“The Way to Eden”
Story by Michael Richards and Arthur Heinemann
Teleplay by Arthur Heinemann
Directed by David Alexander
Season 3, Episode 20
Production episode: 3×20
Original air date: February 21, 1969
Star date: 5832.3
Mission summary
The Enterprise is chasing a small re-used Tholian dart cruiser that’s heading for Romulan space. Despite repeated hails the cruiser will not turn back, and so Kirk engages a tractor beam to tow them to safety. They seem to really want to get to Romulan territory (must be the ale) because they struggle against the tractor beam. Soon their engines begin to overheat (we know this because it turns red, like an electric stovetop) and when it becomes obvious they’re going to explode, Kirk orders Scotty to beam aboard the crew of six to the Enterprise. He will regret this is fairly short order, as will we all.
In the transporter bay six space hippies, covered in floral body paint and flowing robes, materialize before us. They sit down on the transporter pads and refuse to move when Scotty tries to take them to the briefing room. Instead, they shriek like new age banshees, “No go! No go! No go!” Let’s just hope Nurse Chapel doesn’t have to play babysitter again.
Kirk arrives to dispense time-outs. He singles out Tongo Rad, a young man rocking a purple bald eagle look, as the reason they’re not all under arrest. Rad is the son of a Catullan ambassador and because negotiations between the Federation and Catullus* are tense, Kirk has been asked to be very delicate with respect to the petulant child-hippies. They respond by calling him “Herbert.” Spock offers to step in and try his hand at diplomacy. He unites his thumbs and forefingers to create a triangle and says: “One.” This gets the leader’s attention.
LEADER: We are One.
SPOCK: One is the beginning.
ADAM: Are you One, Herbert?
SPOCK: I am not Herbert.
ADAM: He is not Herbert. We reach.
Exactly! Wait, what? Spock asks them to explain their way of life for those of us at home.
SEVRIN: If you understand One, you know our purpose.
SPOCK: I would prefer that you state it.
SEVRIN: We turn our backs on confusion and seek the beginning.
SPOCK: What is your destination?
SEVRIN: The planet Eden.
KIRK: That planet it is a myth.
SEVRIN: And we protest against being harassed, pursued, attacked, seized and transported here against our wishes.
ADAM: Right, brother.
SEVRIN: We do not recognize Federation regulations nor the existence of hostilities. We recognize no authority save that within ourselves.
But isn’t zero the beginning? Well, that’s all fine and good, but Kirk orders the baby anarchists to get a check-up in sickbay anyway because they could have been exposed to intense levels of radiation when their ship exploded. (Also, it’s necessary for the Shyamalan-level “plot twist” to come.) The leader again requests that they be taken to Eden, but Kirk makes it clear that they will all be dispersed and sent back to their home planets as soon as the Enterprise make it back to a starbase. The hippies respond by screaming “Herbert! Herbert! Herbert! Herbert!”
Kirk and Spock return to the bridge, where Chekov confesses that he recognizes the voice of one of the hippies: Irina, a classmate (and old flame) of his at Starfleet Academy. Kirk grants Chekov permission to leave his post so he can find her. Kirk, meanwhile, is baffled by the whole organization. The leader, Sevrin, was once a great scientist and researcher; Tongo Rad is apparently adept at space studies; and Irina, of course, was distinguished enough to make it to the Academy. So what’s the deal?
SPOCK: There are many who are uncomfortable with what we have created. It is almost a biological rebellion. A profound revulsion against the planned communities, the programming, the sterilized, artfully balanced atmospheres. They hunger for an Eden where spring comes.
KIRK: All do. The cave is deep in our memory.
I sit and ponder the cave all the time. In fact, I’m doing it right now.
…
Anyway, Kirk doesn’t grok why Spock seems to understand these people so well. Has he been harboring patchouli tendencies, too?
SPOCK: It is not sympathy so much as curiosity, Captain. A wish to understand. They regard themselves as aliens in their own worlds, a condition with which I am somewhat familiar.
Aw. Spock also explains that “Herbert! Herbert!” refers to a punctilious asshat official. Kirk, not wanting to seem square, says he’ll work on his attitude.
Meanwhile, those darn kids are jamming with their “music.” Adam seems to be the musician among them, and he rocks out with this tune:
Looking for the good land, going astray
Don’t cry, don’t cry
Oh, I can’t have honey, and I can’t have cream
Gonna live, not die. Gonna live, not die
Stand in the middle of it all one day
I’ll look at it shining all around me and say,
I’m here, I’m here, in the good land
In the new land. I’m here.
Sheer poetry.
Their little goovefest is interrupted when Chekov comes in looking for Irina. She knew he would be on the ship and was hoping he’d come look for her. They retreat to a corridor and Chekov grills her on her new approach to life. Irina claims she’s really happy, though, and even if Chekov has turned into a tool she still kind of likes him anyway. Chekov doesn’t much return the favor–he tells her to go back to her “friends.”
Once she leaves, he stumbles on a commotion in the hallway. The hippies are trying to save Sevrin, who they claim is being held prisoner by Doctor McCoy. It’s for good reason–it turns out Sevrin is a carrier for synthococcus novae, a horribly deadly superbug with a vaccine but no cure. Were Sevrin to take his (already immunized) Federation hippies to an inhabited Eden, his disease would wipe out all humanoid life on the planet. Sevrin claims this is news to him and wails about the infringement of his rights, but Kirk orders him put in isolation until McCoy can make sure the entire crew is immunized against the superbug.
Meanwhile, his groupies are gallivanting around the ship trying to get recruits. Sulu seems vaguely interested, and Scotty complains that they’re looking for allies in Engineering. To prevent a full-on mutiny Kirk dispatches Spock to talk to Sevrin and try to convince him to call his people off and let the crew alone. Spock confronts Sevrin about the disease, and Sevrin admits that he knew he was a carrier. When asked why he still insists on going to Eden, though, he says this:
Because this is poison to me. This stuff you breathe, this stuff you live in, the shields of artificial atmosphere that we have layered about every planet. The programs in those computers that run your ship and your lives for you, they bred what my body carries. That’s what your science have done to me. You’ve infected me. Only the primitives can cleanse me. I cannot purge myself until I am among them. Only their way of living is right. I must go to them.
Spock sympathizes to a degree, and agrees to help Sevrin and his followers find Eden if they’ll stop mucking about in ship politics looking for new recruits. Sevrin reluctantly agrees.
Spock reports back to Kirk that Sevrin is crazy. Not kooky-hippie crazy, but certifiably insane, including possibly Hannibal Lecter-level security. Nonetheless, a deal’s a deal(?!?!), so Spock hires Chekov to help him with the Eden-locating calculations from auxiliary control, and goes to his quarters to do his side of the work there. But there’s no peace among hippies, and Adam stops by for a quick chat. He sees the lyre that Spock has on the wall and tries it out. Adam becomes a fan (“it’s now, that’s real now. I reach that, brother. I really do.”) and asks Spock to play.
ADAM: Hey, how about a session, you and us? It would sound. That’s what I came for. I wanted to ask, you know, great white captain upstairs, but he don’t reach us. But would he shake on a session? I mean, we want to co-operate, like you ask, so I’m asking.
SPOCK: If I understand you correctly, I believe the answer might be yes.
Chekov, meanwhile, is busy plugging away at numbers in auxiliary control when Irina comes in. She says she is there to apologize, and asks what Chekov’s up to. He helpfully explains the way that the computers work to navigate the ship and plot a course to Eden, and hands her their How to Hijack the Enterprise pamphlet prepared earlier in the season. She says she could never obey a computer, and all this talk of obeying and computers gets Chekov a little excited. The two kiss, made all the more awkward by Spock phoning in to the station asking Chekov with some irritation where the hell he went. (Makes you wonder what happens when people step away for bathroom breaks, huh?)
Later, the hippies congregate to discuss their potential new followers and Irina proudly explains that she knows now how to take over the ship. Way to go, Chekov. They agree to begin converting as many people as possible:
RAD: Can you suggest any special ways to swing them?
ADAM: Just be friendly. You know how to be friendly. Then they’ll be friendly.
Apparently “be friendly” means “subject the audience to more singing,” which he does, repeatedly and shamelessly, over the ship’s loudspeakers. Crewmembers all over start to groove to the music, distracting them. Spock himself heads down to join the jam session with his lyre. He and a wheel-playing girl pluck away as Adam sings. While everyone is entranced by the music, Rad sneaks out the side and heads up to where Sevrin is being held. The guard there, swaying to the music, doesn’t even notice as Rad slips behind him and does his own version of a nerve pinch to take out the guard. Rad releases the door that holds Sevrin in his cell.
Shortly thereafter, Sulu stops getting a response from his console. Something has taken over the ship! Damn dirty hippies! Sevrin pages Kirk to let him know that the doors to Auxiliary Control are sealed, and he’s heading to Eden whether they want him to or not. Kirk pleads with him not to enter Romulan space and risk intergalactic war, but Sevrin’s not really concerned about that. Spock tries to tell the others, especially Adam, that Sevrin has gone crazy. He tells them to check his medical file. But Adam doesn’t believe them, and sings instead:
Headin’ out to Eden
Yea, brother, headin’ out to Eden
No more trouble in my body or my mind
Gonna live like a king on whatever I find,
Eat all the fruit and throw away the rind
Yea, brother, yea.
You can totally see why a movement sprung up around this philosophy. No?
Sevrin starts messing with a circuitry panel, though, and explains that he’s going to use ultrasonic sound to knock out the crew, allowing him and his hippies to escape. But Irina seems to remember something from her academy days about that kind of sound: “it doesn’t stun, it destroys.” Rad seems a little nervous, too: “Brother Sevrin, it does destroy.” But the mushy-headed zealots are too easily swayed by Sevrin’s insistence that all will be fine once they reach Eden.
Kirk, Spock, and Scotty, meanwhile, are outside the door with a blowtorch making their way in. But they’re too late! Sevrin activates the ultrasonic wossname in every part of the ship other than the room they’re in. First Spock, then everyone else collapses in pain. The whole crew is out, but Kirk and Spock recover enough to turn off the sound. Soon Sulu has come to and informs them via communicator that Sevrin and his people have taken a shuttlecraft down to the surface of Eden.
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Chekov beam down to find the renegades. The planet is indeed beautiful, but when Chekov touches a flower he screams in pain. McCoy runs his tricorder over it and discovers some kind of corrosive acid coats everything on the planet! Their clothes will protect them for now, but they find that the half-naked hippies weren’t so lucky. Adam is sprawled on the ground, covered in sores, with a fruit in his hand. The apple was poisonous.
Adam ate the poisoned apple. (GET IT? Okay, see, in the Garden of Eden there was Adam and Eve. And then Adam ate an apple and fell from grace and was exiled from Eden. This is just like that. Maybe I should explain it again…)
They come across the shuttlecraft and inside find the rest of the hippies writhing in pain, their feet covered in blisters, unable to walk. One by one our heroes carry the poor fools out of the shuttle (because it’s so much safer on the acid planet…) and prepare to beam up. But Sevrin has gone mad. He swears he will not leave the planet, and climbs the nearest tree. Even though Kirk and McCoy tell him not to eat it, Sevrin takes a big bite from a hanging fruit, and he falls dead from the tree.
Back on the ship, the chastened kids head to the nearest starbase to be repatriated. Chekov apologizes to Kirk for his behavior and says goodbye to Irina. Spock, too, says his goodbyes.
SPOCK: Miss Galliulin. It is my sincere wish that you do not give up your search for Eden. I have no doubt but that you will find it, or make it yourselves.
IRINA: Thank you.
KIRK: We reach, Mister Spock.
* Yes, I know, it’s Catulla. Whatever. I think a Catullus planet would be way more awesome.
Analysis
The only way out is through…
There is not enough whiskey in the world for this episode. Maybe it was just me, but the introduction of the hippies gave me surreal flashbacks to The Muppet Babies–all the colorfully dressed, meddlesome children fantasizing a completely isolated, almost psychotically disconnected version of the world. This one probably should have been called “God, doesn’t it feel GREAT to punch a hippie?” Because I was just stunned by how awful Sevrin and his followers are. Sevrin is a complete maniac, a sociopath so obsessed with himself and his own illusions that he’s willing to murder the entire Enterprise crew for the chance to murder a whole planet of people he claims to idolize. He may as well twirl a long-haired hippie mustache. His followers are like children. They blindly follow his lead, refusing to even consider evidence contrary to their worldview; they believe that their own good vibes and attitudes will be enough to sustain them; and they recklessly jeopardize everything, including intergalactic peace, for a chance at their absurd dream. Talk about an indictment of the counterculture. They’re ineffective, effeminate idiots, tools to be manipulated by ambitious and dangerous men.
But it’s a morality play with some ridiculous assertions. For one, it totally sops to the moronic belief that hippie music is some kind of evil recruiting tool that makes good men go astray. The music distracts the crew into not doing their jobs, allowing the hippies to take over the ship with relative ease. It’s their key to domination, you see! I felt like the whole thing had been engineered to teach us A Lesson about Those Kids and Their Rock Music. I don’t think that Sevrin’s use of sound to disable the crew in the end is a coincidence, either. See what happens with that racket?!
While I’m a noted hippie sympathizer, I think most of us would agree that the dialogue is so scathing, it goes way beyond the usual degree of disapproval. Kirk is shocked when Chekov tells him “one of those was in the academy” and they constantly discuss how primitive they are. Then Nurse Chapel (my dear Chapel!) calls them “animals” that belong in cages. Their lines just drip with disdain. Watching Kirk and Scotty whine about those “undisciplined troublemakers” doesn’t even seem like a joke, it seems sad. The whole thing felt like it had been penned by a cranky, 90-year-old man, confused and scared by those meddling kids.
The worst part, though, is that the idea is a good one. I like that we get to see some discontent within the idyllic Federation, and their concerns–the oversterilization of life, the rigidity of recreation, the seeming tedium of such an ordered world–would have been legitimate in the mouths of anyone less ghastly and unsympathetic. Sevrin’s right, and prophetic–superbugs do exist, and they exist because of how effectively we can combat the regular bugs. But by god are these people ghastly and unsympathetic. And boring. And oh god, I actually have a note here around the third time Adam started singing that says “KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!” And let’s not even get into the bludgeon-y biblical metaphors at the end.
One tiny thing I loved: when Chekov is leading Irina through the hallways of the ship and speaking in whispered, anxious tones, there are lots of other people on the ship passing him by who turn to stare at this crazy person he’s talking to. Most realistic moment in the entire episode.
And I don’t think I noticed it until the rest of you pointed it out in the comments, but these third season episodes are introducing more and more egregious examples of Kirk-is-so-special-X-doesn’t-affect him. In this case, the sound, which is supposed to kill people? Only it knocks out the rest of the crew. Except him and Spock. Who are so special and you just can’t see it but they probably have violet eyes and sparkle in the sun.
I have to say, though: it’s not worse than “Plato’s Stepchildren.” At least it didn’t have torture porn?
Torie’s Rating: Warp core breach; escape pods deployed (on a scale of 1-6)
Eugene Myers: I’ve been dreading this day for nearly two years, since Torie and I started this re-watch.
When I first saw “The Way to Eden” as a teen, I thought it was the worst episode ever and vowed never to watch it again. A couple of years later, when the pain had finally faded, I decided to give it another try–surely it wasn’t as bad as I’d remembered. Damn you, selective memory! I found it just as awful as before, and once again I decided never to watch it again. And I blissfully stuck to that promise… until now.
I realized when I committed to re-watching the entire series that the endeavor would have to include “Eden,” but the notion seemed almost bearable when I was being paid to watch and analyze it. Once we began doing our reviews for The Viewscreen, I considered weaseling out of this episode, but that hardly seemed sporting. My one consolation was that Torie was going to have to write the summary and suffer along with me. Meager comfort.
So here we are. I’ve just seen “Eden” for the first time in perhaps seventeen years, and unsurprisingly, it’s still dreadful. I believe it’s the poster child for the third season, rife with weaknesses like sloppy reversed shots, cheap special effects (ships glow red when they’re about to explode!), truly outrageous wardrobes, a poor script, and heavy use of stock footage–including that ridiculous shot from “Spock’s Brain” of Majel Barret’s stunningly bad collapse in Sickbay. (Incidentally, that footage doesn’t even match her radically different, and dare I say hot, appearance in the rest of the episode.)
However, there were a few surprises mixed in with the excruciating segments that I literally winced through. First of all, I’d forgotten that this is one of the rare substitutions of Lt. Palmer for Uhura; I bet Nichelle Nichols was all too happy to sit this one out. I envy her. I had also forgotten that this is partly a Chekov story, fleshing out some of his background and establishing a relationship with a woman from Starfleet Academy, Irina. That almost made me care about it, a little bit. Unfortunately, Mary Linda Rapelye’s Russian accent was awful and I was far from impressed with her performance. For someone who supposedly went to the Academy, her character sure needs Chekov to explain a lot of basic things to her–unless that’s all an act. Then there’s Spock’s interactions with Adam…
I generally remembered Spock “jamming” with the space hippies, but when the scene came it wasn’t as cringeworthy as I anticipated. His solo was almost distinguished, really, especially in comparison to the bizarre musical numbers that plagued the rest of the episode at the drop of a hat. Music plays a very important role in “Eden,” which is as close to a musical as any episode in the franchise; this is the way in which Spock and Adam bond, and it’s striking that the hippies use sound itself to cripple the Enterprise crew and make good their escape.
I was intrigued with Spock’s interest in Sevrin’s beliefs and their pursuit of paradise, as well as his ability to relate to the hippies because, like them, he’s caught between two worlds, an alien even among his own people. Not only does he appreciate their situation, but he sees value in their beliefs; I found the ending touching when he encourages Irina to continue searching for Eden–or make their own. The thoughtfulness behind this character motivation and Leonard Nimoy’s nuanced performance aren’t enough to salvage this experience for me, but it adds some welcome depth that I wasn’t expecting.
I was also interested in the idea of science and technology as a kind of infection: modern advancements leading to new and deadly afflictions. This may have spoken to a genuine fear in the Sixties of too much progress too quickly, but it seems especially relevant today, with fears of the negative effects of cell phones, X-ray scanners, telephone wires, nuclear reactors, chemicals in plastics, and so on. There are new ailments developing regularly as direct and indirect results of our modern technological society: eye strain from staring at video screens all day long, carpal tunnel from typing, sprained thumbs from constant texting, diminished attention spans, cancers, obesity, etc. The idea of abandoning all technology isn’t foreign to some contemporary cultures–as extreme a reaction to progress as that might seem–and it’s especially interesting whenever it’s explored in Star Trek, which generally celebrates the future and humanity’s strides in technology and medicine. (Notably, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine revisits this idea with mixed results in its creatively titled episode “Paradise.”) I also like the idea that a paradise can turn out to be a curse, perhaps a little too overtly in this case, where the “Eden”- of-the-week turns out to foster acidic flora. Because that makes sense.
When viewed with humorous tolerance, “Eden” is somewhat watchable, but it’s so consciously and ineffectually moralizing about hippy counterculture while taking a confusing stance on it (Should we make fun of them or should we admire their convictions?) that it’s simply a disaster. It’s uncomfortable when crewmembers like Nurse Chapel, who is usually sensitive and accepting, idly refer to them as “animals.”
Ultimately, this episode is riddled with classic Star Trek problems: an idealization of paradise, a crew that is incapable of defending the ship from being taken over by people who learn how to do so via their own library files in about ten minutes, inept plotting, laughable costumes, and trying too hard to make a statement without a clear moral. In a better season, in better hands with an actual budget, it may have succeeded, but instead it fails spectacularly. It’s impossible for anyone to take this seriously as either a drama or morality play, and it isn’t even campy enough to be entertaining.
This time I mean it: I’m never going to watch “The Way to Eden” again. Really. Not even if you paid me to do it!*
_________________
*But if you’re offering, let me check my bank account before you hold me to that.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp Core Breach
Best Line: ADAM: Gonna crack my knuckles and jump for joy/ I got a clean bill of health from Doctor McCoy!
Syndication Edits: None
Trivia: D.C. Fontana wrote the first draft of this one, but the script was so savaged she asked her name to be removed and used the pseudonym “Michael Richards,” as she did in “That Which Survives.” Irina Galliunan was originally conceived as Dr. McCoy’s daughter, Joanna McCoy (the episode was titled “Joanna”). She was going to be Kirk’s, not Chekov’s, romantic interest. This version was scrapped. Plans to recycle the idea of her character for the fourth season died with the show’s cancellation.
Charles Napier, who plays Adam, wrote some of the songs he sings himself. I’m shocked he admits that publicly. This was his first guest appearance on television and he says he got the role by jumping up on a table at his audition and singing “The House of the Rising Sun.”
This is the first time we get Chekov’s full name: Pavel Andreievich Chekov.
James Doohan claimed this is the only episode of the original series he did not like. We hope, for all our sakes, he was being polite.
“Herbert!” is considered a possible reference to either former U.S. President Herbert Hoover (whose worst sin, let’s face it, wasn’t a straight-arrow demeanor) or Herbert S. Solow, the previous production executive (the current one being the person who suggested the analogy’s inclusion in the first place).
Other notes: Skip Homeier, who played Sevrin, appeared previously as Melakon in “Patterns of Force.”
Charles Napier pops up later in the DS9 episode “Little Green Men.” I, however, know him as Duke Phillips, Jay’s overbearing and hilarious boss in The Critic.
Previous episode: Season 3, Episode 19 – “Requiem for Methuselah.”
Next episode: Season 3, Episode 21 – “The Cloud Minders.” US residents can watch it for free at the CBS website.
My goodness, warp core breach from both of you. Herberts! Whatever are you going to do when we get Abe Lincoln vs. the rock monster? For all its many, many flaws, this episode did have some potential. I’d give it a 1, maybe even a 2 if I’m feeling generous.
Maybe its because I’m just barely old enough to remember real hippies and the way people reacted to them, but while these were very much strawman hippies, there were those who were utterly self-righteous enough to have behaved this way (given some blurring with the more radical groups like the Yippies, SDS, Weather Underground, and so on) and the crew’s reactions pretty well covered the gamut of older, mainstream America’s reaction to real hippies. Chapel’s “Animals” comment is very harsh, but there were people who thought that way about the youth counterculture. Given that she’s a nurse, I’d say they probably don’t bathe; that or Adam grabbed her butt.
Doctor Sevrin (and I wish TNG and DS9 make-up artists had remembered him, it doesn’t always have to be foreheads!) is an obvious analog of Timothy Leary.
I will confess that I was once actually at a love-in. My parents were young and pretty liberal at the time (they had been active in the civil rights movement, such as it was in Southern California) and we went down to one in some park somewhere. All I remember was a bunch of people sitting around, so this isn’t much of a story. But I was at one once!
Torie: How To Take Over The Enterprise God I loved that concept. Were I talented in the graphical arts I’d print up a bunch of those pamphlets to hand out at conventions! Bravo girl Bravo!
@1DemetriosX
I barely remember the counter culture movement as well. (1961 here) Howvere this episode still get a core-breach and escape pod rating from me.
I kinda like it. Don’t judge me!
It’s one of the few TOS episodes that suggests that maybe everything in the Federation isn’t as perfect as it seems.
Plus, the music is oddly catchy. (Tell me you weren’t spontaneously declaring your clean bill of health from Dr. McCoy afterwards.)
If only they had gotten Lt. Reily to sit in on a session. Now that would sound.
@ 1 DemetriosX
But the potential is what makes it so much worse. I really like the core idea–the way that space travel and technological progress are essentially dehumanizing, and we all have a human desire to return to “the simple life,” even if it seems silly or out-of-place. Unfortunately, the execution is kind of like watching someone beat the shit out out of a clown–even if you don’t like clowns, you recognize that it’s a person in a costume, not really a clown, and even if it were, does he really deserve that?
Haha, nice story. My dad was a draft dodger and my parents spent almost a decade on a commune–like I said, I’m a noted hippie sympathizer, so I’m not really objective here. And admittedly, there were plenty of foolish or just plain crazy counterculture groups out there, many of whom undermined their own stated goals with just about everything they did. But the hippies in this episode are just so cartoonishly awful–they’re either manipulative psychopaths or idiot children. It’s like a daycare for Abbie Hoffmans, with no Bobby Kennedies in sight.
@ 2 bobsandiego
They MUST be mass-producing those pamphlets. It happens every. single. time.
@ 3 ChurchHatesTucker
Haha, I knew SOMEONE would like it, but you don’t offer much of a defense!
I found this episode, for its pacing, more watchable than many in Season 3. It’s as close as the series ever got to Lost In Space but even LiS could entertain.
“Let’s get together and have some fun. I don’t know how to do it, but it’s got to be done!”
Speaking of Irwin Allen productions, the Enterprise’s misused auxilliary control room is coming to resemble the plot coupon of the same name aboard the Seaview. You’d think a room that caused so much trouble week after week would be sealed and guarded.
It’s funny that the actor who played Adam went on to a typcast career as a cop, and usually a brutal cop at that. I imagine he was considered for the part of the Sheriff in First Blood before they cast Brian Dennehy–that’s the kind of cop Napier usually played.
And yet there have been psychopathic leaders in recent history followed into doom by mesmerized idiot children. Jim Jones, David Koresh leap to mind. In that sense, the episode is a bit prescient.
@5 Lemnoc
He was also one of the poor tragic cops gurading Hannibal Lecter in The Silence Of The Lambs. Strangely, I did not recognize him all while watching the episode.
Am I the only person who thought, when Chevok burned himself on the acid flower, hmm acid and flowers another counter-counterculture statment?, this must be the planet where the Zeta Reticulian parasite came from?
Torie: I suppose what this episode really shows us is how the center-right of the day viewed the counterculture. It had been a year-and-a-half since the summer of love, but that had also been the long, hot summer, and it was still 6 months to Woodstock. People were mostly getting their views from the news, and what little they saw that wasn’t violent involved drugs and a general rejection of what they had grown up believing. In some ways, the political divide was worse than it is today, but it was more generational than it is now.
The real advantage of my telling about the love-in is that I am now stuck with “Saturday in the Park” (which is a pretty good description as I remember, except for the man selling ice cream) instead of “Heading Out for Eden (Yea, Brother)”.
Even as a kid I didn’t like much of the hippie dialogue in this one. I thought it was about as bad as Hollywood Indian.
The idea that a clean, controlled environment could be the cause of sickness in some people appealed to me (in a storytelling sense) and much later I made a connection to this episode when I learned of Uly’s condition in the series Earth 2.
I’ve a few other things I want to say about this one but I’m holding off while I search for reference material.
This is definitely a one bottle of gin episode for me. My biggest WTF moment was the wheel of music.
I found their reactions to the hippies mostly spot on though considering the times and the military nature of Starfleet. When you are all about orders, discipline, and being one of the upright citizens anything to challenge that can be reacted to poorly.
This is one of those “could have been episodes” imho. Too bad it was crap.
oh, best thing about this episode is a purely personal note. I had a friend, she was a neo-hippie, born too late to be part of the counter culture but loved th romantic view of those days. She was also gulliable to the extreme. She had never seen this episode and when we told her about she refused to believe us, convinced that we were palying upon her gulliable nature in another practical joke. (yeah, I have great friends. Don’t turn your back on ’em.) Ayway this went on litteraly for years until we procurred a copy and screened it for her.
The horror, oh the horror. LOL
For all the episode’s faults, it’s still a 100% accurate portrayal. None of those characters would be in any way out of place sitting in Berkeley City Council.
Kirk in this episode comes across as such a stiff-necked brass hat, such a Herbert in comparison to Spock’s more intellectually sympathetic response, I wonder if the intent of the script was to place him, as a military man, in a bad light. Or whether it was just bad scripting that seemed to place Kirk in a bad light.
It wouldn’t be the first time “Kirk the Soldier” was shown as unpretty, but in other stories (“Errand of Mercy,” “Arena”) he at least comes to some awareness, some uneasy ease with his kneejerk fascism. He expresses some inner remorse or promise to do better. Here, he writes these people off pretty early on (as he did the revolutionary Lokai in “Last Battlefield”), then adds insult to injury by coopting their jargon in the closing line.
No, it was fairy well established by the space hippies that Kirk didn’t reach.
Remember that it is reasonable to assume that Star Trek’s core audience of the time, as s-f nuts, were interested in a different, better world just as were counterculturalists; if Roddenberry’s vision of a color-blind future utopia wasn’t hippie-dippie, I don’t know what is. So in one sense, this episode goes about mocking its core youth audience.
Kirks closing remark is like Nixon or Nelson Rockfeller waving their fingers around, “oo, peace baby,” or worse maybe, our fathers squeezing into paisley-plaid hiphuggers and growing out their combovers. Whatever we think of hippies today, it hits a flat, sour note and–in rhyming lyrics inspired by Adam—makes Kirk a real jerk.
@1 DemetriosX
Hey, I’ve been saving that Warp Breach rating since we began the re-watch! Although I may be with Torie–“Plato’s Stepchildren” may actually be worse, or at least the pain lingers longer. How fickle memory can be.
@2 bobsandiego
I think Torie did a great job with this recap. And we should totally design some of those pamphlets. I’ll have to see what my graphic design capabilities are, or task a better artist with this one.
@5, 6 Lemnoc
It certainly has its moments, which was more than I expected.
I also got the charismatic cult leader vibe from Sevrin. Was there anyone like him in the news in the Sixties? It might not seem otherwise believable that a man could lead people so far astray, but we know now that it happens all too often.
@7 bobsandiego
Acid! Of course! It seems so obvious now. Not as obvious as the apple and Eden thing… I’m disappointed that the Star Trek writers couldn’t do better than the whole paradise/Eden thing. Were people so obsessed with the idea of a perfect world back then?
@10 Larry
Yeah, what the heck was that wheel thing? And did they beam aboard with these instruments? I meant to go back and check the beginning of the episode, but that would have meant watching more of it than I had to.
Good point about the discipline of Starfleet vs. the free love, devil-may-care attitudes of the space hippies. I think if anything, the later series emphasized the whole discipline thing even more, especially Picard and Sisko. And yet, isn’t accepting other people’s beliefs and customs also part of wearing that uniform?
@12 S. Hutson Blount
Thanks to this tidbit of information, I now have a blacklist of places I will never visit. Number one: Berkeley, CA.
Eugene: re: you coomment on never havig to watch this episode again.
I guess that means you’ll never plays Star Trek Roulette with me.
(a D3 for the season, and a d6+D12 to determine 1-24 the episode to wtach and NO CHEATING.) It’s how I get value from my set knowing left to my own devices I’d watch the same episodes over and over.
@ 6 Lemnoc
Comparing hippies to Jonestown isn’t exactly fair, and any extent to which the episode makes Sevrin seem THAT out there was just punching strawmen.
@ 8 DemetriosX
It wasn’t just the center-right, I’m sure–the old-school leftie labor leaders and civil rights crusaders weren’t exactly pleased at upstart punks throwing their entrenched power structures under the bus of radical change. To that extent, I can see the distaste even in people like Roddenberry, but I still think the language the characters use is more extreme than necessary to get the point across.
@ 10 Larry
Interestingly, the efforts to make Starfleet seem like they had sticks up their asses meant casting Chekov as a square, when the whole point of him on the show was to be young and hip and cool and attract that demographic.
@ 12 S. Hunton Blount
An accurate portrayal of what? They’re caricatures.
@ 14 Eugene
I’m going to have to revise down my “Plato’s Stepchildren” rating.
@ 15 bobsandiego
That’s a dangerous game…
@16 torie
The only games worth playing are dangerous. I do it with Buffy The Vampire Slayer as well, but since I only own five season the odds of a clunker are significantly lower.
Bet you’re missing The Tholian Web now.
I have to second S. Hunton Blount here. Berkeley’s City Council, Police Department, and area activists must be experienced to be believed. I don’t even know where to start!
Eugene @14:
Timothy Leary. There’s even the acid thing again. He was a psychologist rather than what the writers probably meant by scientist and he didn’t have a fatal disease, but there are similarities.
Also, that round instrument looks to me like something bakeries use to slice cakes so that all the pieces are the same size.
Torie @16 re Chekov: Walter Koenig hates this episode. He says it is the absolute low point for his character. Some of the problem is that this arc was originally supposed to be Kirk and McCoy’s daughter and nobody thought to adjust the character dynamics when that changed. That said, I can see a couple of reasons why he might get more uptight than usual, under the circumstances. His connection to the group, tenuous as it is, probably makes him act a little more by the book, at least in front of Kirk, and seeing Irina having gone toward one extreme could push him toward the other.
@15 bobsandiego
Okay, but what’s in it for me? In a game of Star Trek Roulette, the odds are against us and the situation is grim.
However, that might be a fair way for us to choose episodes for the TNG Re-Watch…
@19 DemetriosX
Now I want cake.
On another note, I just posted a blog entry with pictures that show exactly how much I suffered through this episode: http://ecmyers.net/2011/02/the-way-to-eden-is-through-hell/ I imagine most of you can relate to my pain.
I’m glad you two are watching these, so I’m not tempted to.
Hm. Now I wonder if Eden being covered in deadly acid was supposed to be some sort of LSD reference.
Eugene @20:
1. “Wait…what?”
2. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
3. “I really want to punch somebody.”
4. “Oh, please!”
@20 Eugene
are you saying there are as many bad shows as good in Trek TOS? Anyway it’d be a chance for you to show your fanish quality. ;)
Yup. LOTR reference in Star trek rewatch cause that’s how I roll.
Right, well, I seem to have missed all the fun. Oh, well.
Did I like the episode? Well, you know … actually, even though it’s stupid beyond belief, it’s actually fun. And, yes, I think it’s better than ‘That Which Survives’, ‘The Empath’, and — oh, we haven’t got there yet.
Skippy Homeier with lettuce-leaf ears. Inspired! (Picture him now as Melakon, with the same ears, getting machine-gunned at the end of ‘Patterns of Force’!)
Regarding Kirk’s hard-assedness, do recall that Gary Mitchell referred to Kirk at the Academy as ‘positively grim’, and the Kirk of ‘The Man Trap’ and ‘This Side of Paradise’ is decidedly a bit uptight. I see him as basically an Eisenhower Republican (i.e., pro-establishment but not totally insane or an obvious war criminal), except that he overthrows governments right out in the open, instead of through clandestine CIA programmes. So it’s not surprising that he’s not too wild about the flower children.
Chekov does tend to be less hip than his haircut would imply. Is he that different here to the way he was in ‘Spectre of the Gun’? A bit uptight but still romantic, just a nice guy? Not sure.
I do like the idea of the How To Take Over the Ship pamphlet; clearly, that must be part of the ship’s library, and is the first thing any strangers check out upon getting access to a viewscreen. Or maybe it’s been posted to the Federation equivalent of the Internet, which would explain how everyone seems to know how to do it straight away.
And I actually like the songs! So they’re not The Mamas and the Papas or Pete Seeger.
And you know what? I will take Berkeley over San Diego any day of the week. Sorry, bob.
Okay, that’s it.
Oh God, Adam’s singing. NO ONE SINGS THROUGH A SMILE LIKE THAT. You’ll look and sound like a lounge singer and an obvious lip syncher.
Anyway, one thing I haven’t seen people mention here yet is the class implications of the episode. The hippies were often seen as these well-off college kids who totally ignored how privileged they were to drop out of school, squandering an opportunity that their working-stiff detractors would’ve loved to have received; it was a big source of resentment. (Obviously this isn’t universal). The episode writers try to capture that here, going out of their way to portray these dropouts as a very talented and privileged bunch — the Academy, an ambassador’s son who’s also a scientific genius, another genius leads them — even Adam’s a pretty good musician, considering his ability to spontaneously improvise appropriate tunes and lyrics.
@24 Nomad UK
umm Just a note of clarification, I did not bring up real world politics. That was another commenter. Believe me I resisted great temptation to really tear into Star trek political message on earlier episode.
@bob #26
I didn’t think NomadUK was replying to you — just referring to San Diego generally, and apologizing to you for using it as the contrast example?
Also, Eugene, they did beam aboard with the instruments. I noticed it on the watch-through. (Because obviously what I’d do in a ship about to explode is clutch my Space Harp.)
OK, I have yet to grade this episode. It’s a really tough one, since my head says it’s a 1 and my heart says it’s a 3.
So, I’m going with Warp 2. With an asterix.
Late to the party as usual. (Well, I read the rewatch last night but find posting from my mobile phone to be somewhat less than satisfactory.)
re: the speculation about “Herbert” referring to Herb Solow – I find that to be quite plausible. If any of you have read the “Inside Star Trek” book he cowrote with Robert Justman, you’ll see him in that role. Though I had to refer to my copy to see it was Justman, not Solow, who called Gene out for allegedly using marijuana.
There’s a school of thought that the whole “hippie” phenomenon was largely a creation of the media in the first place, and this episode would fit right in with that. Having been born in 1962, and kept well sheltered through much of my childhood, I have no firsthand experience…but as a former member of The Media (TM), I don’t find it hard to believe.
Music plays a very important role in “Eden,” which is as close to a musical as any episode in the franchise
Perhaps the music is somewhat less central to the stories, but I prefer the various Deep Space Nine episodes featuring the Vic Fontaine character. But then DS9 is my favorite of the Treks, and I’m a sucker for holodeck stories.
bobsandiego@26: My apologies; I was in a hurry and forgot who said what.
(I still prefer Berkeley to San Diego, but it’s nothing personal.)
…oh, and:
TNG Re-Watch
Haven’t been reading them but just discovered AV Club is already doing one. Looks like they just hit the fifth season. They’re cheating, though – more than one episode per write-up.
Show ’em how to do it right!
rvanwinkle @ 29
At the risk of dating myself, I had the opportunity to visit San Francisco on a family vacation in the summer of 1968. We did a drive through of Haight-Ashbury. As we waited at a red light on that famous intersection, a group of gingerhaired freaks in wild clothes wandered out and sat on our car until the red light changed, then moved off. It was the most ridiculous and time-wasting thing I’d ever seen, sitting on cars until the light cycled. My dad in his crewcut laughed and laughed, then circled back around to experience it again like an amusement ride.
So I can attest with certainty that the hippie movement was not (entirely) media created.
It was a scene, a vibe… and as I suggested earlier, involved people not terribly different from the “movement” of Trekkies who penned a letter campaign to NBC when the network threatened to cancel the series at the end of its second season… a bunch of smelly, jobless, immature freaks obsessed with some touchy-feely hippie-dippie space utopia teevee show with black women as officers (imagine!) and (ha-ha!) a green dude with silly devil ears. Eye rolls all around.
The same treatment the Enterprise crew gives the space hippies I imagine the NBC execs gave those letter writers—a pat on the head while killing the show’s budget and moving it to a time slot that made its doom a self-fulfilling prophesy that justified their earlier decision to cancel it. Just sayin’…
Man, you guys are such downers.
@ 18 sps49
I’m a California native, so Berkeley brings warm fuzzies to mind. Your mileage may vary.
@ 19 DemetriosX
I was thinking Timothy Leary the whole time, too, which again seems profoundly unfair.
@ 21 Jon Hansen
That sounds like about the right level of subtlety the episode engaged in.
@ 24 NomadUK
Agreed. But I have a grudge against San Diego ever since I got left behind there at the zoo on a school field trip. (True story.)
@ 25 DeepThought
Has there been ANY episode of Star Trek (or any popular show, for that matter) that cared about characters who weren’t privileged? Fiction is never interested in the poor, unless they’re there to Teach Us Something.
@ 26 bobsandiego
Yeah, let’s save real world political discussions for open bar at our first get-together.
@ 29 rvanwinkle
Oh god, those are my least favorite DS9 episodes. (Well, second least favorite, after Ezri.) But I’m a huge fan of musicals so I tried to give the episode some slack… I mean some of the songs are kind of fun. Or at least they were after I drank my two drinks. I was going to open the whiskey but decided to save that for Turnabout Intruder.
@ 32 Lemnoc
You made me sad. :(
@33 Torie Fiction is never interested in the poor, unless they’re there to Teach Us Something ah hem that’s a bit broad in content. Of Mice and Men, The Grapes Of Wrath, The Old Man and The Sea off the top of my head, of course those are not genre stories. Sadly, genere, SF and even worse fantasy, is very much about well-heeled (or characters who are heels) and powerful characters. Off the top of my head in genre I come up with only two, both Heiniein juvies, Starman Jones and <em? Citizen Of The Galaxy, but Thorby, in the latter, turned out to be very rich after starting the story as an illiterate slave.
/subject switch
I think you blokes are just upset that last Week San Diego have lovely weather in the mid 70s. :)
Well I’m going to worldcon in Reno…anyone else?
@33 Torie Fiction is never interested in the poor, unless they’re there to Teach Us Something ah hem that’s a bit broad in content. Of Mice and Men, The Grapes Of Wrath, The Old Man and The Sea off the top of my head, of course those are not genre stories. Sadly, genere, SF and even worse fantasy, is very much about well-heeled (or characters who are heels) and powerful characters. Off the top of my head in genre I come up with only two, both Heiniein juvies, Starman Jones and Citizen Of The Galaxy, but Thorby, in the latter, turned out to be very rich after starting the story as an illiterate slave.
/subject switch
I think you blokes are just upset that last Week San Diego have lovely weather in the mid 70s. :)
Well I’m going to worldcon in Reno…anyone else?
The “How To Take Over The Ship” Pamphlet is not only in the ship’s library. Star Fleet regulations insure that a copy can be found in the upper left dresser drawer in every guest compartment on every ship. It’s found right on top of the Gideon Bible. :)
@ 34 bobsandiego
You’re right, that was too broad. I meant television and film, mostly.
@ 36 Ludon
Ha! Don’t you mean data disk?
@33 Torie & 34 BobSanDiego
I submit for your approval the entire sub-genre of Cyberpunk.
@33 Torie: well, I guess it’s a matter of personal taste. I found it refreshing they used any music other than then-current pop.
@32 Lemnoc: but how many of those came to Haight-Ashbury after hearing about it through what we, these days, call the mainstream media?
My 1968 story: my parents took us to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. All I remember is being cooped up in a hotel room, not understanding why my parents didn’t want us to go outside. As I stated earlier, a sheltered upbringing. It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned what was going on that week – our high school American history stopped at the end of WWII.
@Torie #33
Sure, stories usually focus on privileged people. But my point is that they’re making an express effort to represent these people as more privileged than most, and also as having significant talent that could go to good use but instead is getting squandered on childish utopianism. I’m not sure we’ve seen any other group be so explicitly characterized as privileged by ST writers, and we’ve met a lot of guests-of-the-week. It just seems intentional when it also fits so well with the allegory.
@bobsandiego #34
Hmm . . . well, I think fantasy is a little unfair, because in most societies of that kind, the peasant class simply doesn’t have the chance to do anything worth writing adventure stories about at all, unless they’re getting plucked out of peasant-dom. I will give more reflection upon genre-teleplays-about-underprivileged-people, though I think at the end of the day a lot of it’s going to come down to having adventures is itself a privilege, or at least heavily dependent upon privilege. If you’re not in a pretty special social role, that “adventure” is going to be more like a “desperate struggle for survival.”
@rvanwinkle #39
Funny how history stops at politically significant junctures. When I was in school, History Ended at 1968. I think (from, er, tutoring them and writing their textbooks) the kids these days get all the way up to Reagan, with maybe some mention that 9/11 happened afterward . . .
@33 Torie- It’s fine to visit, and they still have the late 60s reputation, but they just act so Against Everything all the time. I remember in Fall ’91 we had a Naked Guy attending classes- oh, he was such an Individual, and how dare they dispute his right to attend class as nature made him, but who wants to be the next to sit in his chair? And all the effort put into People’s Park, with the result that is a dealer’s haven and scary late at night.
But I don’t get all upset about it. Today I’m sad about the poisoning of the trees at my other alma mater (I didn’t know how old they were).
As a native Angeleno, I suppose I ought to weigh in on Berkeley vs. San Diego. I went to a debate tournament at Berkeley in the late 70s and got my degree from UCSD, so I lived outside of La Jolla and in Del Mar for 5 years. SD has better weather and better beaches. Berkeley has more interesting shops and better public transportation (no car in SD was hell). SD probably has better bars and clubs, but a lot of that has to do with people in Berkeley being able to jump on the BART and go across the bay to SF. Pace Torie, I’ll just say that politically they are in many ways mirror images of each other and leave it at that. Me, despite the hipsters and aggressive bicyclists, I’ll take Portland, OR ([Homer]Mmmmm, Powell’s[/Homer]).
@ 38 ChurchHatesTucker
Cyberpunk TV/movies?
@ 39 rvanwinkle
That’s pretty funny, actually.
@ 40 DeepThought
For my school, history also Ended at World War II.
@ 41 sps49
We always have That Guy, but this is NYC. Maybe it’s an urban thing?
@ 42 DemetriosX
Haha, what is this debate we’ve started? I can’t take sides, I haven’t been to SD since I was a kid and I only went to Berkeley once–just a few months ago. But if anyone starts dissing Santa Cruz or the Monterey Bay, there’s gonna be a rumble. That’s where I’m from.
Torie @43: Cyberpunk TV/movies. Max Headroom is the first thing that springs to mind. Most of the characters were elites, but Blank Reg was a regular and several other blanks also appeared often.
None of the characters on Red Dwarf could really be considered an elite. Decker isn’t exactly privileged in Bladerunner, though he isn’t part of the underclasses either. But finding something from before the early 80s is going to be very difficult.
@44 & 43
Cyberpunk movie: Really I think a great cyberpunk movie, granted it was before the coining of that phrase, is Rollerball, very much a corporate dystopian setting. Curiously it has no really poor people because there are no really poor people left in the world. Economic hardship has been traded away for security the price being freedom.
I’m not a native San Diego – few are – I’m a transplant from the south courtesy of the USN, however I adore my adopted city.
I believe a story about an average person does exist within the Star Trek universe. That would be the Cardassian novel The Neverending Sacrifice discussed in at least one episode of DS9.
As to other sci-fi shows or movies about underclass characters. These two would be marginal, but the short-lived shows Salvage 1 and Quark could count. Additionally, (And I’m dredging up an old nightmare with this one.) The Starlost could be counted.
Cyberpunk movies by decade according to cyberpunkreview.com.
A pretty loose list, I’d say, but worth a gander.
@3 ChurchHatesTucker
Yes, the idea that the Federation was not all in one happy, peppy, middle-class lockstep march toward The Future was one of the interesting things about this episode. One problem so many of the ST iterations have had is a lack of self-reflection — the problems faced are always the external threats. Discussion of internal threats and politics and social discontent have always gotten short shrift (with the possible exception of early DS9 examination of Bajoran religion and politics).
@7 bobsandiego
I always figured the acid of “Eden” was a heavy-handed analog to the fiery-sword-wielding angel that guarded the Biblical Eden after Adam and Eve were kicked out.
@42 DemetriosX
I was at some speech/debate tourneys at UC Berkeley in ’78 or ’79. It’s a small world after all. (Also, it was far less crazy-hippy a place than I’d always pictured it.)
…
And, with all that, and with all the very obviously flaws of this ep, I still give it a 2 or so. There’s an exuberance here, no matter how misdirected, and a fine questioning of whether Our Heroes are always, in fact, the Heroes. And, honestly, I could just sit around hearing Skip Homeier reading from the phone book to be entertained. There’s a lot of bad goofiness here, but some good, too. If I had to banish one episode from the TOS canon, it wouldn’t be this one.
***Dave @48: If the topic was health care, then we may have been at the same tournament. I don’t remember anything about that particular tournament or even our affirmative case & plan, but maybe we even faced each other. Who knows?
Church @47: That is a pretty broad list, but I do see a couple of other films there that deal at least in part with underclasses. Metropolis is certainly the earliest, but they are sort of a plot point there. In some ways, Modern Times also fits. We also have a plot point underclass coming up next week.
@23 bobsandiego
I always appreciate a well-placed LotR reference! We should probably tally up our final ST ratings to figure out exactly what the ratio of good to bad is.
@29 rvanwinkle
Sadly, Vic Fontaine is one of my least favorite additions to DS9, though I liked some of his episodes on my latest re-watch. But you’re right, he adds a lot of music to the series, and his songs are definitely better than Adam’s.
@31 rvanwinkle
I didn’t realize AV Club was doing TNG, but we knew they were re-watching Star Trek when we started, and obviously that didn’t deter us! There’s plenty of room on the internet for varying opinions and different approaches to re-watches.
@49 DemetriosX – I think it was the next year, on energy policy. At least I seem to recall being there and shuffling around a lot of 4×6 cards talking about nuclear fusion. Health Care Reform was 77-78, and it’s funny how much some of the basic talking points still applied (or were used) 30+ years later.
Just as some of the topics in this episode (alienation, youth, conformity, back to nature, playing music on a bicycle wheel) still resonate today, no matter how Jack Webb-like the Enterprise officers class tended to treat them.
@***Dave #51
Man, why’d you have to go and drop the Jack Webb bomb? Now I’m picturing Adam from this episode looking in the camera and earnestly saying “My hair is green, and I’m a tree! I’m Blueboy!”
@34 bobsandiego
Re: Worldcon, I probably won’t be in Reno this summer, but I may make it to the 2012 Worldcon! I’m way overdue for a trip to Chicago.
***Dave @51: Yeah, that was the year after I was there. I wasn’t terribly interested in the health care thing, but I really wanted to do energy policy. Unfortunately, the teacher who was our coach decided no more debate, so we only did local speech tournaments that year. I was really looking forward to it, too.
@52 DeepThought: Exactly. They even both end up tragically, based on something they ate. The Dragnet LSD episode aired just two years before this tale. At least Spock softened the condemnation of Those Kids These Days, by suggesting at the end they might be able to channel their rebelliousness into something more productive, but I do wonder whether the former LAPD cop had seen that Dragnet ep and, if so, what he thought.
@50 Eugene:
Well said, I shouldn’t presume to judge their approach.
Should you and Torie continue the rewatch past TOS, it might be of interest to jointly review TNG and DS9 episodes that originally aired the same week when those shows overlapped, i.e. staying in chronological airdate order. Ditto DS9/Voyager overlap.
@55 Dave:
IIRC the LSD episode was in fact Dragnet’s pilot. One might view it as the media’s opening salvo in the War on Drugs.
@56 rvanwinkle: Dragnet had been for at least a decade on radio, then TV, before that episode (or LSD) made the scene, and “relevant” shows had been tackling issues like the drug counter-culture before 1967, I believe.
That said, it certainly was one of the most mainstream (or conservative) portrayals of drugs on TV — laughable in some ways, but with a quirky, unpolished authenticity that was the hallmark of Jack Webb.
And, to bring it back around, arguably more realistic and better acted than this particular TOS episode.
With the talk early on about the music distracting the crew in this episode, I had wanted to mention a short story from the 60s or 70s in which music played an even bigger distraction. I’ve spent the week trying to locate it but with no luck. Maybe someone here can help me with this one. I don’t remember the why, but somehow a mega-popular rock band gets booked to perform for the U.S. Armed Forces. Someone gets the idea to make sure that everyone in the service – no matter where they happen to be – gets to hear the performance. The story ended with the team in a silo somewhere in the midwest getting drawn into the music and how they responded to the relentless chanting of “Do It! Do It!”
Can anyone help me with this one? I’ve been trying to find when it had been written in relation to this episode.
Thanks.
@58 Ludon
Ah, so that was the research you were doing. I’m drawing a blank, but hopefully someone will remember the title. I suppose the ISFDB isn’t any help?
Ludon’s short story doesn’t ring any bells. I’ll ask around, maybe at LibraryThing; they’re pretty good at teasing out forgotten titles. But it did remind me of the truly awful movie Wild in the Streets. It’s worth watching once just for the sheer lunacy. Basically it’s the story of a youth takeover of the US by a rock star elected president. It stars Shelley Winters and Hal Holbrook, who both must have been really hard up for cash. It also features Richard Pryor in one of his first movie roles. There’s also a Melvin Belli cameo, so there’s a Trek connection. The music isn’t bad, especially when you think of what Hollywood thought of as “youth music” in 1968. “Shape of Things to Come” even went to #22 on the charts.
The first suggestion I got for the story that Ludon was looking for is “The Big Flash” by Norman Spinrad. It seems to match what you’re looking for and the reason the band got to be broadcast to the armed forces is that they were a CIA psy-ops project.
@61 DemetriosX
Thanks. I’m sure this is the one. I hadn’t read the thing since the 70s so my mind must have filled in the details that had slipped away. I just found an on line copy in Google Books and skimmed through it. For those who would like to read it, this link should take you right to the into to that story in a book called Beyond Armageddon.
http://books.google.com/books?id=6jS0PYWOGxIC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=the+big+flash+spinard&source=bl&ots=kVDSOgNZNu&sig=ImbpSzHmgfAHGPC87JvN05a82Us&hl=en&ei=y4pmTeahN8atgQf3g-TmDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDAQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false
It looks like this story was written after this episode was produced so I don’t think there’s any direct connection. However, I can’t help thinking about this story anytime I see The Way To Eden. The idea of people on duty at critical positions being influenced by music.
@61 DemetriosX, @62 Ludon
Thanks for tracking this down! I’ll check it out.
It looks like this story was written after this episode was produced so I don’t think there’s any direct connection.
There could have been a direct connection in the other direction though. Spinrad wrote for Trek, so assuming he stuck it out through the third season, he could have seen and been influenced by this episode.
And in my brief research on that possibility, I just found this fascinating list of undeveloped episodes, which includes another Spinrad outline called “He Walked Among Us,” which would have starred Milton Berle! http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Undeveloped_Star_Trek_episodes
Actually, Spinrad kind of dealt with a lot of this in Child of Fortune, which has a charismatic sort-of-hippie leader enticing the privileged young to drop out. Of course, he is treated rather more positively than Dr. Sevrin, but that’s not atypical for Spinrad.
@63 Eugene
I’ve just looked over that list on the Memory Alpha site. Some very interesting ideas there and a few that sound like they really couldn’t have been produced within the real-world timeframe of their given series. The idea with McCoy and Uhura on the reversed race status world caught my attention. Star Trek’s take on that could have been interesting. The basic idea was later explored in the movie White Man’s Burden http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114928/ and with some variations in Watermelon Man http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066550/ and Soul Man http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091991/ . I can’t help wondering how Star Trek’s take would have compared with these stories.
I can’t think of Spock jamming with the hippies without remembering the Bilbo Baggins song. Oh, it hurts.
I also, I don’t know why, have this weird image of Leonard Nimoy singing Davy Crockett.
Anyway, I’ve been lucky enough only to sit through this episode a couple of times myself. I remember the first time I saw it I was so disappointed in Chekov (even though he strangely seemed to fit in with his Monkees haircut). Handing over the “Guide to Taking Over Enterprise” like that. Just wrong.
I kind of like the general concept of the planet being poison to the hippies and all, even though the hammer of Adam and the poisonous apple is so heavy that it hurts my brain. I think it would have been more effective if they were just all extraordinarily allergic to everything rather than the vegetation being coated with an acid. Anyway, it just seems really appropriate that paradise for them all is a killer.
@66 Toryx
Probably because the Bilbo Baggins song sounds a little like the Davy Crockett song, or at least, it does when I sing it.
Speaking of Leonard Nimoy’s singing, you should really check out our LaughTrek for “Spock’s Brain” when you get the chance. :P
Eugene @ 67:
Y’know, that hadn’t occurred to me about the Bilbo Baggins song. I’ve only seen the video twice, years ago, and I do my best not to allow my brain to summon the music from the depths of its synapses. I figured it started playing Davy Crockett as a reflex mechanism. Which, come to think of it, it probably is.
I fully intend to check out the Laugh Trek. It sounds amusing as all hell.
@EugeneMyers – “I also got the charismatic cult leader vibe from Sevrin. Was there anyone like him in the news in the Sixties? It might not seem otherwise believable that a man could lead people so far astray, but we know now that it happens all too often.”
Look up Mel Lyman.
I think, though, that whoever said it was supposed to be an indictment of “those kids and their music” had it right. There was a lot of hogwash being written by music critics and political and religious leaders, about the detrimental effects of rock and roll. The music itself was supposed to be hypnotic, to produce the effect of being high on drugs just by listening. Rock’s emphasis on the second and fourth beats, “similar to the jungle rhythms of Africa” (also said about jazz), was said to be the exact opposite of normal biological rhythm. It was described as having an effect on the cerebrospinal fluid, causing a shutdown of intellectual functioning and a heightening of primitive emotions, removing inhibitions and causing listeners to behave solely on basic animal instincts. Sounds like zeenite.
Now that you’ve stopped laughing: Countless stories and articles of this type were being published, radio and television interviews with alleged experts, describing rock as spellbinding, hypnotic, leading listeners into confusion and seeking a leader to follow in mindless obedience… whomever. Leary. The Beatles. Commies. Many otherwise intelligent people believed it, because they couldn’t understand rock. They literally couldn’t hear the melodies, let alone the lyrics. “Christian rock” began as an attempt to use the awesome hypnotic power of rock for good instead of evil since lyrics could suggest Jesus as the answer.
The image of the usually ultra-efficient Enterprise crew zoning out on Adam’s preachy lyrics and the bland blues played by Mr. Spock and Mavig invariably bring this now incredibly antiquated hysteria back into what’s left of my mind.
I was always intrigued by Mavig’s round musical instrument. It was identified by fan writer Ruth Berman as a Berengarian dulcewires. She had Uhura playing one in the short story “The Disaffirmed”.
Just saw that Charles Napier died Wednesday. He was 75.
Trivia note: Charles Napier is also well-known for being the leader of The Good Ol Boys in The Blues Brothers. I’m surprised that no one mentioned that one.
I just watched this earlier and it is pretty awful. Why these people, who no one seemed to like having on board had access to shipwide communications was a glaring plothole. It also bears restating that there was no reason to pull the space-hippies out of the shuttle and every reason to not pull them out. What the hell was that about? They had no shoes and McCoy clearly stated that even their own Starfleet clothing would not protect them forever. I’m clearly baffled by this.
Like many of the other people who posted here, I too, found this episode to have a lot of wasted potential. There was a pretty damned good premise there, but they decided to mess it up by having a seriously messed-up concept of space-hippies.
Probably the saddest part about this is that ST has always been known for being a progressive view on the future. Yes, it explored contemporary issues in the guise of Sci-Fi, but, nothing like this. It really is a shame that Dragnet actually portrayed hippies in a better light than this episode did, and Jack Webb was a serious hippy hater.
Side note: Although the murders took place after TOS went off the air, there’s almost a Manson-like quality to the villain in this episode. Just an odd coincidence.
You know how to really enjoy an episode? Hear over and over for a year how bad it is, lower your expectations, and Shazam!
I liked “The Way to Eden” very much. I’m sure it will number among my favorites for 3rd season. I’ll save most of it for my own site, but there are far too many interesting concepts here, and moments of important character development, to warrant all the opprobrium.
One thing this episode was NOT is a moral polemic against hippies. They get too much respect from Spock, and sympathy from the rest of the crew, for that–and too many great scenes from the writers. This is instead the episode where Kirk learns to be less of a Herbert, and feels wistful about his Starfleet programming. For Spock, it’s about showing interest and openness to an alternate way out of his personal emotional hell, and his logic first protest against the barbarism of society. It feels like the end of a series long, character arc for him–Spock’s most important episode since “Journey to Babel.”
I believe this episode treats the hippies very sympathetically, but identifies and explores two concerns and vulnerabilities about the movement, both valid: 1) that the style of the movement leaves its young followers too vulnerable to exploitation by charismatic cult leaders, who may be less benign than they appear, which is what Severin is; and 2) there is not enough respect granted to other people’s choices, who may find other valid paths to validation and fulfillment. That’s the Chekov/Irina story. Her accent may have been terrible, but if you listen to their lines when they debate their life choices, it’s one of those rare dialogue scenes where they’re both absolutely right, from their point of view. The episode doesn’t end with either one of them being convinced of their wrongess (even after Severin nearly murders Irina), but with an exchange of respect and a promise to mutually strive be more understanding.
My run in with hippies (modern day ones) came in 2001, when I was a public defender in Seattle, charged with representing 13 peaceful protesters arrested during the WTO conference. All in all, almost 600 were swept up in mass arrests, and held in jail for 5 days until the end of the conference. This experience made me very sympathetic to the scene where Kirk and Spock meet Severin’s followers in the transporter room, which is all about passive resistance and the sheer power of this technique to gum up the works. It’s amazing what falls apart once one side decides that they just aren’t going to play along–and being as annoying as possible to those wielding the “power” is part of it. In WTO, this took the form of mass refusal of the arrestees to give their names, repond, or offer any form of ID while they were in jail. This was very frustrating for the public defenders, who of course were sympathetic and wanted to do what we could to help, but were effectively sidelined by this technique (at least at the mass arraignment stage), and grouped with the police and prosecutors as their antagonists.
I also met an acquaintance in the crowd of arrestees who was fellow graduate of Princeton University. Commentary on privilege and social class is definitely a component of this fascinating episode, which I eagerly look forward to watching again (sorry Eugene!).
I got my year wrong for the WTO protests in Seattle–I’m older than I think I am–it was 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests
You might be interested in Greg Schnitzer’s take on Mavig’s instrument. He actually built one.
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/2015/08/08/mavigs-harp-from-the-way-to-eden/
This episode wasn’t quite as bad as I remembered it to be, although I would definitely not go as far as Kevin in ranking it among the best of the third season. Sure, it’s a period piece, but so is every other Star Trek episode; at its core, Star Trek is about the 1960s, not the 2260s or whatever. Yes, the music is pretty hard to listen to (except for the instrumental “Far Out Jam” with Spock and Mavig), and the fake Russian accents are even harder to listen to. What I find interesting is how this episode compares with “This Side of Paradise” (a first season episode with a similar theme).
I’ve always interpreted “This Side of Paradise” as a commentary on the 1960s counterculture, albeit one written at a different stage of its emergence. In 1966, when “This Side of Paradise” was written, the hippie subculture was going strong in places like San Francisco — although it was not in the public eye to the extent that it would be two years later. Therefore, the episode’s commentary needed to be somewhat oblique; a more obvious or direct parallel would have risked losing viewers who hadn’t heard of Haight-Ashbury yet. The result was an episode that could stand on its own merits as a story.
In contrast, by the time “The Way to Eden,” the hippie was a more-or-less familiar character on television. Therefore, it was simple enough to present the space hippies as space hippies, rather than jumpsuit-wearing agrarian colonists. With fewer constraints, the story required far less creativity to tell. The result was a lazy and poorly-written script.
It’s often said that all great art needs constraints, and the third season of Star Trek provides a good example. In the first season, Star Trek’s social commentary needed to be more or less below the surface. By the third season, the secret was out, and social commentary no longer needed to be veiled; subtlety was thrown out the window (see: “Day of the Dove,” “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” “The Mark of Gideon,” “The Cloud Minders,” etc.), and both storytelling and social commentary suffered for it.
Would this episode have been better if D.C. Fontana’s “Joanna” story idea had been adopted? I think so, although the idea of a relationship between Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy’s daughter is kind of problematic for me. The intensity of the resentment Fontana portrays McCoy as having for his daughter and ex-wife is also problematic. With enough time, the concept could have developed into a decent episode. On the other hand, if these elements had been handled in a sloppy way (unfortunately, very likely in the third season), their inclusion might have made the episode even worse.
For what it’s worth, Joan Winston’s “Perchance to Dream,” a story outline that might have made into the fourth season had there been one, dealt with rock concerts and drug abuse. If it had ever been made into an episode, it might have given “The Way to Eden” a run for its money.
One thing I appreciate very much about “The Way to Eden” is Spock’s line to Irina in the final scene, encouraging her not to give up on her ideals. In contrast, in “This Side of Paradise,” the conclusion is basically that the countercultural experiment was a total waste of time. Nearly five decades later, it’s clear that, while the 1960s counterculture did not achieve its goals, and was a failure in many regards, it nevertheless had a positive impact on many areas of society.
FTR, “The Way to Eden” did not make my top 5 for Season 3, but I did give it an honorable mention.