50th Anniversary Rewatch Thread

[ZapBrannigan]

Lost in Space did two different hippie episodes. "Collision of Planets" had essentially an alien biker gang with hippie overtones, with Daniel J. Travanti of Hill Street Blues as the leader. Both episodes portrayed the anti-establishment hippie concept as misguided at best, and sinister when you scratch the surface.

But that's not surprising, since they had to present a challenge to the heroes, who were disciplined, straight-laced, and clean-cut, much like Kirk and Spock. Dr. Smith was not a hero, so he promptly joined the hippies in "The Promised Planet," and absolutely skewered them with his pathetic attempt to assimilate, which had the effect of exuberant mockery. It was great.

So really, there was no way hippies were going to be shown in a positive light on Star Trek or Lost in Space. They got gentler treatment on mid-sixties sitcoms, but were still shown to be ridiculous or lazy in most cases. Bewitched went the other way and made hippies sexy, in the person of Serena (the Boyce and Hart episode). That works, too, since the main appeal of the hippie movement for young men, after opposing the Vietnam war, was the idea that if you dressed insanely and stopped getting haircuts, you'd get a lot more action with young women.

 

[wayne66]

Skip Homeier and Charles Napier are great. The counter culture does take a beating in this episode it is true. Still, I enjoy it. It is an entertaining episode. I know Walter Koenig did not like playing Chekov as such a rigid authority figure. I love the jam session. Charles Napier is a good singer. This is another episode where the Enterprise crew lets somebody take over the Enterprise. Seems pretty easy to do.

 

[erastus25]

Skip Homeier and Charles Napier are great. The counter culture does take a beating in this episode it is true. Still, I enjoy it. It is an entertaining episode. I know Walter Koenig did not like playing Chekov as such a rigid authority figure. I love the jam session. Charles Napier is a good singer. This is another episode where the Enterprise crew lets somebody take over the Enterprise. Seems pretty easy to do.

Takes a more subtle beating in This Side of Paradise, as well. Star Trek may have preached openness to all philosophies, including anti-war sentiment, but in practice it was not supportive of the counterculture movement.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Takes a more subtle beating in This Side of Paradise, as well.

That's a great point. The episode has Sandoval critical of himself for the colony having wasted time and accomplishing nothing. Metaphorically, it's like they've been high and partying all the time instead of working.

Star Trek may have preached openness to all philosophies, including anti-war sentiment, but in practice it was not supportive of the counterculture movement.

But this part I can't agree with, at least not fully. In "This Side of Paradise," the colony's going to be relocated and they're going to made their paradise on another planet. In "The Way to Eden," Spock encourages Irina to keep looking for Eden and for her group to either find or make it themselves.

In both cases, the message is that the groups' intentions are good, and that the groups are composed of good people (Dr. Sevrin himself excepted), but they were either subverted or led astray. Both episodes are supportive of the true missions of the groups.

In fact, the counterculture movement of the 1960s was plagued by the excess of drug use, so the criticism of "This Side of Paradise," while not universally applicable, was still broadly applicable. And, as in all movements, radicalization and extremism were problems in specific instances, though the overwhelming majority of hippies were nonviolent. So, it could be said that "The Way to Eden" was not metaphorically wrong, but it did not paint a generally-applicable picture, so arguably it was metaphorically unfair; it was too heavy on being the hippie episode instead of just the radical cult episode. Nevertheless the problem of radical, violent cults and other groups within the counterculture movement was a real problem, and one well-known instance was cited upthread already, even if it wasn't the norm.

 

[Maurice]

Is there some evidence to suggest "This Side of Paradise" was intended as a critique of hippie counterculture?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Is there some evidence to suggest "This Side of Paradise" was intended as a critique of hippie counterculture?

Not that I know of, but thematically, at least, it's doing the job to a tee, for the reasons I mentioned. I've always thought so. It may be a little too early to have been conceived as a critique of hippie counterculture per se, but not regarding counterculture involving communal lifestyles and experimentation with drugs.

 

[UnknownSample]

Before I move on from Requiem: People complaining about this or that seem to think that if the characters exhibit flaws, then that's a flaw in the writing, and a mistake.

Not a single Trek character, not a single person, is without flaws. I'm very glad Trek acknowledges this and shows us the flaws. Some of these flaws of the characters are pointed out in the lines, but people think it was a mistake anyway. Flint and Kirk competing over Rayna was not meant to make them look good. It was foolish, and that's the point. This will always happen, sometimes, though, because desire can take over and interfere with judgment. It's certainly not sexism in the writing, because they're made out to have been destructive fools at the end.
--------------
McCoy always will have that edge where he pushes his difficulties with Vulcans too far. That's the character. We tried a Trek where everyone was just nice and got along all the time, early Next Gen, and that didn't work out very well... The Spock - McCoy ongoing debate is one of the best things in TOS. McCoy was friendly. He was just being honest, and from his perspective, helpful.

 

[erastus25]

That's a great point. The episode has Sandoval critical of himself for the colony having wasted time and accomplishing nothing. Metaphorically, it's like they've been high and partying all the time instead of working.


But this part I can't agree with, at least not fully. In "This Side of Paradise," the colony's going to be relocated and they're going to made their paradise on another planet. In "The Way to Eden," Spock encourages Irina to keep looking for Eden and for her group to either find or make it themselves.

In both cases, the message is that the groups' intentions are good, and that the groups are composed of good people (Dr. Sevrin himself excepted), but they were either subverted or led astray. Both episodes are supportive of the true missions of the groups.

That's really slapping a band aid on the problem to hand waive it away though. At best, the show acknowledges counterculture ideals as theoretically a good thing, but in the two most overt on-screen examples they are treated as functionally awful. Either something to be saved by the Kirk and Starfleet, or as near-luddites who fall for the 23rd Century equivalent of anti-vaxxing propaganda. I don't disagree that the show pays lip service to the positives of counterculture, but that's overshadowed by the way it's actually portrayed and we never see this theoretical acceptance manifested.

 

[Discofan]

The thing that bothered me the most about that episode is that the hippies showed there are annoying, underhanded, borderline insane, (and that's not mentioning the attempted murder of the crew), character traits that the hippies I've met were totally lacking. They were simple people, they believed, maybe naively, that universal peace and love was possible. They had no taboos about drugs but they said nothing when I refused to participate. So unless there are two categories of hippies diametrically opposed on almost everything, the ones in ST are just very bad caricatures.

 

[erastus25]

"Bad caricatures" is pretty much a perfect description, IMO.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Star Trek
"The Way to Eden"
Originally aired February 21, 1969
Stardate 5832.3

The Enterprise picks up a group of space "hippies" looking for Eden.

What was going on the week the episode aired.

Guess I've already used some of my talking points upthread. I've always enjoyed this episode. The general behavior of the space hippies is entertainingly kooky and contrasts nicely with our disciplined, law-and-order Starfleet regulars. And I never had a problem with the existence of such a movement in-universe, because the rationale given for its existence in the episode makes perfect sense. We even get a nice bit of depth added to Spock, that he identified with and apparently had some past history with the movement. All that, and Spock Jams! Yes, I generally enjoy the music as part of the whole package of the space hippie culture presented here. I first became familiar with this episode in syndication, so when I got it on DVD, I was tickled to find that there were two more songs that I hadn't known of--the first one in sickbay and the first song in the jam session had both been cut.

What doesn't work so well is the half-baked concept of Planet Eden. What were its special requirements, that Sevrin and his followers wouldn't settle for any ol' relatively virgin, M-class planet, and that this specific one could be positively identified?

Also, I know she was pumping Chekov for information, so to speak, but you'd think that if Irina had attended the Academy, she'd know a little more of the basics of how the ship's computers worked, such that Chekov wouldn't feel the need to explain them to her in such elementary detail.

I'm not sure to what extent the dangers of cult leadership were on the radar in the general American culture at this point in 1969--to my knowledge, that became more of a thing in the '70s--but as has been touched upon upthread, this episode was particularly on-the-money in exploring this angle mere months before the Manson murders.

So unless there are two categories of hippies diametrically opposed on almost everything, the ones in ST are just very bad caricatures.

There are two types of people--those who divide people into two categories, and those who don't.

Next week--there's a Star Wars joke in here somewhere, but the Force isn't with me:

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[Discofan]

Star Trek
"The Way to Eden"
Originally aired February 21, 1969
Stardate 5832.3


What was going on the week the episode aired.

Guess I've already used some of my talking points upthread. I've always enjoyed this episode. The general behavior of the space hippies is entertainingly kooky and contrasts nicely with our disciplined, law-and-order Starfleet regulars. And I never had a problem with the existence of such a movement in-universe, because the rationale given for its existence in the episode makes perfect sense. We even get a nice bit of depth added to Spock, that he identified with and apparently had some past history with the movement. All that, and Spock Jams! Yes, I generally enjoy the music as part of the whole package of the space hippie culture presented here. I first became familiar with this episode in syndication, so when I got it on DVD, I was tickled to find that there were two more songs that I hadn't known of--the first one in sickbay and the first song in the jam session had both been cut.

What doesn't work so well is the half-baked concept of Planet Eden. What were its special requirements, that Sevrin and his followers wouldn't settle for any ol' relatively virgin, M-class planet, and that this specific one could be positively identified?

Also, I know she was pumping Chekov for information, so to speak, but you'd think that if Irina had attended the Academy, she'd know a little more of the basics of how the ship's computers worked, such that Chekov wouldn't feel the need to explain them to her in such elementary detail.

I'm not sure to what extent the dangers of cult leadership were on the radar in the general American culture at this point in 1969--to my knowledge, that became more of a thing in the '70s--but as has been touched upon upthread, this episode was particularly on-the-money in exploring this angle mere months before the Manson murders.


There are two types of people--those who divide people into two categories, and those who don't.

Next week--there's a Star Wars joke in here somewhere, but the Force isn't with me:

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Accept third party cookies

The first TOS episode that addresses the problem of painful gas...

 

[erastus25]

The first TOS episode that addresses the problem of painful gas...

I guess you missed Obsession! ;-)

 

[johnnybear]

The thing with Sandoval's colony was that they were working even if their livestock had died! It seems to me that to be happy in this day and age or fifty years earlier was a sin! Which of us would reject the spores which offered us peace and contentment on a beautiful planet with love as well rather than the work edict which preaches conformity and don't rock the boat even if you know it's wrong!
JB

 

[dahj]

I'm a bit late with the rewatch, which is so very Herbert of me, but I do reach this episode. Yeah it's a silly episode, but entertainingly so, so I kinda like it. I see you folks have already got the good and bad aspects of the depiction of hippies covered here, and I don't have much to add on that topic that hasn't already been said.

Except maybe that Charles Napier would go on to play a US Army General on DS9's Little Green Men, which is kinda symbolic of how many of the hippie generation went on to be a lot more conservative in their later years.

Sevrin's disease sounds like somebody read an article on MRSA while writing the script.

This was originally supposed to be the one where Kirk falls for McCoy's daughter Joanna, but the romance obviously got rewritten for Chekov and Irina which would explain why Chekov is suddenly a by the book super serious model officer(which would fit what we know of Kirk's past) and not his usual inwented-in-Russia comic relief self.

 

[johnnybear]

I don't think MRSA was around back then was it?
JB

 

[dahj]

I don't think MRSA was around back then was it?

I went to the google machine and it says first report was in '61.

 

[johnnybear]

Really? Wow! Then Trek were picking up on a real medical virus with Dr.Sevrin back in the sixties! Wonder why we weren't aware of that back then? Probably more reasons to keep us in the dark!
JB

 

[CorporalCaptain]

something to be saved by the Kirk and Starfleet

Pretty much every episode involves Kirk and crew fixing things. When there's no problem, there's no drama.

It would be easy enough to imagine "Wolf in the Fold" being rewritten to be set on a free love hippy colony, but in that case one could criticize the implication, by metaphor, that hippy communes are too weak to survive on their own without the assistance of state services like police and other subsidies, since it is the visiting starship that saves the colony from the evil predator.

If there's not something that needs to be fixed, then just what would the basis for the interaction between hippies and starship be? And if the hippies need the starship in some way, then how could that not be twisted around into a metaphorical declaration that hippies are inadequate?

 

[dahj]

"The Cloud Minders", Episode 76, February 28th

Tonight's Episode: You load sixteen clouds, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

(we're in the final four)