Title: This Side Of Paradise
Airdate: 3/2/1967
Plot Summary
The Enterprise heads to a colony expecting to find a lot of dead colonists, thanks to Berthold rays that have bathed the planet. To their surprise, not only are the colonists alive but are in perfect health. Some have even healed old injuries. But what is the secret of this supposed paradise.
Risk is our Business
Kirk is annoyed by the colonists from the get go. Even though the spores finally get him, he’s able to shake their influence because the Enterprise and his career are a stronger influence.
He also comes up with the idea of the sonic itching powder to try to piss off the crew.
Logical
This the Spock show. We get to see Spock experience true emotion, including the bittersweet moment when he shakes the spores and has to tell Leila he can’t be with her. Nimoy does a great job, switching from typical Spock to being “truly happy.” The wistfulness of his realization is pretty heartbreaking.
He’s Dead Jim
The spores seem to bring out McCoy’s accent heavily. Naturally being a raging alcoholic, the first thing he does is make a mint julip.
Before that though, he’s completely mystified on how anyone is alive on this radiation filled planet and does the medical exams on the colonists.
Canon Maker
So colonies are firmly confirmed as a thing that happens and that Starfleet will check on them or do corpse duty, as they expected to have to do on this occasion.
Spock also asserts that his mother is a teacher and his father is an ambassador. We would meet Sarek and Amanda later and this would be confirmed. Sarek being an Ambassador would have ramifications even in the movies.
Canon Breaker
I really couldn’t find anything in this episode to be a canon breaker. Well done.
Man It Feels Bad To Be a Red Shirt
No deaths!
Technobabble
The communicators can be used to emit hypersonic sounds, even when they are closed. This requires a lot of rewiring of the bridge console.
I know that guy:
Jill Ireland plays Leila. She was married to Charles Bronson and played in a ton of his movies. She had a pretty prolific career but sadly passed away in 1990 from breast cancer.
Frank Overton plays Elias Sandoval. His biggest credit was the sheriff in To Kill A Mockingbird in 1962. He also passed away early in 1967 at only 49 years old. This episode was his final acting credit.
What it means to be human – Review
I love this episode. There’s been some allusions to the old tale from Homer of the Lotus-eaters. The idea of living life at an extreme. These people are content to do nothing but the bare minimum, subsisting on the spores, or Lotus blossoms, if you will. They call it paradise but it’s really just a bunch of people being fine with being bored. At the time, psychoactive drugs, particularly marijuana use was increasing in America and I think this might have been a bit of a comment on that.
Kirk’s response to McCoy at the end is great. McCoy comments that this is the second time man has been ejected from paradise to which Kirk responds, “Oh no Bones. This time we walked out on our own.” The idea that man must struggle to better himself is an underlying theme that would resonate through Trek even through the TNG era. Indeed Sandoval’s first reaction to shaking off the spores is to lament that they’ve accomplished nothing since they got there.
Kirk trying to get under Spock’s skin with some of the most cruel epithets I’ve ever heard in Trek is priceless. Racism, is there nothing it can’t do? But even funnier is Spock mentioning that striking a fellow officer is a court martial offense has Kirk with one of his best lines. “Well if we’re both in the brig, who’s going to build the hypersonic transmitter?”
Bones goes full Colonel Sanders when the spores hit him. Sulu just gets dreamy eyed. Uhura turns into a dangerous saboteur, don’t get that lady mad. But the biggest change is Spock, who gets downright insubordinate and is fine with it. The sight of Spock hanging from a tree never gets old.
I just love what this episode is trying to say. There are no easy shortcuts, there is always a price to be paid for paradise. Best to make your own, even if you never get there. You don’t sell out your soul that way. Great episode.
