3.20 — “The Way to Eden”
Plot: The Enterprise takes on board six colorful renegades, traveling through space on a stolen cruiser in search of the legendary planet Eden. Their wild clothes, groovy songs, and (somewhat) passive resistance techniques evoke space hippies. Unfortunately, these renegades are cultishly following a charismatic leader whom Spock opines is insane.
Thoughts: This episode is supposed to be a famously bad episode. James Doohan and Walter Koenig both said they don’t care for it, and D.C. Fontana had her name taken off it (although this may have been more in reaction to the degree to which her script was rewritten than based on the final content). Eugene and Torie at TheViewscreen.com hated it, each giving it a score of “Warp Core Breach” on a scale of 1 to 6 (Torie suggested the episode should be subtitled, ““God, doesn’t it feel GREAT to punch a hippie?” Which is pretty funny). I must be undiscriminating, because I enjoyed it very much.
Perhaps the songs and costumes feel too wild for some people? Does it read as condescension or disrespect for 1960s counter-culture? I believe we have enough distance on those times now for a critical reappraisal. I thought the songs were rather good. The dubbing was atrocious, but I can overlook that.
Passive resistance and counter culture are interesting topics, certainly worthy of examination by Star Trek. The cult dynamic adds another interesting layer. Spock’s identification with the seekers is an interesting twist for his character, displaying humility about his passion for logic and choice to avoid emotion. This is a big episode for him–it feels like the endpoint of a long arc through the whole series. The ethos of the speakers is not illogical; for Spock it may represent another way out of his emotional hell of unbelonging.
In this episode we find out Chekov’s first name. I thought his scenes were nice, even if they portrayed him as more of a square (Herbert!) than implied by earlier episodes. His argument with Irina over the merits of life in Starfleet was a good piece of dialogue–both characters were absolutely correct, from their own points of view. Her accent sounds Transylvanian instead of Russian, however–making Chekov sound positively authentic by comparison. Wouldn’t they be more likely to speak to each other in Russian? Maybe she was from Transylvania.
it’s the sign of a dramatic, well-plotted episode when cast members beam down to a planet for the first time in Act IV. There were only two things I didn’t like about this episode. Some of the scenes on the bridge of crewmembers rocking out to the groovy music are overdone. Some more subtlety, please? Also, no one but Spock should be able to perform a Vulcan neck pinch.
3.5 out of 5 Herberts.
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