those damn hippies
- Thread starter hifijohn
- Start date
Once.
Just the once in Devil in The Dark! He wasn't even mentioned again! Next time Barry Russo (or John Duke Russo) appeared he was Commodore Bob Wesley in The Ultimate Computer!
JB
Wait a minute, wait a minute! I never said he was Robert W. Giotto!!! 
Nicely put in though, Timo, but it was a different character...apparently!
JB
Nicely put in though, Timo, but it was a different character...apparently!JB
I always wondered who could have made the hippie dudes futuristic guitar
Could never be a Fender or Gibson incarnation, not even allowing for 300 years of development
Rickenbacker though. . . . .possibility
Could never be a Fender or Gibson incarnation, not even allowing for 300 years of development
Rickenbacker though. . . . .possibility
I always wondered who could have made the hippie dudes futuristic guitar
Could never be a Fender or Gibson incarnation, not even allowing for 300 years of development
Rickenbacker though. . . . .possibility
His name was Adam.
Romulans, Vulcans, Medusans . . . there are a lot of names in the original series besides Eden that relocate a bit of Earth culture and lore into space. Sometimes they're held up as the true origins of the Earth myths (Apollo in "Who Mourns for Adonais"), and I suppose Eden may be the opposite case, in which an Earth myth affected the perception of a planet discovered later. But I'm not sure you can always explain the parallels so literally.
Why would the UT give them those particular names?
I doubt that I will even find a better reference to trying to relate current pop culture to what we see in Star Trek than this. Even if they someday tried make it canon that Budweiser was actually making warp engine components in the future, it won't top this.I always wondered who could have made the hippie dudes futuristic guitar
Could never be a Fender or Gibson incarnation, not even allowing for 300 years of development
Rickenbacker though. . . . .possibility
That name would have made the episode make more sense, by explaining the hippies motivation as being trying to get back to a primitive state, rather than anything to do with that world they were looking for.
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 think that the idea is that Star Trek's future got to a somewhat "utopian" state through technology, and now that things are so peaceful, these new hippies are looking for a way to live peacefully without the tech or the societal rules in place to protect the peace. Actual it makes sense now, THE WAY TO EDEN; it's not that they don't see the present society as a "utopian" free society, it's that they want to find a different WAY to get there that requires less tech.
Kirk is out-of-character mad because he sees them as a threat to his version of society. If theft, border violations, and lack of respect became the norm, there could be no utopia either in his militaristic way or their nontechnical way. So he sees them as hypocrites, and is trying to not to accept that.
I suddenly think this episode is way more interesting.
Utopia or not, I'll bet there are still orders for your day to day life in The UFP while on Eden the Hippies wanted to live their lives in their own way and be happy!
JB
JB
I certainly never said "utopia". It really doesn't matter that the Star Fleet people have chosen a different way... if they're more developed people, with fewer intolerances, more appreciative of other points of view, then there ought to be more than enough room in the Federation for the "hippies" to pursue this life, and there should be all sorts of ways of living life represented all through the Federation. And the crew shouldn't be weirded out by them, in that same way the mainstream was in the 60s. They wouldn't agree on avoiding technology, that's all.
I was mostly joking, but if the UT does take concepts and give words to describe them, then words with cultural meanings could be it's way of filing in concepts. Eden = a nice place that has no specific location.
I think I must be the only person who counts this as one of their favorite episodes. I love stories about crazy cult leaders; I'm always interested in what motivates them, and why people choose to follow them. I'd love to see an origin story for Dr. Sevrin - how he became mentally unbalanced, and how he became ill.
It's not in my Top Ten TOS episodes, but I don't mind watching it every once it a while.
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