Damn Dirty Hippies!

[Jeri]

^ The husband was visiting his family in Green Bay, and it was even colder here than there. It's just not right!

Yeah, Chuck was a definitely a hippy; he had his own commune. SoCal is not poser-land; it's on the west coast.

 

[T'Bonz]

East coast hippies were an order of magnitude or two less serious: the west coast had the Manson family and Berkeley; the east coast had Woodstock. Posers. And they looked it: east coasters always wore belts with their bell bottoms.

LOL. West Coast elitist.

I hardly think Charlie was representative of the hippie movement anyhow. Or at least, I prefer to think that he was not.

There were plenty of real hippies in the East.

But Way To Eden was dated even in 1971 or 2, when I first watched it. I remember cringing at the cheesiness of it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^ The husband was visiting his family in Green Bay, and it was even colder here than there. It's just not right!

Yeah, Chuck was a definitely a hippy; he had his own commune. SoCal is not poser-land; it's on the west coast.

Having a commune or not wearing a belt doesn't make you a hippie. If you think it does then you don't really know what a hippie is.

As a long time resident of Northern California, I can with great confidence call SoCal hippies "posers". We invented the hippie!

 

[Jeri]

Way to Eden was always dated. It was never right.

East coast hippies not only wore belts with their bell bottoms, they wore white belts with their bell bottoms. And probably white shoes, too.

Indeed NorCal did invent the hippie; but in comparison with east coasters, SoCal is not poser land. Chuck was a hippie; his biographies call him that, too. You won't find where I said he was representative. In fact, I was pointing out he was extreme. The east coast hippies were wimps in comparison to what went on in the west; during the decade of the 1960's, we lived in the south, the west coast, the midwest and the east coast.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Sorry, but crusing the Sunset Strip or living in Laurel Canyon doesn't make you a hippie. SoCal was full of charletons, conmen, criminals and crazies. Old Charlie was all four, but he wasn't a hippie.

 

[Jeri]

You won't find where I said it did; and biographies and news accounts call Manson a hippie. He's a criminal, such as Doctor Sevrin, who was portrayed by Star Trek in The Way to Eden as a hippie.

 

[Nerys Myk]

You won't find where I said it did; and biographies and news accounts call Manson a hippie. He's a criminal, such as Doctor Sevrin, who was portrayed by Star Trek in The Way to Eden as a hippie.

Killing people isn't a hippie trait. Sevrin seems closer to Tim Leary than Charlie.

 

[Jeri]

Again, you won't find where I said it was; but Chuck was categorized as a hippie and Sevrin portrayed as one.

P.S. I wouldn't agree Sevrin is no worse than Leary. Leary never endangered people's lives by knowingly carrying a deadly disease among them or nearly killing a shipload of them with sonic waves.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Then those people were wronmg about Charlie. Sevrin was nevere called a hippie. He was a parody/satire/commentary on hippie leaders.

 

[Jeri]

Manson is commonly called a hippie, and this episode is commonly called the one with space hippies.

 

[Nerys Myk]

And the rock in WALGMO is called the "penis rock". Humorous nicknames, but not what it was called in the episode.

To many people anyone with long hair is a hippie. When I wore my hair long I was called a hippie. I wasn't.

 

[Jeri]

There's been no fan dissension about this group in the episode being meant to portray hippies.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It was a commentary about the hippie counterculture. As I have said many times. A reflection of 1960's society as seen through Star Trek's prisim. Something Star Trek did now and again. See "A Private Little War" for some Cold War/Vietnam commentary.

 

[Jeri]

They were attempting to make a commentary; not many take it seriously.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It was a fun episode. The Herberts just dont get it.

 

[Jeri]

It was a fun episode; I don't skip over it when I'm watching the series in order. But skipping is not my policy anyway.

 

[snakespeare]

Yay! They agree! :-)

There were no hippies, in fact. There were children of scared parents who spent their time after school getting stoned. There were also some people who dropped out of the capitalistic mainstream to create communes, but that had been going on for hundreds of years. There were also pacifists who for various reasons, some religious and others sheer survival instinct, did not want to go to war. There were also vegetarians who could not bring themselves to eat other living creatures. There were the beginnings of the questioning of the belief that chemical products could ensure food quality. There were campaigns to reduce the population explosion. Popular music began to incorporate classical sounds, which was somehow also revolutionary. And there was a general belief that humanity had gone down the wrong path with, not the invention of the A-Bomb, but the decision to use it. But more than anything else, there were a bunch of kids who postponed their adulthood by partying, which basically meant enduring mental agonies and physical discomfort because it was "cool".

Sensationalized news shows tried to blur it all together because fear sells ads. (Manson's "family" was a great boon to news programs.) But the truth was, it was just normal life. The people of the 60s were actually as normal as the people of other decades. The only real difference was the ratio of adults to children, so obviously, the old fear that Saturn had of his children, played itself out.

Whether NoCal, SoCal, Upstate or Downstate, the kids who wore those bellbottoms and tie dyes were all conforming to their social norms. They were all enacting time-honored mating rituals, just the same as the pierced and tatted youth of today.

Those who remain from those times, who still retain those values of peace, harmony, and love of the arts, mostly cut their hair and changed to the new fashions. Such people would be peace-loving no matter where or when they were born.

So "hippy" was a construct of the television news shows, and this episode is actually an artifact in itself of the failure of two generations to understand one another (not that anyone wanted to!)

 

[scotpens]

. . . --I submit that if they had gotten rid of the musical numbers then this episode would be held in a much higher regard than it currently is

No, it wouldn't. Crap is crap.

Lost in Space had a "space hippies" episode, but that show was INTENTIONALLY played for laughs.

 

[scotpens]

There were no hippies, in fact. . . The people of the 60s were actually as normal as the people of other decades. The only real difference was the ratio of adults to children, so obviously, the old fear that Saturn had of his children, played itself out.

That's a valid point. Hippies were largely a creation of the media. Every generation has its share of young rebels and non-conformists. Before the hippies, there were beatniks; before beatniks, there were bohemians. And the presence of "hippies" in San Francisco's fabled Haight-Ashbury district was a very brief phenomenon, lasting from the summer of 1967 (the "Summer of Love") through 1970 or so.

Getting back on topic, I wonder how many non-Trekkies have only seen "The Way to Eden," "And the Children Shall Lead" and "Spock's Brain" -- and based their opinion of the show on those three episodes?

 

[TheKeeper]

I "reach" this much maligned episode based largely on two factors:

- The scene after the sonic weapon has rendered the crew unconscious. Adam and the others are singing a happy version of "Heading Out to Eden" as the camera pans across scenes of all the crew collapsed and looking dead. That was a pretty powerful moment, and I would put it up against some of the best moments in all of TOS.

- Irina was hot.