Title: The Way To Eden
Airdate: 2/20/1969
Plot Summary
SPACE HIPPIES. ‘Nuff said.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk is pretty much as irritated with this group of dirty hippies as we are. The one time he softens and shows a bit of sympathy for the young, he immediately gets informed they’ve taken over the ship.
Even though everyone on the ship is completely unconscious because of the hypersonics, Kirk is able to shake it long enough to stumble into the control room and turn it off. Because (say it with me now) he’s just that awesome.
Logical
Spock is sympathetic to their cause and their philosophies. He is able to talk to their language and even spends time playing his lyre with them. My opinion of Spock ratcheted down several notches thanks to this episode.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy finds out that Sevrin is a carrier of space syphilis or whatever and quarantines him quickly.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu has to pilot the ship and run the tractor beam on the stolen ship, duties he performs excellently. He’s also into botany, apparently.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov is front and center this episode, working with Spock to find “Eden” and rekindling his romance with Irina, a former classmate in the academy. He at first is pretty pissed at her but her bare midriff starts to break down his defenses.
We also get a proper Chekov scream when he burns his hand.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura sits this one out and I don’t blame her.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty doesn’t brook any nonsense and tosses them out of his engine room first chance he has.
Canon Maker
This is the first time the Enterprise will find a false Eden. It will not be the last.
Canon Breaker
Once again anyone can just walk into a critical section of the ship and take it over, in this case auxiliary control. Yeesh.
Spock reads no life at all on the planet, neither humanoid nor animal. A ton of plants got really offended. Maybe that’s why it started killing them all.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
No red shirts die, but a few dirty hippies do and I’m totally here for it.
Technobabble
The auxiliary control room is identified as the room that will serve as a bridge should some systems break down. This will become a staple in Trek, if not often used.
Hypersonics kill. Except when they don’t.
I Know That Guy:
Skip Homeier returns. First played a Nazi, now a cult leader. Damn, talk about unfortunate typecasting.
Mary Linda Rapelye plays the old flame of Chekov’s.
Victor Brandt plays Tongo Rad. He was last seen in Elaan of Troyius as Watson and has a much bigger, more insufferable part here.
Phyllis Hodges Boyce played the blonde hippie. She was just two when she played a little girl in Gone With The Wind. Later she also played in Batman and was previously in The Galileo Seven. Batman, Trek, and Gone With The Wind. That’s got to be unique.
But the real shock casting is Charles Napier as Adam. Napier played in so many shows as a military or police officers I have to wonder if this job made him only take parts that was as far from this role as humanly possibly. Napier was Tucker McElroy, one of the Good Ole Boys in The Blues Brothers, Murdock in Rambo Part II, and even returned to Star Trek as (you guessed it) a General in Deep Space Nine. His resume is long and there’s a ton of voice and acting work that you’ve probably seen him in.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
HERBERT! HERBERT! HERBERT!
Well you asked for it you animals. The one you’ve desperately waited for. And lest I bury the lead, it sucks ass. But I really attempted to be objective about it.
This episode was supposed to represent the hippie counter-culture of the day. If it was trying to portray them in a sympathetic light, it fails miserably. But if it was trying to show how insufferable the boomer youth was during that time period, there’s a case that it may have succeeded. An older professor type taking a bunch of kids under his wing to lead them to ruin? Kids so out and out unrepentantly obnoxious, arrogant, and so sure of their nonsense only to have reality nearly burn their feet off, never mind killing a couple of them.
So maybe they were trying to say that hippies are just a bunch of dirty commies cultists and should die.
Alas, I don’t think that was the case, or at least not intentionally. Spock by his very character and history will lend a certain amount of gravitas with his opinion. If he thinks highly of something, so should the viewer. So we should take this group somewhat seriously.
But I can’t. From Sevrin’s stupid silly putty ears, to Adam’s obnoxious singing, to their insane ideas of going to some godforsaken planet just because it’s pretty, it’s all nails on a chalkboard grating. The singing alone just makes me want to jam an icepick in my ear canal. Not one of these characters come across as sympathetic. If they had just blown up at the beginning, it would saved everyone a lot of trouble.
Oh by the way, you let these people, one of which you are pretty sure is insane, just wander around the ship into sensitive areas. And somehow they find Eden because.. I dunno. It was on a floppy disk marked “Eden?” How the fuck did they cross reference that shit?
Fuck this episode. If you want to introduce someone to Trek, never show them this. Or even better, if they become a fan, consider this their trial by fire. If they still love Trek after this episode, you got a live one.
Everyone involved in writing this should be sacked. And by that I mean stuffed in burlap and tossed in a river.
