happydalek | The Alternative Factor

Anyone remember this little gem from the first season of Star Trek, the original series? More to the point, does anyone actually know what the heck was going on during this episode? After it ended, I felt like somebody had just spent the last 50 minutes pouring thick sludge into my head and then hit me with a heavy, blunt object. Uugh. The lack of continuity with Lazarus' beard was especially grating, as if the production team realized that the episode was crap and deliberately decided to make it look as crap as possible. Spock and Kirk seemed awfully underwhelmed at the prospect of the whole universe being destroyed, but Robert Brown did an excellent job at acting completely, inexplicably bonkers. Or maybe he wasn't given any direction at all and was just reacting to the source material? I have no idea how Kirk and Spock were able to figure any of this out before sane Lazarus' infodump in the last five minutes. What a terrible episode. Blecch.