Title: The Paradise Syndrome
Airdate: 10/04/1968
Plot Summary
In The Paradise Syndrome, Kirk, Spock, and Bones are observing a planet where they find a tribe of Native Americans that have evidently been transplanted by an unknown alien race. An asteroid is due to hit the planet unless the Enterprise can deflect it from its path.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk spends most of the episode with amnesia and starting a new life with his hot Indian wife while playing unwilling god for the tribe. This is really in character for Kirk, who we find out later likes antiques. He has a longing for the simplicity of the past and a quiet life with a great love but also cannot keep himself away from the Captain’s chair.
His dreams haunt him to go back even though he’s not really understanding the meaning of them. Later, in Generations, the only thing that movie did right was to show this conflict within Kirk. He desperately wants to sit in the chair and make a difference but in the Nexus he once again has a love he wants to spend his life with but cannot.
Logical
Spock, for his part, does everything correct given the circumstances. He leaves Kirk as time is of the essence if he wants to stop the asteroid. When that fails, he spends the rest of the time deciphering the obelisk as it might be the key to stopping the big rock and is, of course, correct.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy on the other hand is a complete dick to Spock and every decision he makes. To be fair, he apologizes and admits to Spock that he was correct but it took him two months to come to his senses.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu does his best but can’t blow apart the rock.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov is absent. Or maybe not. The supporting cast really takes a back seat in this one.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura might have been there but didn’t do much.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty complains constantly about Spock running the ship’s engines too hot and finally mourns his “poor bairns,” the inspiration for my heading for anything Scotty related. I improved on that by adding 30% more drunken Scotsman.
Canon Maker
This is the second time Kirk falls in love with a woman from the past (so to speak) and she ends up dead.
The preservers are introduced as an explanation for why there are so many humanoids throughout the galaxy. This would be much more clumsily explained in TNG later.
Canon Breaker
Why Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are on the planet in the first place when they know an asteroid is bearing down and time is of the essence is a mystery to me. Once again the engines seem to do just fine or melt through the floor depending on what the story calls for.
Why use a phaser on the asteroid and burn out the engines? A photon torpedo would have a lot more punch and not take nearly as much energy from the ship. Because they needed the Enterprise to take two months to get back to the planet so Kirk could do his thing on the planet.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
No redshirt deaths in The Paradise Syndrome but Kirk’s wife and unborn child don’t fare well.
Technobabble
The explanation of how imperative it is to deflect an asteroid as far away as possible, and how you don’t need to move it very far if you do it far enough away from the target is excellent.
I Know That Guy:
Sabrina Scharf plays the fetching Miramanee. She kept working steadily in the ’60s and early ’70s but abruptly quit acting and became an attorney and activist.
Rudy Solari played Salish but did so little, I could barely find anything even on IMDB. He sadly passed away in 1991 at the age of 56.
Richard Hale played Goro. He worked a lot from the ’40s through the ’80s and usually played either Middle Eastern or Native American characters.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
People seem to despise The Paradise Syndrome and I’m not really sure why. It’s not a classic or anything but it’s perfectly fine. This type of story would be done much better in TNG’s The Inner Light but the idea is basically the same. The responsible captain and leader longs for the simple life and gets it temporarily before he’s pulled back into his life.
Mostly this story works or doesn’t work due to execution. In The Inner Light, most of the runtime is devoted to Picard’s journey into his life while the rest of the crew trying to bring him back is only 20% of the episode. This gives Picard’s story a lot of time to breathe.
Here it’s more 60/40 between the two stories and neither has a great opportunity to breathe. Kirk’s fares better but Spock, Bones, and the Enterprise have a lot of issues. Spock does what he can but it feels very manufactured to blow the warp engines just to make sure Kirk stays on the planet. Then Spock has to figure out the writing on the obelisk, which he does in the very next scene. It’s all very rushed.
It doesn’t help The Paradise Syndrome that McCoy is a bit of a jerk throughout most of those scenes where he just comes across as grating and unhelpful. This was an opportunity to make these two work together and instead, it was mostly insipid arguing for the sake of it.
Kirk’s story fares quite a bit better as he reluctantly takes up the mantle of “god,” has a perfectly understandable conflict with the previous medicine man, and falls in love. His appreciation of the life he finally has makes sense, as does his conflict and nightmares attempting to remind him of who he is.
It’s tragic (though really? McCoy couldn’t save her from a lackluster stoning?) and sad but just doesn’t quite pack the punch other versions of this story would have in later shows.
I think the hate comes from the stupid and dumb lefties who see white people playing Indians and knee-jerk hating for the sake of it.
It’s not like there were a ton of native American actors running around Hollywood in those days. It certainly doesn’t insult Native Americans in any way that I can see. The story makes that life look idyllic. Maybe that’s inaccurate but it certainly isn’t trying to be insulting about it. I think everyone just needs to calm down and look at the story for what it is.
The Paradise Syndrome is a perfectly serviceable if unremarkable episode.
