I just watched The Apple, generically TIVOed G-d knows when. The digitally enhanced planets look cool. However, when the Enterprise fires it’s main phaser battery against Vaal, Kirk still steps behind a tree that is 6" in diameter for protection from the blast.
Here is what I do not get. Vol is powered by rocks. How can this produce enough energy to overwhelm the matter/antimatter energy of the Enterprise?
Well, they are BIG rocks.
Really, really, really big rocks.
They are mighty rocks!
From the Wikipedia article on the episode;
Basically the polystyrene rocks on this planet go bang if you step on them, so there’s some sort of fantastic physics at work there. The same sort of physics that mean that the anti-matter warheads on the Enterprise never seem to go with as big a bang as you think they should.
If you want a view on how anti-matter works in the Star Trek universe I recommend (and I can’t recommend this episode enough, really) The Alternative Factor.
I agree that overall, The Alternative Factor is a very good episode but the ending always bothered me. Why are they stuck there forever? Why couldn’t they die in the portal?
As it happens I just watched part of this episode a couple of days ago (I bought all three seasons of TOS on DVD awhile back and am only now finding time to watch them as something to do while on my treadmill). I think I’m getting too old for this series, because my first thought was: “Okay…if you step on them they blow up, but Spock can pick one up and break it in half with his bare hands and it doesn’t go boom right in his face?”
The remastered episode I watched apparently solved this problem by editing out the exploding rock scenes. It may also be a compression, not tension thing. :rolleyes:
Maybe they were feeding Vaal virgins. It would explain forbidding the “touching and holding” thing.
Yes! I can swallow the whole crazy doppleganger from an anti-universe premise, but the whole eternity-with-a-madman-at-his-throat button just seems unnecessarily bleak. They’re still human(oid), after all. Why couldn’t they kill each other? In any case, they’d eventually die of thirst, right? OK, still bleak, but not eternally so. I just have to tell myself Kirk was wrong about this one.
Don’t confuse the editing for television (to allow for additional commercials in the 1 hr time slot) with the recent remastering process. I’m not aware of any editing of this nature with the remastered episodes.
Also, wouldn’t one side of the rock be under compression while the other side is under tension when Spock breaks it in half?
I’ve heard of one or two important bits being left out. Like Decker’s comments on Vulcans never lying on the bridge. Left in, it adds to the sense of his resignation, without, it would lack somewhat.
Maybe it needs some sort of a oxidation to take place, break open the outside and it activates.
I believe the DVD’s will be unedited, but the ones shown on television are edited differently than we are used to seeing in syndication.
Concerning compression and tension, I can only add, “Humor…it is a difficult concept.”
Nit Pick:
Decker: “You’re bluffing.”
Spock: “Vulcans never bluff.”
Decker: “No, I don’t suppose they do.”
You are correct, it adds to the scene.
That’s the one which took place on the “planet of the Aryan Polynesians”, isn’t it? I remember being simultaneously intrigued and grossed out by the white eyeliner all the natives were wearing.
ETA: I may have a faulty memory, but I could have sworn they were tossing fruit down Vaal’s gullet.
Yeah, Daid Soul. I try not to think about that, Thank You Very Much.
We must share a brain because that’s what I thought too.
Ack, “bluff” :smack: