilization & Existence, for the folks at home watching NBC, this was no Sci Fi plot but in the Cold War reality of their lives when, as JFK put it a nuclear sword was dangling over all our heads by a thread