160: Star Trek TOS Season 1, "The Alternative Factor"

https://youtu.be/aa_jfx_oBm4

Matt and Sean talk about special effects and ham in Star Trek: The Original Series. This doppelgänger episode is bad, but is it so doubly bad it’s doubly good?

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Creators & Guests

Host

Matt Ferrell

Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts

Host

Sean Ferrell 🐨

Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Trek In Time?

Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.

In this episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about using a camera to tilt in place of, well, anything else. That's right everybody, we're talking about Star Trek, Season 1, Alternative Factor. Episode number 20 in shooting order, but 27th in broadcast order. Makes me wonder if they felt like it wasn't their best episode to share.

Welcome everybody to Trek in Time, where we're watching all of Star Trek in chronological order. That's chronological stardate order. And we're also taking a look at the time at what was going on in the world at the time of original broadcast. So we're looking at things in 1967 and we're taking a look at the original series.

And who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi and I write some stuff for kids. And with me as always is my brother, Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you today? I'm doing pretty well.

How about yourself? Doing okay. A little, uh, stir crazy. I've been, because of where my job is located in Manhattan, uh, the UN has had their global meeting. It's been a week that we just finished and where my office is located is impacted by the security around all of that. And with everything that goes on around the UN, it becomes very hectic.

It becomes very difficult to get to and from the building. And because of all of that, they at work allowed us to work from home remotely all last week. And then just because of our workload calendar, this coming week is what they call a quiet week where we're allowed to work from home remotely the entire week again. Normally we have to spend at least three days in the office.

So I was home all week last week. And I've already reached squirrely levels.

And there were a couple of days, like right now it's, it's raining. It's not very nice outside. So who wants to go outside right now? But there were a couple of days where it wasn't like that at all. And I just simply forgot to leave the apartment. So spent several days just kind of like here all day climbing the walls by myself.

Working. And then the weekend came and my partner's here and I'm like, people, what do you do with people? What, what is this? What is, how do you people? And so I'm looking forward to next week as well, where the same thing will happen again. So it'll be magnified. But other than that, I'm fine. Perfectly fine.

As I mentioned we will be getting into the Alternative Factor, but before we do, we always like to visit the mailbag and see what all of you have been saying about our previous episodes. So Matt, what have you found for us this week? Well, from the episode Arena, uh, we have one from Packet 31. Who wrote, The Gorn's eye blinking effect was added much later during the DVD release days when the special effects were updated.

It wasn't in the original broadcast. Cause Sean and I both commented on it, like, hey, wow, the eyes blinked. It's like, you can't do that, that's a funny one. Yeah. Yeah. Oops. Yeah. Then we also had one from, uh, I, what was that, Leah Augusta, 9924, who wrote, To me the Gorn has always looked like he's ready to bake with that apron and those arm protectors on.

To which, Wayouts responded, He could have been the ship's cook. To which he responded again, Hey, Xitopli, we got a top mission for you, but I got a cake in the oven. When I read that, I immediately went back and looked at the picture of the Gorn. He does look like he's working. He does look a little bit like he's getting ready to pull something out of the oven.

And hot mittens. Yeah. I also like the idea of that last comment being read in the voice of, uh, What's his name? Cassidy, who provided the voice in the episode. I like the idea that I have a slice of cake in the oven. I have a cake in the oven. And then Mark Loveless came in with a really good comment about, uh, how we were complaining about super beings are kind of getting overused in Star Trek.

And Mark did a great job putting it in context for the time. He said, listening to your comments on the whole superior beings thing, remember the context of the time in which this was written. The Cold War era, Vietnam War protesters, Protests had started in earnest in 1965, a general growing opinion amongst Americans that Vietnam was a mistake and these type of political topics were becoming more common in fringe television.

The superior beings showed that in the bigger picture, maybe we humans aren't always right. The Federation represented Americanized democracy and the quote, good aliens and quote, bad aliens represented other nations. To me, in the context of this time, Arena really emphasized this. Remember nuclear war was a real threat.

We needed to hope that we humans, i. e. Americans, could make good decisions, learn from mistakes, and actually survive into the future, exploring space and beyond. Heavy shit, yes, but these were heavy times. And I thought that was a really good kind of reminder as to why these supreme beings keep popping up.

I thought it was a really great explanation. That is. That is. Thank you, Mark. And Mark, as usual, had a wrong answers only for today's episode. Plot to Alternative Factor. The story evolves around a musical group led by Scotty and Uhura. They play go go music with bagpipes and scat jazz, improvised vocals, and lyrics that make no sense.

They call their band Alternative Factor. Most of the rest of the crew hates their music. Later, when attacked and boarded by Klingons, Alternative Factor recordings are accidentally played, driving the Klingons mad, and they retreat. Scotty and Uhura are mortified, and the crew has a good laugh. The later episode, The Trouble with Tribbles, is considered a complete rip off of Alternative Factor with Tribbles instead of music.

I have a theory Matt, do you want to hear my theory? What's your theory Sean? My theory is that Mark Loveless is from an alternate universe in which these are the episodes of Star Trek. And so he's from the mirror mirror universe. So he's from the mirror universe and when he comes and he shares these, these are in fact the episodes that people watched because this has happened with his wrong answers only before. There's, they're very complete.

Not only are they very complete, that wouldn't have to be pushed too hard to actually make An actual episode. Like I could see an episode in which somebody on the crew, it's one of the comedic episodes where they make up a bunch of music and then the music inadvertently is the answer to the problem that they're faced with.

So Mark, come clean, which universe are you from? Jump into the comments, let us know. So that noise you hear in the background, that can mean only one thing. That's right. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Matt, good luck. While orbiting an apparently dead planet, the Enterprise seems to experience a strange moment of non existence.

Captain Kirk discovers a man named Lazarus on the planet below, who claims the effect was caused by his, quote, enemy, later revealed to be an insane version of Lazarus from an alternate dimension. The sane version of Lazarus asks for Kirk's help in defending his counterpart. These descriptions are so much better than enterprise.

It's not even funny. A little correction there. You said defending his counterpart. The word is defeating, but I think that it amounts to the same thing. It's all perfectly fine. This episode directed by Gerd Oswald, who was the child of German immigrants who immigrated to the United States very early in his life.

He would have been directing this sometime around the time he was between 30 and 40. And his father was a director in Germany. It was written by Don Ingalls and Ingalls has an interesting background in connection with Gene Roddenberry. They knew each other from being policemen, which I thought it was an interesting little nugget.

Ingalls and Roddenberry would both eventually leave the police department. They would both separately go into pursuing writing. They would both end up in Hollywood where Roddenberry had some success earlier on, and he would recommend Ingalls for work. Eventually Ingalls obviously wrote an episode Here We Are, and Ingalls would go on

to continue to work in television, eventually working as a producer on T. J. Hooker, which is of course William Shatner's 1980s cop show, which as Matt and I have discussed in the past, we will be including in this Trek in Time re watch, we will be working those in chronologically with the rest of, no, no, I know we won't.

Nevermind. I don't know where that came from. We're not doing that. We're not watching T. J. Hooker.

This episode includes William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly. We do not see much of the rest of the full bridge crew but we do get Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura doing a very interesting little, uh, I can't tell if it was directed or improv, but the first shot of the bridge that you see where Kirk is coming in and Spock, he has to go talk to Spock as he passes his command chair.

Uhura is standing next to the command chair, looking at the screen and she's pushing buttons on the captain's chair. I couldn't help but wonder, is she allowed to do that? Like, Hey, Uhura, those are my buttons. What are you doing? Those are my buttons. Get your hands off my buttons. In guest roles, we have Robert Brown as Lazarus, Janet MacLachlan as Lieutenant Charlene Masters.

Richard Derr as Commander Barstow, Christian Patrick as the transporter chief, who does a great job of looking like he should be starring in honey, I shrunk the kids. Arch Whitting as Assistant Engineer, Tom Lupo as Security Guard, Ron Veto as a Security Guard, Vince Cadiente as a Security Guard, and Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie, once again, one of those side characters that we see occasionally making an appearance on the bridge.

The world at the time of original broadcast, as I mentioned, this was broadcast fairly late in the season, despite the fact it was the 20th produced, it was the 27th in broadcast order, which drops the broadcast into the end of March, March 30th, 1967. So we're leaving behind a lot of the things that we've been seeing back to back to back.

And we're jumping into some new information from 1967, like the number one song Happy Together by the Turtles. Matt, take it away.

Great as usual. And here on your screen, you of course will see a picture of the Turtles. This was taken shortly after they had just robbed a bank. And at the movie theaters, the number one movie of the week was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. This is a 1967 romantic musical comedy drama.

They tried to hit every single nail on the head with, uh, it was based on a 1961 stage musical of the same name, which was based on a book from 1952 by Shepard Mead. And the film was directed by David Swift and staged by Bob Fosse and starred Robert Morris, Michelle Lee, Rudy Vallee, and Anthony Teague.

And on television? As I've mentioned before, we are looking at the Nielsen's and we are comparing Star Trek, which had earned on average about a 12 with shows that at the top of the list, we're getting almost a 30 on the Nielsen ratings, gives you a sense of the scale we're looking at. We have looked at shows from Bonanza and the Andrew Griffith show on down, and this week Well, it's a program that was basically an anthologized version of the repository of, of movies and shows that they had on hand from a little company,

maybe you've heard of it, called Disney. That's right. Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. That is the actual name of the program. Can you guess why? That's right. Color television had just emerged on the scene and Walt Disney left ABC because NBC had the ability to broadcast in color and Disney in a foresight, uh, structuring of their company had been filming programs in color and all but three of their feature length films were in color.

So they had all their animated films, they had been filming in color. And broadcasting in black and white. And as soon as NBC was There with like, we've got this ability. Disney wanted to leave. They forced ABC to let them go. And they waited for ABC to sell off their shares of Disney before moving over to NBC.

I think it's interesting the way the world works that now that Disney owns ABC. Yeah. You can't keep all the players straight. So the Walt Disney Company started the program in 1954, it would go on until the nineties and it was a regular program on Sunday evenings. Uh, I believe it was largely, if I remember correctly, Matt, it was counter programming to like 60 minutes so that like, The grandparents and parents would be like, we need to be informed.

And the children would be like, we need to be entertained. And everybody would get together and fight over the television. That's what America stands for. And in the news, a continuation of some of the discussions that have been in the, in the news in previous weeks, but there were two that jumped out to me

in particular. One story about President Johnson ordering the CIA to halt aid to private groups. The CIA was in the habit of taking money and giving it to basically Self moderated volunteer organizations that were doing things like looking for communists and the CIA would help fund them. That doesn't sound like it's going to go poorly.

And the other one that stood out, the U. S. lawsuit going after a monopoly amongst the farmer organization where it was about monopolizing the milk industry. There were 17 states involved in this investigation, which, or 19 state investigation, which looked at the farm cooperatives setting of prices in those 19 states on dairy products.

So the question of the day in 1967 would have been got milk and the Fed would have been saying, you bet we did.

On now to our discussion about this week's episode, Alternative Factor. This is, in the history of Star Trek, there have been so many episodes and there are occasionally times, especially around anniversaries, where journalists, magazines, websites will look back at the programs and will try to rank them in orders of quality.

This one consistently lands very close to the bottom. My research did not find any evidence that anybody had said, this is it. This is the worst one. But there are certainly many, many listings that are like, yeah, this one's pretty bad and pretty consistently marked as bad. So let's just get that out of the way.

Not a great episode. Tell me how much you loved it.

Can I just say, I did not remember this episode at all. Like. I know I've seen every episode, at least once. So, at some point in my life, 35 years ago, I probably saw this episode. And then my brain, to protect itself, blacked it out. Cordoned off that part of my brain, ejected it, killed those brain cells, uh, I didn't remember this at all, Sean.

This is an awful episode. This is, it was boring. It was, it was so 1960s with the fight scenes in the netherworld with the negative film of the two, like Lazarus's fighting each other, uh, with no explanation as to what was going on. And we're supposed to be in some kind of LCD drug state to understand what's going on with those scenes.

Wow, Sean. I don't know what to say, I'm so bad. So let's talk about the effects for a moment. You just raised the special effects, or as I mentioned at the top, the lack thereof. Uh, this was a superimposed image of a nebula. It's the, it's the Trifid nebula, which makes no difference to anybody, but that was a detail I found out.

So now I know that. Lots of use of tilting cameras, lots of use of a photo negative effect. And we are supposed to, let me ask you this. Do you think we're ever supposed to not realize that it's a alternate version of the same guy. Well, they explicitly say it is by the end, but like, but I'm saying like at the beginning, do you think there's ever any attempt by the show to present, like, this guy is fighting somebody else?

Or is it like, cause Like right outta the, the gate. It was, it was app. It was apparent to me. Like I said, I didn't remember this episode, but it was apparent to me right from the get go, oh, it's the same dude. Because in the negative version you see, he's in the same exact outfit. So it's like, you see the same belt buckle, you see like, it's the same features fighting each other and then there's like, as soon as he's like, back and forth and he's injured and then not injured, it's like, it's apparent right away, this is not the same guy, so they never tried to really hide it much from the viewer.

Right. Uh, side note, this doesn't bear On the plot or the special effects very much, but it is an important question. In 60 seconds or less your thoughts on his beard? Holy crap, man. What the hell was going on with that beard? It was. It was, I don't know, mildly racist and offensive at the same time as being like, why is it like so thin in this scene and then a little bushier in this scene?

There's one scene where I'm convinced they forgot to put it on him, where he's sitting in the ready room. It's a handful of whiskers. Yeah. Well, before that though, before it's just a handful of whiskers, which are so wispy and as if to be invisible, there's a shot which is a little bit further back and it doesn't look like he has a beard.

He looks completely clean shaven and it's like, wait a minute. Does the duplicate not have a beard at all? And then they go in and it's just like, Oh no, it's just like somebody just cleaned a sink drain and then threw it on his face and it looks pretty gross. So, I mean, there, there is something to that.

Like, when you said, as a viewer, did the show ever try to not communicate or make it clear what was going on, the one thing I will say that I thought was interesting for, well, interesting, uh, was for like the first two thirds of the show, it was kind of like, I was kind of like, is this a parallel universe him?

Or is this some kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation where it's the same guy, but something's happening to him, and like, his inner evil self keeps coming out, and then the more meek, kind of crazy guy, keep, doctor, keeps coming forward to try to stop him. Um, so for me, there was a period where I was kind of thinking, oh, this is just kind of like a Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, like the human versus self kind of, you know, drama that they were trying to make some kind of statement about like the inner war within ourselves fighting itself and all that kind of stuff but then by the end it was just like oh no it's not even that it's just a parallel universe version of himself is crazy and the other version of himself is not Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And they never suggest that this is the mirror universe. I found myself thinking it's actually more interesting if it's not. Where did you land on that? I'm in the same boat. It's like, it's, if this was the mirror mirror universe thing, it would actually, I think, weaken it. I think it's better that it's something completely its own and unique, especially when they're talking about like the, the hole in the universe.

Like it's like some kind of like, Something has ripped a hole between these two things. And if the anti matter and matter touch, kaboom, like the world goes crazy. Yeah. Um, I thought that was a very interesting idea. Yeah. They just didn't execute on it well. So I thought there was a interesting concept that somebody came up with and just didn't know what to do with it.

I found myself kind of linking, like, I'm going to work backwards now from like more. Recent versions of this kind of moment and working backwards. I like the physical environment that's created and the pseudoscience like techno babble of the episode. That, like, really great sci fi is always, like, halfway to being right, and eventually scientists are like, oh, we discovered this thing, and it does this thing, and it's kind of like this.

And it's like, oh, a sci fi writer in the 1960s wrote about something like that. That's crazy. I like that there's this perception is driving the reality of the linking space and when Lazarus says it's like a hallway it's like a chamber where there's explosives at either door which creates that shocking moment of unreality but it's protecting everything it's keeping everything contained and if You're in there, it's, you can meet, but then once you, you can't meet in either universe, otherwise it will cause the problem.

Yeah. It's almost like the reality of that is defined by the perception of the individuals. Like it's this space which has, you know, a perceptible reality that makes no sense with the goofy swirling around and the negative photo image, uh, just because if you don't do that, what are you going to show? So it has that kind of like, I get symbolically what is going on here.

It is a space, which is not a part of the universe. There is no being there. So you create this very goofy way of representing it. And I feel like it taps into something similar with what they do with the wormhole in DS9. When you have Cisco go into that wormhole, I feel like they're playing with something very similar.

The reality in the wormhole is defined by beings that live there only through the lens of Cisco or whomever is there, their perception, their reality is manifested around them. And none of it is. True to the beings that live there, it is based upon the needs of the perceiver. So it's that kind of hand waviness to sci fi storytelling of, well, why is this experience something that kind of makes sense?

Well, it doesn't, but otherwise, how do you represent it? And I like I like their attempts to do something very, very bold, like they are playing with non reality as a story element in a show that is ostensibly for an entire family, everybody from adults down to kids. Yeah. And you have to do something in a way that can be understood by everybody within your audience.

And I think that's a bold attempt. So, I kind of give like a hat tip for the audacity of that. Going even further back, stepping back from like the DS9 connection for me, into the terrain of 1960s sci fi and pulp sci fi. This is not a good episode. I did remember it. And like you mentioned, like you didn't remember this at all.

I do remember this one and I think I remember it because at a certain level, in a certain way, I love this. I love how 1960s sci fi this is. This is a kind of pulpy, Go for, like, gonzo, pseudo horror. Like, this is, like, almost H. P. Lovecraftian in the way it reaches for the existential horror on Lazarus's part of there is a beast I am chasing, and the alternate Lazarus is also chasing a beast and the response on each of them being at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum doesn't change the fact that both of them are pursuing this beast. And my problems with this episode are not with the concept, but with the execution. It feels like the execution is full of withholding on the part of the calm Lazarus.

Like, it is. It might've been helped if at the very end Kirk had said to him, how come you didn't tell me this at all in the previous times when conversed? Yes. Like, why didn't you tell me any of this? And to have the calm Lazarus say when you've been alone for as long as I've been, you forget how to ask for help.

You forget what it is to like, like something. Because what has happened on the screen is a lot of unnecessary manipulation on the part of the good guy. And the bad guy, who we think is the meek, like, oh, he's, he's pursuing this monster. And it's the, there's no reason why the calmer version wouldn't have said, you are seeing two versions of the same person.

And we are swapping places without design. And we are both looking for the other, but if we ever meet, it will be a problem. Like, there's no reason why he wouldn't have said that. Captain, if he finds me, it will be the end of everything. Like, there's a version of this which goes in that direction.

And is a better episode overall, just for the sheer pulpiness of it. And part of pulpy sci fi for me that I love is the fact that it is often overwrought and poorly executed at times because you're working at a speed and a pace that like you're, you're, you're drive out, you know, outpaces your, your ability in that moment.

Um, So I found myself watching this really like loving the, the music of the, the fight sequences, the topsy turvy camera, the negative, the negative, uh, Film use. Like, all of that. I found myself like Like, boy, this is bad and I absolutely loved it. I loved re watching this. Okay, so, so, I'm with you to a certain extent.

Like, it comes back to the, okay, it's the 60s, the concept, the story, the concept they came up with. I also like, I like the concept of this parallel universe, the pocket universe, corridor thing that they've got between them to explain that whole and how it's not just exploding outright, um, and how the crazy guy is

gonna break that. And so they're trying to stop the crazy guy from breaking that. That in itself, I think is a great idea. The execution of this sucks. And it seemed like they got stuck in that 60s mentality where they were experimenting in filmmaking with all this, the stuff that we saw. So like, That drug trippy LSD haze kind of filmmaking very abstract ideas and trying to make you kind of think things through as the viewer and to challenge perceptions and to try different types of filmmaking the experimental side of things like Jim Henson was doing experimental stuff like this at the beginning of his career around this time.

You know, like in the early seventies, he was doing stuff just like this, like really weird stuff. It's experimental filmmaking that they were playing with. And it seems like the, the, when they wrote, came up with the concept of this idea and they executed it. It feels like they were fell into the trap of using these ideas and techniques and filmmaking styles that were very kind of the rage at the time without a purpose.

So it doesn't, it all just kind of falls apart. It was just like the execution is where this failed completely. And I'm with you on like, you kind of hate it. And like, at the same time, like there's a movie from the late eighties, early nineties, that's a favorite of mine called Android. Direct to video movie.

It's a bad movie. I cannot express that. It is a bad movie. But the concept and the ideas in that movie are spectacular. And I still love it. It's like, there's such amazing ideas around sentience and becoming alive and like, what does it mean to be alive? And this android that's got consciousness and it's really, really a great concept.

Horribly executed. Like the execution of that film is awful. And that's what this is like to me. It's kind of like, oh, it's, it's of its time. Like, you can tell why they did what they did at the time, because this was happening everywhere, but they didn't have a reason to execute it the way they did. Yeah.

On top of which, it was a sloppy filmmaking on top of it. It was, it was a sloppy, sloppy filmmaking and storytelling. The thing that got under my skin, Sean, I wrote numerous times in my notes again and again, why the hell are they letting this guy just wander around the ship again and again? I was just gonna get to that, yeah.

Yeah. He keeps He keeps doing weird stuff and they keep letting him just wander around and at one point they come in, what was it, uh, security has reported him missing and my response to that in my notes was, how? You keep letting him wander around. It's like, what do you mean security is reporting him missing?

You've never even been tracking him in the first place. It's like, you've just like There are two scenes. There are two scenes when McCoy is like on the bridge. He walks, can you get this gor out? Out of my, just walks into the elevator and goes away? Yeah. It's like, wait. Nobody follows him. It's like, wait, what are you doing?

It's like he's doing questionable stuff and the security guy in the red shirt. It's like right next to the thing and you just let him, what? What is happening right now? Yeah, it's uh, when McCoy says, get this gorilla out of my medical Bay. And it's the security guards just standing there with this, like, doesn't even respond to the insult.

And then later when Kirk is like, where is he? And he goes, I don't know, it's a big ship, I'm just a country doctor. I'm just like, what? What is happening? Where is he? I don't know. He left. Okay, McCoy. Great job. But that's the lazy storytelling. That's the lazy storytelling. It's like they have to allow him to wander the ship to be able to do what he's doing to keep the mystery of, it's two people,

a mystery from the crew and it's the only reason they're doing it and that's where it's like this is a horrible episode because of stuff like that it's like they didn't have to they could have, better writing would have made this work, better filmmaking would have made this work the concept the idea of the message that they were trying to convey is good it's just like they didn't know how to do it yeah i kept thinking like it's the withholding on the part of the one lazarus that doesn't make any sense it is the um The bad writing around like ship security and how they respond to having a stranger on the ship that they don't trust.

Like Kirk starts off saying like, I don't believe anything that you're saying, but have a free run of the ship. Go hang out in the, go hang out in the cafeteria with all of my crew and leer at them confusingly and then leave suspiciously and have them all just be like, Like the camera stays on this one woman who's just like, she looks so bored.

It's just like, Oh my God. Um, and I kept thinking there's an alternate version of this where it is Lazarus is met and he immediately says like, I need your help because I'm being pursued. And I will end the universe and the confusing dun dun dun of that. And then him explaining like, take every emotional beat from the beginning of this episode.

I don't believe you. I think you're crazy. Like take all of that, leave it the same, but make it about a Lazarus who's like, I'm being pursued by an alternate version of myself. If the two of us meet, it will mean the end of everything. And Spock is just like, none of this makes any sense. And then they start getting evidence.

One of the scenes that stands out for me as being actually beautifully rendered is the scene between Kirk and Spock where they talk about the quantum physics. I love that scene. I loved it. And you could have had that scene take place where it's this whole, like we have detected a thing, but it doesn't exist.

It's kind of like a hole. It's kind of like a rip. And then they talk about, they talk through the whole thing of like what that has to mean. The fact that Kirk even makes us a point of like, there's only one conclusion you can reach. It has to mean this. It has to mean an alternate reality and the discussion around all of that, I was just like, that was a perfect little nugget.

I particularly, because throughout the entire scene, Spock keeps calling Kirk Jim. They are alone and they are having this moment where it is not a captain and his science officer. It's two friends. And I love that scene for that because it's these two friends who are completely alone speculating about like, what do we have?

What are we dealing with? How do we do this? What is going on? And it, that for me is like, that's just popcorn. I'm just like gobbling that up. Go ahead. So can, can I ask a question around if we're talking about the idea of this at the time What do you think they were trying to convey? Because like, as Mark mentioned about the previous episode, it's like at the time you've got the Vietnam War, you've got protests, the growing Cold War between the Soviet Union and the US is just getting more and more tense, um, the threat of nuclear disaster, is looming, starting to loom.

So it's like, it feels like that is clear here to me where it's like, you've got ultimate destruction. The world can end any moment and you have the Soviet Union on one side and you got the US on the other side and they're portraying one of them's crazy and one of them's rational and we gotta stop the crazy because they're going to destroy the world.

And so obviously that's kind of like a stand in for the Soviet Union and all that kind of stuff. So for it feels like very much of his time and you and I grew up in the. 70s and 80s, the threat of the Cold War and nuclear annihilation was still very present when we were kids. So like, to me, it feels very Real and very in the moment, and it felt like that's what they were trying to play with.

I think it is absolutely. Yeah, I, if we put our loveless lenses on and look at it from that perspective, I think that it's very much in line with what you were describing about it's a matter of perspective. It's a matter of which side of the equation are you looking at it from. You may both be seeing the same thing.

But your conclusions may be wildly different and it is worth taking the time to figure out not how to solve the problem, but to balance it so that it is effectively, this is effectively, I think, backing into mutually assured destruction. It ends with the two of them forever wrestling in that pocket universe.

They're basically saying that's what we're going to be doing is forever wrestling with the other nation that's threatening nuclear annihilation, that's going to be mutually assured destruction. We don't have a choice, and there's no winning this without losing. So it is, I mean, it's kind of like an evolution of game theory at the time, which also would have been evolving at this time.

Game theory began looking at The, the various permutations of winning that would not include a winner and a loser, but the ability to actually have a win loss state at the same time. And this would have been that natural evolution of that thinking. And it's an interesting, like I said, it feels like they back into it.

It's not like they start off with the goal of like, we're talking about mutually assured destruction, but they end in that place. They're kind of like, huh. And the idea that you can't solve the rip. I like, I actually like that. I like the fact that they don't say like, Oh, we figured out what to do. We need to barrage this with a thing.

And then when we barrage it with this thing, it will seal it. And then we'll both be on either side. And that Lazarus isn't like, uh, Oh, you need to make sure we're each on the appropriate side first. So we need to make sure you throw him through from my world while I'm going through from the other side at exactly the same time so that we're not in the opposite side and then it will seal and then we'll be fine.

No, it's like trap us both inside. And that exact ending was strangely enough, the ending of the first permutation in DC Comics of the Justice League of America, there was a DC event where they had the original Justice League effectively go into an alternate dimension where they have to fight a massive world ending villain forever. And they know they will never ever defeat it and it is then sealed off with them holding it back from a portal.

This was a motif of this era of like, how do you handle knowing that it's not about defeating the other side, but just making sure both sides know not to screw around. And I think that that, that loveless analysis is really a good one to keep in mind. It's also, it would just a number of years later, Sean, like maybe 15 years later.

So the amazing movie war games came up with the actual answer, which is the only way to win is not to play Sean. It's not to play at all. That's right. We've learned a lot from Joshua. Thanks to tic tac toe. Before we end our conversation, wanted to share an interesting little nugget about this episode.

Originally, Lazarus was going to be played by John Drew Barrymore. If that name sounds familiar, well, John Drew Barrymore was the son of John Barrymore, of course, of the massive acting family. And he's the father of, want to take a guess? Drew. That's right. He named Drew Barrymore his daughter after himself, basically his middle name.

So in the 1960s, he was being incarcerated for erratic behavior. He was having problems. He had been in Europe for a number of years. He made a bunch of films in Europe over a period of years and he came back to L. A. And in the 60s, he was incarcerated for drug use, public drunkenness, spousal abuse. In 1964, he went to prison for possession of marijuana.

In 66, he was supposed to play Lazarus in this episode. He failed to show up. He literally just did not show up with no explanation. Now, given the history, we can speculate about, okay, we know effectively why he didn't show up. But, he didn't show up. The producers of Star Trek quickly scrambled to replace him, and then they filed a grievance with the Screen Actors Guild.

The Screen Actors Guild then suspended Barrymore's ability to work in Hollywood for six months. And after that, he would do a few things. He, the suspension was lifted in 67, he worked on screen a few more times, eventually was imprisoned again for, uh. Uh, drug possession after a car crash. He was arrested in 69 for possession.

And then in 1975, Drew Barrymore was born. So his tumultuous 60s into the 70s and then her emergence in 1975. And of course she would go on to be in ET and have her career, but her childhood was plagued by The drug use of her father and the environment that he brought her into and there's a lot of tragedy there and she's talked about it publicly and shared it in memoirs as well.

So it's an interesting and sad nugget of Star Trek history that here we had this episode that might have starred a Barrymore in a really, truly awful episode.

So, next time on Trek in Time, we are going to be watching Tomorrow is Yesterday. Please, as always, jump into the comments and let us know, wrong answers only, what is that episode about? Before we sign off, Matt, do you have anything you want to share about what you have coming up on your main channel? By the time this is out, uh, my latest episode will be about why the US sucks at wind energy. Uh, there's Recent, like last year, the US basically built no new wind turbines. They didn't commission anything new. Uh, what's going on? Where the rest of the world is building like crazy, why do we suck at this? So we dove into that. Shouldn't it be, why does the US blow at wind energy?

Yeah, but, you know, Megamate has gone from suck to blow, Sean. That's right. It's now now. As for me, if you're interested in finding out more about my writing, you can check out my website, seanferrell. com. You can also look for my books wherever you buy your books. That includes Large stores like Amazon, small stores like your local bookstore, or even your public library.

And I also happen to have a few copies of the paperback of my most recent series, book number one, The Sinister Secrets of Singe. It's a middle grade adventure book. Also, just, I think, fun for adults who like adventure stories, and I am happy to give them away. So, in the comments, if you're interested in a copy of the book, drop a giveaway, drop hashtag giveaway into the comments, and I will do a random raffle and give those five away to five of our listeners.

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We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the hard business of talking about bad beards.

Thank you so much, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen. We'll talk to you next time.