The Way To Eden = propaganda?

They handled the whole hippie/rebel issue more effectively and sympathetically in season 2 with just one line of dialogue from Teri Garr.

 

For all the griping about TOS' third season seeing what Frieberger wrought on the second season of Space: 1999 a few years later is to conclude that TOS got lucky. 1999's second season was essentially a wasteland of bad, bad, bad.

 

It may have been about as discrete as a sledgehammer, but remember, at the time there were race riots going on in many of the big cities. Imagine not just 1 LA Riots (the 1992 one) but many and imagine they had been going on for the past few years. 1968 was a crazy year on so many levels (multiple assassinations, Tet Offensive means everything was hitting the fan in Vietnam, lots of chaos). Star Trek reflects that rising chaos with the orgy of death that are the redshirts in Season 2 (67-68). You have to consider the time something was made in when it was trying to say something.

 

I still find it hilarious that the lead hippie (Adam) was played by Charles Napier, who now is mainly known for playing hard-nosed military types like he would later do on DS9.

 

I hated that “almost self-destruct” sequence. It was such an obvious cheat. We know Kirk isn’t really going to blow up the Enterprise, for Christ’s sake. It was just a way to pad out the running time of an already thin story.

And the Nazi Planet episode had already been done in Season Two.

 

Compare it to "Blue Boy" from Dragnet '67. As bratty as the hippies act, Kirk allows Spock and Checkov to help them, right, and doesn't just yell at them and lock 'em up. I actually thought it was a way progressive entertainment types in Hollywood were showing they were hep to the now.

But be aware, I think it's a great ep. Character development of a secondary character. How'd THAT get by the TOS showrunners?! The whole Spock-grokking them - nice touch. The psychedelic organ sound on Spock's harp - who knew? I love that riff they play - always reminds me of Ballad of Billy Jo.

 

I, for one, am glad they didn''t with McCoy's doctor. That would have been just too Eewww. It also would have made Kirk look really bad getting involved with one of his best friend's daughter.

 

It wasn't a complete loss.

The part with the sonic attack on the Enterprise crew and the Aurora and its destruction were nicely done.

 

I would've kept the character as Joanna McCoy, but still had her involved with Chekov, maybe even have her be an Academy dropout with a prior history with Chekov. Would've made for a great scene between McCoy and his wayward daughter, mirroring the same argument many parents were having with their own hippie children at the time. As well as some nifty "stay away from my daughter" moments between McCoy and Chekov.

 

it could have been far FAR worse..

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaGG8Oh3Qas[/yt]

 

Oh, the pain.....

 

To paraphrase Doctor Smith "You puscillanimous poseur!"

How many episodes into Season 2 did it become a live-action cartoon?
(people seem to forget Lost in Space left all seriousness behind shortly after it became colorized)

 

A lot of American shows got less serious when they went into color, didn't they? Adventures of Superman, The Fugitive to some extent, ... even Gilligan's Island managed to get even sillier.

Doctor Who got silly eventually, but not immediately upon going colo(u)r.

 

An interesting Starlog article with Russell Johnson (The Professor) said that in the last season of Gilligan's Island, the writers wrote more silly "dream sequence" episodes because they were not allowed to write anything that indicated "sex between the castaways".

 

It was also a way to get off that island set and have some fun with the characters without having the castaways actually rescued.

 

You mean Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe”? That’s a pretty standard blues guitar riff, isn’t it?

 

Interestingly enough, Gilligan creator Sherwood Schwartz related that they had plans to change the format of the show in the 4th season with flashback episodes/sequences that would have shown the castaways in their lives before the shipwreck. Sadly for the show, which was approved for a 4th season, CBS President William Paley insisted that they reinstate Gunsmoke—which had been cut from the schedule—and to make room for it, the programming execs decided to drop a new show they weren't confident in, and which shared an hour with Gilligan.

 

But, they were also going to replace Ginger with 2 new female castaways and have Ginger conveniently forget about the other 6 castaways she was stranded with for so long. They also had some really absurd script ideas. To paraphrase the title of another recent topic, maybe cancellation was a blessing in disguise.

 

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26tWWopd_3g&feature=related[/yt]

 

Truer words could not be spoken in this thread.


transcribed from "Assignment: Earth" (thanks to chakoteya.net):

"Assignment: Earth" actually seemed to bring a Baby Boomer-generation character to life, as a serious personality, for a brief time. By contrast, "The Way to Eden" seems to trivialize the generational divide that plagued America (and other parts of the world) during the Vietnam War era. Dr. Severn and his Eden-bound Aurora space hippies came across as more of a cheesy uber-60s TV caricature of the Boomers.