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6			 THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR
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WRITER:	Don Ingalls

GUESTS:	Robert Brown (Lazarus?)
	Janet MacLachlen
	Richard Derr
	Eddie Paskey

AIRED:	March 30, 1967

HACK-MAN rating: .100
Usenet rating:   .170

QUOTES:
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 - "[But you'll  be trapped as  well, forever, at each others' throat, for-
   ever through time]." --Kirk   "Is it such a  large price  to pay for the
   safety of *two* universes?" --Lazarus


			 THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

PLOT:
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Lazarus is a schizophrenic time  traveler whose  personalities are fighting
each other through time and space.  There is a rip in the space/time fabric
and Lazarus  seems  to  be  the  key  to  the anomaly.   There's  a fire in
engineering started by Lazarus to steal dilithium crystals  (which he needs
to power his ship in order to kill his alternate personality).

FACTS:
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 - Planet has zero gravity for a split second.	
 - They evacuate to 100 parsecs.
 - Alternate universe.
 - Magnetic field.

OPINIONS:
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This episode dragged  a minimal  plot out  for an  hour, but  had some fair
acting and one of the better quotes in Star Trek.

There are, however, a couple of major flaws regarding anti-matter.   If the
one Lazarus  himself  is  anti-matter,   he  should   have  been  destroyed
immediately when  he  came  into  contact with  *any* matter,  not just his
counterpart.  (likewise for kirk  in the  anti-matter universe.)   also, if
the two lazari did manage to annihilate each other,  they would  make a big
boom (E=mc2), but it shouldn't destroy the entire universe(s).