Goofs

When Señor Valdes asks the Kanamit a question at the UN he is reading the question from a paper on his desk, face tilted down. When the camera angle switches to a close-up, his face is suddenly pointed up towards the Kanamit.

Lie detectors require a yes or no answer to function. The Kanamit's narrative when asked what his motivation for the visit would not have registered.

When the Kanamit enters the UN building, he informs the assembled diplomats that the Kanamits have learned their "language," while communicating in English. There are literally hundreds of languages on Earth, and English is only one of a number of official languages spoken at the UN.

The guards at the United Nations Building are shown wearing guns. The UN guards are unarmed.

In the beginning when Mr. Chambers asks the computer what time it is on Earth and is told twelve noon, he is asking a source aware of Earth's different time-zones, yet is given the answer of his own time, Eastern Standard time, since it is known that this is what he is referring to.

The Kanamits land in April, but at the UN we hear that the Kanamit ship landed at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. As of 2018, in April, New York and New Jersey are on Eastern DAYLIGHT Time, but in the 1960s, when the episode was filmed, Daylight Saving Time didn't start until the last weekend in April.

Kanamits have to lower their heads to pass through human height doorways on their own ships.

When the Kanamit first arrives and addresses the United Nations, he's holding his book. During a close-up, the top edge of a page is visible with the word "National" printed.

When the Kanamit spacecraft is first seen from the ground, it passes in front of a nearby tree instead of behind it.

As the Kanamit first enters the UN assembly, the sound of his walk indicates that he's wearing a very Earthly-sounding pair of leather shoes.

When Chambers begins telling his story while on the spaceship, the exterior introduction scene shows a busy street with old-fashioned 1940s era automobiles. But it cuts to the street scene in front of the United Nations building where the passing vehicles are more modern 1950s and 1960s models.

The Kanamit homeworld is described as "billions of miles" away. Michael Chambers notes that it's "100 billion miles off into space." But the Kanamits are from another galaxy. Traveling a hundred billion miles wouldn't even get you to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri), let alone another galaxy.

The TV station broadcasting the Kanamits' arrival at the United Nations building in New York has the call letters "JDQE-TV". TV stations in New York should have call signs that start with the letter "W". Call letters beginning with "JD" belong to Japan.

Chambers compares translating the Kanamit book into English to decoding Japanese messages in World War II. This analogy makes no sense. The WWII code-breakers took a coded message which looked like a meaningless string of Japanese characters, and reversed the coding process to produce a readable Japanese message. The problem here is not that the Kanamits coded their book, but that no one on Earth knows the Kanamit language. There is no way that they could take the book by itself and translate it if they did not have a "Rosetta stone".

Chambers says that the new nitrate was demonstrated in Argentina, and that he knows the country was "barren and fruitless as any place on Earth." Argentina has the thickest layer of humus (fertile soil) in the world, and has always ranked among the largest world producers of wheat, soy and other grains, as well as fruits and vegetables, not to mention beef cattle.

When Chambers is talking about the Kanamit's fertilizing process he says the soil had more vitamins than a drug store chain. While adding certain nutrients like minerals to soil would make it more fertile, vitamins would have absolutely no effect.