Captain's Blog pt. 51: All Our Yesterdays

I first read Macbeth in 10th or 11th grade. I can't recall which - somewhere around 1989, some 389 years after it was written - but I distinctly recall sitting in class and listening to a classmate read this out loud: 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

and when everyone started discussing the last few lines, I was stuck on that "And all our yesterdays" line.

Title: 2 pts. Knowing the context from which its drawn adds a lot, doesn't it? Puts a thoughtful spin on the events we see on Sarpeidon. Food for thought re: our own society/ catastrophes/ nostalgia.

I can't be the only one who saw the episode a hundred times before realizing the title was Shakespeare, can I? It's possible. In 2012, I did one of those Bible-verse-a-day-via-email things because I'd always meant to read it cover to cover and figured with the impending Mayan apocalypse and all - and having no Atavachron at my disposal- it was an opportune time. Anyway, when I got to Proverbs I was amazed at how many titles I recognized only from other contexts. I say this with no regret or cutesiness - just one of those things.

Script and Theme: 7.5 / 9 pts (out of 10/10). My problems with this episode are mainly Internal Logic problems, so we'll table those for now. The script's well-paced, the dialogue's crisp, the character dynamics are fun, and the idea is still captivating decades later.

Depending on your comfort level with the Just Like Earth syndrome, your mileage will vary on the Kirk sub-plot.

By the way: It's a great line about Kirk calling out to the spirit "...and did call it... 'Bones" but it's worth mentioning: Kirk doesn't actually say "Bones" in this scene.

"Witch!! Witch!! They'll burn ya!" Hearing Kirk called a witch so many times in this episode skewed my idea of witches for many years. When everyone else in 4th grade was picturing "Surrender Dorothy," I was thinking of "All Our Yesterdays."

And Bell, Book and Candle. But that's a different story.

Internal Logic and Consistency: .5 pts (out of 3). I guess it depends on which theory of time travel to which you subscribe. Sticking with what's been previously established in TOS, the central conceit of this episode - sending people into the past to avoid dying when Sarpeidon's sun goes supernova - violates about 52,000 rules of Trek time travel. 

Whether you're a tyrant banishing a dissident

or Mr. Atoz getting rid of a problem, it's beyond reckless; it virtually guarantees someone will change something in the past that obliterates the future. I mean, haven't they seen the show?

Also... the Atavachron is a fairly space-age piece of equipment. It's not unreasonable to assume that any species capable of building such a thing could build a few dozen space arks and light out for another class-M planet. Just saying.

Nimoy was so opposed to the original script - where he just carries on an affair with Zarabeth in defiance of all previously-established character/ species history (a real problem in Season 3 eps) - that he went over Freiberger's head to force a rewrite. The compromise was the explanation we're given about Spock reverting to the passions of his now-contemporaneous Vulcan ancestors by being sent so deep into Sarpeidon's past.

If this is the case, then McCoy must regress similarly, but we see no evidence of this. Though maybe the joke is no one can tell.

It's a fun episode, but it unravels quickly once you start yanking on loose threads. I'd recommend just rolling with it.

Visual Design: 1.5 pts (out of 3). Nothing too special, but that's not to say it's bad. The sets and costumes serve the script perfectly well.

Outside the witch/jail sets, there's the Ice Age.

And Zarabeth's cave.

Speaking of, I guess Bill Theiss (costume designer) was phoning it in this episode.

The costumes of the witch-burning era folks are all good. (I can't explain why this picture cracks me up each and every time I see it,

but it does. It might be because I always mutter "Yeah, you'd better run..." when I see it.)

Guest: 3 pts. Ian Wolfe (also in "Patterns of Force") is memorable as Mr. A-to-Z.

Didn't expect ol' Mr. Atoz to sneak up on ya, didja? Eh? (pokes Norm in ribs) Eh, young fella?

As for Spock's love interest:

She remembers her time on-set fondly: " I do remember it vividly. I remember being in the cave. I remember the lighting in the cave. Marvin Chomsky was a terrific director, very caring, and Jerry Finnerman, who unfortunately recently passed away, was a wonderful director of photography."

But Jerry Finnerman had left by this episode... ah whatever.

Mariette Hartley in Roddenberry's Genesis II.

She was given two bellybuttons to compensate for the network covering up her bellybutton in "All Our Yesterdays." Seriously! Not making this up.

Of Spock's love interests in the series (not counting Nurse Chapel) she probably comes ahead of T'Pring but behind Leila. Maybe tied with Droxine.

Kirk and the Gang: 18 pts out of 10. Shatner gets a couple of fun Shatner-esque moments, and everyone does a perfectly fine job. By this point, cancellation was casting a long shadow over the set, so I give two extra points just for showing up.

Real subtle, lady.

"One more move...

"and I'll break it." You've got hear the audio for the full effect.

Speaking of audio, I made countless Trek "sound collages" back in the day, and I once looped McCoy's "I was looking over some material about their Ice Age" for a good ten minutes. Just something about the way Kelley delivers that line tickles me to no end. Sped it up, slowed it down, distorted the wind, added cheesy synth. Wish I still had some of those things. Hours and hours spent hovering over the 4-track, all for naught.

Memorability: 3 out of 3 pts. This category is very subjective. It's tough to gauge these things. Trekkies all know it, but that's not a good instrument of measurement. I wager if you said "Mr. Atoz," "Sarpeidon," or "Atavachron" to non-Trekkies, they wouldn't know what you were talking about.

Total Points Awarded: 44.5

Captain's Blog pt. 50: The Alternative Factor

Kirk and Spock: Under the Dome

On March 30th, 1967, NBC aired:

Title: 1 out of 3 pts. A better name would be "Lazarus, Go Home."

Script / Theme: 1 / 6 pts (out of 10/10). This is a good example of cool idea, bad script.

On the bad script side: 

- Kirk and Spock don't act like themselves (Kirk in particular seems quick to assume people are pulling pranks or giving him poetic answers, like some generic Captain from any generic military show,) and they fail to put very obvious things together. Except when they need to, in which case, they make deductive leaps that are not at all obvious.

- Repetitive dialogue.

- Contrived mystery and set-up.

- Spock's telling Lazarus he is a liar, so matter-of-factly, doesn't make much sense. When Kirk does, a little later, it makes a bit more, but it's still kind of silly.

- Does the entire galaxy quake each time the cross-dimensional hiccups happen? If not, why not?

- Lazarus is not a very well-conceived character. Neither of them.

- Why is everyone so amazed at the possibilities inherent in the idea of matter vs. antimatter? Hadn't it already been established at this point that that's how the warp core works? Actually, maybe it hadn't. 

- The last line ("But what of Lazarus? What... of... Lazarus?") aches for a profundity the story has not delivered. It just doesn't land.

On the cool idea side, two alternates whose struggle threatens the omniverse and who must be trapped in the dimensional corridor between worlds is pretty cool.

DC sure must have thought so, as it's been the basis for every "Crisis" event since.

Lazarus' ship looks like the submersible from this old Choose Your Own Adventure story, doesn't it?

Lazarus would have been much cooler played by Jacques Cousteau.

Visual Design: 1 pt out of 3. Is there any essential reason they couldn't have filmed the planetside scenes on a soundstage? Does it improve the visuals/ episode by any discernible amount? I can almost hear the line producers grumbling about this each time it cuts to the scenes on the surface. Still, always nice to see. As with "Arena," "Shore Leave," and "Friday's Child," not to mention "Darmok" from TNG and a few others, the exteriors were filmed at Vasquez Rocks.)

This cross-dimensional hullabaloo is effective enough, I guess.

At least the first forty times we see it.

 

It happens every 4 or 5 minutes.

Guest: 2.5 pts out of 3. Drew Barrymore's Dad was originally cast as Lazarus, but when the first day of filming came, he was a no-show. (A big deal, especially in 1967. He didn't work again for 6 months as a result.) So they grabbed Robert Brown at the last minute.

How'd he do?

Well, like I say, he's not helped by the script. His character exists only to give very generic explanations / nonsensical rage.

Granted he's supposed to be mad/ driven to distraction by knowledge of his counterpart's existence.

When I watched Mr. Plinkett's review of Star Trek (2009) I was taken aback by his insistence that "Parallels," the TNG episode where Worf learns of countless alternate Worfs and realities/ dimensions, was the worst TNG story ever. What? That's a top 3 ep for me; what's his problem? Apparently, argues Mr. Plinkett, such knowledge would rob anyone of their sense of uniqueness/ drive anyone crazy. "Worf discovers nothing he does matters."

That really struck me as kind of wackadoo. How would learning you were not one but several negate the relevance of your own actions? Why exactly is it a given someone would snap upon learning this? Unless you're so egocentric to think not just the world, not just the galaxy, not just the universe, but the omniverse revolves around you, I just don't see how that would be the case. (And that wouldn't even be egocentrism; it'd be insanity.)

That gets back to the failure to properly characterize Lazarus. He is driven to frothing-at-the-mouth-and-wispy-beard-rattling rage at the thought of "the creature," and he must destroy the entire multiverse to get at him. We're told of his planet being destroyed and his blaming it on his duplicate, but all we're shown is this:

I mean, this is so over-the-top it's in orbit. When such things happen, I have to wonder if perhaps it's been exaggerated to draw explicit attention to itself as cover for something else. If that's the case here, it sailed over my head. Nevertheless, Brown does the job required of him, i.e. alternate between insane and not insane, and he does get to scream "KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!" before the commercial break, so... that's a win of sorts, right?

Never saw this show, but Brown went on to star in Primus.

As for the other guest star:

This part was originally written as a love interest for Lazarus, but then they went and cast a non-white lady in the part and everyone got crazy and TV stations in the South allegedly refused to air such a thing. 

I say allegedly because I can never tell if these sorts of decisions were made in fear of / anticipation of such an action or if they actually received Boss-Hog-accented threats they wouldn't air such race-mixing malarkey. So, it was cut out.

She doesn't have too much of a role, but apparently she likes to spend her coffee breaks with this futuristic Connect 4 thing. MacLachlan went on to have a long career, mostly in television, including a remake of Valley of the Dolls which starred Gillian from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. 

Internal Logic: -5 pts out of 3. First off, things start off with a disturbance so profound that it hits every quadrant of the galaxy "and beyond." Okay. Even if we assume the Federation has enough outposts and technology sophisticated enough to make an estimated projection, the "beyond the galaxy" bit is a bit of a stretch. Maybe the Admiral who relays this info is just a big exaggerator. As previously mentioned, I'll be forgiving of TOS for a lot of this stuff, as they were basically writing the rules as they went along. But a few things I must mention:

If that's the case, they're pretty casual about letting their only suspect / only guy at the crime scene lollygag about the ship.

Those are the Dilithium crystals there, tucked under his arm in a blanket. Please read that sentence again.

This really cracks me up. It's not really an error, just seems a little retro to me. Reminds me of this business from TAS:

Kirk and the Gang: 3 out of 10 pts. Everyone turns in a rather perfunctory performance.

McCoy comes across more or less like himself. He refers to Lazarus having the recuperative powers of "a dinosaur." Seems kind of an odd reference, but hey: Bones.

Memorability: If you've been adding up these points, you'll see a rather paltry sum. (9.5) Yet this episode has always stuck with me. Part of it is what I described way back in Captain's Blog pt. 1: episodes that weren't on my parents' VHS tapes remained the ones I hadn't seen as often. As such, "The Alternative Factor" had that special rare B-side/ bootleg quality to it, in my imagination. And despite all of the above, still does for me.

Side-note: I came of age in an era where "alternative" meant non-commercial radio music, but not all non-commercial radio, only stuff like The Smiths and Love and Rockets or Sisters of Mercy, what Rolling Stone called college rock before that became the commercial radio stuff. (I remember "the alternative has gone mainstream" being a profound thing to say circa 1993. By 1995, such an insight was cliché. So it goes.) I mention this because for many years, "The Alternative Factor" actually had an "alternative" factor; it was always one of the episodes I never heard anyone talk about, mention, or caught in re-runs. These days, of course, you can google the episode, find a summary, production detail, several re-watches, essays, clips, and side-trip blogs like this one.

I do like the scene between rational-Lazarus and Kirk once he goes through the corridor, though.

Nevertheless, if we end up on the same desert island and I got to pick the 50 TOS episodes, you'd likely be angry that I wasted a pick on this one. But, I would have to. 9 out of 5 pts. (Extra point for the terrible beard. That stays with you.)

Total Points Awarded: 18.5