Oh, Picard, you are Stiff!
those damn hippies
- Thread starter hifijohn
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Oh, Picard, you are Stiff!
If the Space Hippie Interstellar Troupe there hated anything that was technological (thank Dr Sevrin's insanity and the kids' naivety), Data would not be welcomed into the group as (he) is the ultimate regarding "conflict of interest". Irina Galliulin would be the one to disassemble (him) since she was the cadet who dropped out, the others' origins (Rad aside) not really brought up...
But Picard? Why not? Catch Picard at a low point (family member dies) and coincidence brings up the hippies at just the perfect time? Like winning the lottery, it can happen...
Now there's a visual!!
Everybody was making fun of hippies at the time. Even George Carlin (who, only a few years later, would start to LOOK like a hippie) had his whole "Al Sleet, the Hippie-Dippy Weatherman" bit.
Still, I would say that there are only a few TOS episodes I like less than "The Way to Eden." Like maybe "The Man Trap." I'd say I even liked "Spock's Brain" better.
Still, I would say that there are only a few TOS episodes I like less than "The Way to Eden." Like maybe "The Man Trap." I'd say I even liked "Spock's Brain" better.
The thing that I found bizarre is that Captain James T. Kirk, representing the peaceful United Federation of Planets and who in other episodes would've been mellow and espoused sentiments very much in line with the peace n' love era, gets all militant and reacts like a hardened crusty old guy when confronted with these kids. In any other episode I could imagine Kirk maybe being suspicious of Dr Sevrin himself and his motives, but not so outright hostile as he is here even before he even meets them , as if the very concept of hippies makes him puke. Strikes me as out of character. By contrast, Spock here is much, much more open-minded and in tune with the philosophy of peace, love and harmony, he just seems to 'get' what Kirk doesn't. Spock is not a Herbert.
The thing that I found bizarre is that Captain James T. Kirk, representing the peaceful United Federation of Planets and who is other episodes would've been mellow and espoused sentiments very much in line with the peace n' love era, reacts like a hardened crusty old guy when confronted with these kids. In any other episode I could imagine Kirk maybe being suspicious of Dr Sevrin himself and his motives, but not so outright hostile as he is here even before he even meets them , as if the very concept of hippies makes him puk. Spock here is much, much more open-minded and in tune with the philosophy of peace, love and harmony, he just seems to 'get' what Kirk doesn't. Spock is not a Herbert.
Yup. It's basically a Spock fanboy episode in that regard. And Spock's failure to appreciate the threat posed by the hippies certainly doesn't help when they nearly kill the entire crew.
The thing that I found bizarre is that Captain James T. Kirk, representing the peaceful United Federation of Planets and who in other episodes would've been mellow and espoused sentiments very much in line with the peace n' love era, gets all militant and reacts like a hardened crusty old guy when confronted with these kids. In any other episode I could imagine Kirk maybe being suspicious of Dr Sevrin himself and his motives, but not so outright hostile as he is here even before he even meets them , as if the very concept of hippies makes him puke. Strikes me as out of character. By contrast, Spock here is much, much more open-minded and in tune with the philosophy of peace, love and harmony, he just seems to 'get' what Kirk doesn't. Spock is not a Herbert.
I don't think he treats them any worse than anyone else that stole a ship, compare to Harry Mudd after he finds out that Harry isn't allowed to be out in that ship. And he knows this one is stolen before the episode starts, not just flying without a travel plan. He wasn't too happy with Lokai for stealing a shuttle, either.
I take that point @Marsden 
But it still feels like such a vehement anger, like Kirk is being written as the old military guy who admonishes "these kids, with their scruffy clothes and their shabby hair", just as a general impression, I feel like in some other episodes he might not have been written in quite that same way...
But it still feels like such a vehement anger, like Kirk is being written as the old military guy who admonishes "these kids, with their scruffy clothes and their shabby hair", just as a general impression, I feel like in some other episodes he might not have been written in quite that same way...
I take that point @Marsden
Scotty sees through the hippies from minute one ("...a nice lot, too"). He scowls at an engineer on the bridge who's rocking out to the their music. Scotty is on the ball as usual.
By comparison, Kirk is soft on them ("I got into a little trouble at that age, didn't you, Scotty?"). And this, right while Tongo Rad is attacking crewmen. Spock, by playing the well-timed rock and roll gig, inadvertently assists in the hippies' distraction that helps Rad attack.
The crew is blasted with a sonic weapon, control of the ship is lost to visitors, and the Romulan Neutral Zone is violated, not to mention just going off the ship's assigned route at all. If a hundredth of that fiasco happened under a U.S. Navy captain, he'd be court martialed and never command another ship bigger than a toy in the bathtub, regardless of the verdict, due to a "loss of confidence" in his ability to do the job. The musically inclined executive officer would be gone, too.
Compared to the Navy, Starfleet is incredibly forgiving.
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What seemed wrong about TWTE was that if we had solved all these social problems, then there shouldn't be any need for such a counter culture in the 23rd century. There would be nothing to rebel against. There could be people like them, but there wouldn't be all this antagonism. The Enterprise crew should be unphased by them, and they'd get along alright. Instead, the crew act as surrogates for the WW2 generation, conformist contingent of the audience. "What's with these crazy kids these days, Ethel? In my day we didn't talk back to our elders!!" And so on. Is that how we see the society of Star Trek? Or that crew?
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In Star Trek's future, there should certainly be a hell of a lot more loose, Bohemian, hippie-ish people than there are now. And people would be okay with it, unless someone happens to be an a'hole...
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In Star Trek's future, there should certainly be a hell of a lot more loose, Bohemian, hippie-ish people than there are now. And people would be okay with it, unless someone happens to be an a'hole...
More or less what I was trying to say, but you've put it much more eloquently 
Didn't Chekov's girlfriend know that Sevrin was intending to murder the entire crew of the Enterprise including Chekov and didn't try to stop him or warn anyone.
In the end the hippies were saved and everyone is sorry for them while they should have been put in jail for accessory after the fact AND MADE TO WORK BREAKING ROCKS IN PRISON -DAMN HIPPIES.
Kirk was very forgiving - Lenore, Lester, damn hippies.
Didn't Chekov's girlfriend know that Sevrin was intending to murder the entire crew of the Enterprise including Chekov and didn't try to stop him or warn anyone.
In the end the hippies were saved and everyone is sorry for them while they should have been put in jail for accessory after the fact AND MADE TO WORK BREAKING ROCKS IN PRISON -DAMN HIPPIES.
Kirk was very forgiving - Lenore, Lester, damn hippies.
Irina Galliulin and Tongo Rad both knew and I think one of them must have disobeyed Sevrin because the Enterprise crew wasn't dead, just knocked out.
Maybe they realized that Sevrin's old job was being a brutal dictator's assistant on the planet Ekos.
Yeh I'm not sure. I'd prefer your explanation. Otherwise the crew of the Enterprise are stupid letting the hippies go in the end.
However we didn't see anything on screen saying they had toned the sound waves and thought the crew only survived because they stopped the sounds for a few seconds for them to escape, giving Kirk or Spock a chance to disable the equipment.
One thing him and Cartman have in common.Kirk just hates those damn dirty hippies SO MUCH!!!!!
I got the feeling you couldn't just go find a planet and settle it in the Star Trek society of the 23rd century; you needed government approval - and in fact that group would NEVER get it because Doctor Sevrin had/carried a disease (which he got because of the Federation's high tech life support systems), that required him to remain in a high tech/managed environment or he'd die/infect others; so he and his group of followers were looking for the planet 'Eden' because it was outside Federation jurisdiction; and a supposed Earth-type 'Paradise'.
That reminds me: the seemingly ridiculous aspects of TWTE are:
1) The idea that, not merely someone, but everyone (!) would think that Eden was a real, historical place.
2) That Eden was understood, without need for discussion, to be a planet, in fact an exoplanet, rather than a place on Earth-- where did that idea suddenly come from?
3) And that we somehow had enough information about this inferred planet to predict its location in interstellar space. Buh-whaaa? The Bible doesn't contain ANY of this information, and that's where the story of Eden is told.
Just as "The Omega Glory" did not tell us how the natives got our Constitution, this is a huge whole in the story. We are not being told something that the story hinges on and the characters take for granted.
I would suggest that when the Space Hippies say "Eden," they aren't referring to the Biblical place, but to the Terran nickname for a legendarily beautiful planet that Federation people have heard about from aliens, and thus have some solid, historically recent information about, but whose location in space has not been nailed down.
So searching for this "Eden" planet is more akin to looking for Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, or Noah's Ark, in that not everybody thinks it's worth it. And it's like the 1985 search for the Titanic, in that the thing is real but its coordinates have been elusive for a long time.
Melakon was just a similar looking humanoid life form to Sevrin! Dr.Sevrin's human ancestors include most Haunted's Julian Clegg! And I'm not kidding...
JB
A great great great great grandfather of mine, Henry Hurst (1771-1834), lived for part of his life in Paradise. Paradise, Pennsylvania, to be precise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_Pennsylvania
I don't think that many other people thought that Eden in "The Way to Eden" was supposed to be the biblical Eden, but merely a planet named after it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden
Presumably Eden was a planet that someone had visited very briefly, not long enough to discover the acidic biochemistry, or record its location, and were chased away from by Romulans.
And no doubt some of the people who spread the legend of the Edenic planet Eden in the Romulan Neutral Zone were people who wanted to restart the war with the Romulans. "Those dirty stinking Romulans, they stole Eden, the most perfect planet in all the galaxy, from us."
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