"Paradise" Lost

[MAGolding]

I discuss the chronology of the TOS episode "This Side of Paradise" in post # 110 of the thread:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/tos-chronology.304218/page-6

I notice that the Sandoval group had a philosophy similar to present day groups of "plain people" in the USA like Amish, and Mennonites (I have some distant Mennonite ancestors) and Hutterites, who avoid using various aspects of 20th century technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish#:~:text=The Amish (/ˈɑːm,branch off from, Mennonite churches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterites#:~:text=Hutterites (German: Hutterer),,of the early 16th century.

These groups are religious groups, and there is no mention of religion by members of Sandoval's group.

KIRK: Mister Spock, there were one hundred and fifty men, women, and children in that colony. What are the chances of survivors?

ELIAS: There are two other settlements, but we have forty five colonists here.
KIRK: What was the reason for the dispersal?
ELIAS: We felt three groups would have better potential. If disease were to strike one group, the others would be less likely to be affected. You see, Omicron is an ideal agricultural planet. We determined not to suffer the fate of expeditions that went before us.

ELIAS: By all means, make them. I think you'll find our settlement an interesting one. Our philosophy is a simple one, that men should return to a less complicated life. We have few mechanical things here. No vehicles, no weapons. We have harmony here. Complete peace.

ELIAS: This is the reason, Captain. This soil will grow anything we plant in it. It's a perfect world. We have a moderate climate, moderate rains all year round. It gives us all we need. It is perfect.

So the colonists seek a simple, uncomplicated, life, as farmers, without many mechanical things,

I suggest that farmers can't live simple, uncomplicated lives, without machines and vehicles. I suggest that the more complicated and advanced the technology available to a farmer, the more simple their life will be.

Even though the soil and the climate are good in this region of of Omicron Ceti Three, growing crops there would be labor intensive anyway.

LESLIE: I heard Sandoval saying they could grow anything here. That's true, sir. They've got a variety of crops in. Grains, potatoes, beans.
KIRK: Make your point.
LESLIE: Well, sir, for an agricultural colony, they have actually very little acreage planted. There's enough to sustain the colony, but very little more.

When Sandoval is freed from the spore influence:

ELIAS: We've done nothing here. No accomplishments, no progress. Three years wasted. We wanted to make this planet a garden.
MCCOY: You can't stay here. You can't survive without the spores. After you've cleared at the Starbase, you could be relocated. It depends upon what you want.
ELIAS: I think I'd, I think we'd like to get some work done. The work we started out to do.

So clearly the goal of the Sandoval group of colonists was to operate an agricultural colony that sold surplus food to other planets and bought stuff with the money from the sales.

That means they originally planned to work harder than necessary to grow enough crops to survive.

When I was a teenage boy, I had the chore of mowing the lawn on a quarter acre suburban plot with a house, a garage, and some flower gardens in it, so the area of lawn to be mowed was rather small, but I hated the job and the time wasted on it. I used an un powered or man powered push mower.

Then we moved to an outer suburb and a place which had ten or eleven acres of land. Fortunately most of the land was forest and grasslands that weren't mowed by me often. The area that I had to mow was about two acres, and some of it was nice flat lawns with no obstacles. But there were three buildings, a pond, trees, bushes, flowers, rocks, etc,.in many parts that I had to avoid, and a steep slope in one part.

I generally mowed with a powered push mower for about an hour or a tankful of gas each day, and when I finished mowing the whole mowing area it was usually time to start over again. One time I was rather ambitious and did all the mowing in a single full day of work.

If I had a riding mower I could have done the mowing faster, but there were areas to be mowed that were not very suitable for large width riding mowers.

And I noticed in "This Side of Paradise" that parts of the area around the Sandoval settlement seemed to be large lawns.

Farmers with modern equipment use many mechanical tools to plant, tend, water, and harvest their crops. These are usually pulled by tractors, unless they have their own motors.

What did Sandoval say:

ELIAS: By all means, make them. I think you'll find our settlement an interesting one. Our philosophy is a simple one, that men should return to a less complicated life. We have few mechanical things here. No vehicles, no weapons. We have harmony here. Complete peace.

So they have few mechanical things, and no vehicles.

So their hypothetical mechanical plows, tillers, weeders, and harvesters can't be pulled by any powered vehicles.

It is common to use sheep as living lawnmowers, and we actually used a goat as a living lawn mower for a while. General Carrington used horse pulled and powered mechanical lawn mowing machines to cut the grass on the parade ground at Fort Phil Kearney in 1866, and no doubt also to cut wild grass for hay for the horses over the winter.

Modern powered plows, tillers, weeders, and harvesters are descended from 19th century mechanical counterparts that were powered by the horses and other livestock that pulled them. Such devices were widely used to mechanize farms in the Northern USA by the time of the Civil War of 1861-65. So a large proportion of young men could leave their farms to serve in the Union army and the farms could continue to produce large surplus crops to feed the army and the northern cities and export vast amounts of grain to feed the United Kingdom, which was thus discouraged from intervening in favor of the CSA.

So possibly Sandoval's group planned on using farm animals for power for various livestock powered mechanical farm machines, much like 19th century farmer sin the USA did. But "the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry".

Omicron Ceti III is exposed to deadly Berthold radiation, presumable from Omicron Ceti, that destroys animal tissues. The spores protect their human hosts from the Berthold rays. But:

KELOWITZ: (opening up the barn door) Hey.
SULU: What is it?
KELOWITZ: No cows. This barn isn't even built for them, Just for storage.
SULU: Come to think of it, we haven't seen any animals. No horses, no pigs, not even a dog. Nothing.

SPOCK: Spock here, Captain. There seems to be a total absence of life on the planet, with the exception of the colonists and various types of flora.

MCCOY: No animals. That's peculiar.
KIRK: Yes, especially in view of the fact that the records for this expedition indicate that they did have some for breeding and food purposes. Apparently, none of them survived.

SPOCK: Nothing. Not even insects. Yet your plants grow, and you've survived exposure to Berthold rays.

So no insects to pollinate any flowering plants among the crops. So pollinating them is another task for the colonists.

MCCOY: We've explained the Berthold rays to you and their effect. Can't you understand?
ELIAS: Doctor, how can I make you understand? Your own instruments have shown that we're all in perfect health. We've had no deaths here.
KIRK: What about your animals?
ELIAS: We're vegetarians.
KIRK: That doesn't answer my question, sir. Why did all your animals die?

So if Sandovals's group did bring farm animals, Kelowitz's observation that the barn wasn't built for cows means that it wasn't prefabricated on Earth and merely assembled by the colonists. So the colonists probably had to cut down a lot of trees by hand, saw them into planks by hand, and build the barn by hand, and presumably all the other buildings. Unless the barn was prefabricated and the colonists removed the stalls after the cows died.

So basically the plan for the Sandoval colony involved a lot of physical labor by the colonists, and then when the livestock died the labor multiplied. The colonists would have to provide all the muscle power themselves and would have to work much harder to produce merely enough food to survive than they would have had to work to produce large surplus crops for export if they had living farm animals.

So to me living in the Sandoval colony would seem a lot like being condemned to hard labor in prison.

Of course the influence of the spores made the colonists happy and contented. Under the influence of the spores, possibly helped a lot by their previous commitment to the philosophy of the Sandoval group, the colonists were happy despite their hard labor.

But suppose you were a child living on Earth with a happy, carefree childhood in a technologically advanced society, and one or both of your parents were converted to the Sandoval group's philosophy of the simple life, and they took you two or three hundred light years away to a farm planet.and you had to constantly work?

I can imagine that some of the kids in the Sandoval group may have been really angry at their parents. And of course the kids would have eventually been infected with the spores and become happy. And then when they were uninfected those kids may have resumed resenting and hating their parents.

So to me, if it wasn't for the lotus-eating opiate effect of the spores on people, making them forget their problems, life on Omicaron Ceti III would seem more like the opposite of Paradise.

 

[Timo]

So the colonists seek a simple, uncomplicated, life, as farmers, without many mechanical things

...And no doubt without UFP oversight as well. Indeed, interaction with the Federation or the rest of mankind would appear unlikely, given the circumstances. Sandoval was "expecting visitors" at some point, but that was pretty much it. And had he not been high on spores, he would probably have resented rather than welcomed Kirk's uniformed presence.

So clearly the goal of the Sandoval group of colonists was to operate an agricultural colony that sold surplus food to other planets and bought stuff with the money from the sales.

How so? The thing our heroes point out and the colonists lament is that the colony can barely sustain itself. The opposite of that isn't necessarily industrial-scale production for sale: instead, Sandoval's folks might aim at expanding their colony, which indeed calls for a firmer approach than barely sustaining, but doesn't necessitate trade or other interaction. Possibly Sandoval just lamented that they hadn't gotten their forge and iron mine working yet, so the generations to come would have difficulty maintaining their tools; otherwise, they might be content with what they already had.

And I noticed in "This Side of Paradise" that parts of the area around the Sandoval settlement seemed to be large lawns.

...Which for the most part apparently is natural Californian vegetation, existing ITRW without human intervention.

But the farm here features fences, useful only for keeping dumb animals in line. And the buildings involve sheds related to animal husbandry. There is also commentary on all the imported animal life being missing, that is, dead. Clearly the colonists intended to have an environment where sheep might manage lawns and cows would provide milk; they built for that; and then things went south when all the animals died of the radiation.

...The one interesting thing there is the timeline. Apparently, everybody got Spored very early on, because if some did not and thus died horribly, there would be no time window in which the colonists would be motivated to put the finishing touches to their houses: too shocked by the deaths first, too high to care afterwards. So when did the animals die, exactly? (And why? The actions of the plants are never explained to satisfaction, and nobody appears to care. But that's a different discussion.)

Farmers with modern equipment use many mechanical tools to plant, tend, water, and harvest their crops. These are usually pulled by tractors, unless they have their own motors.

And Sandoval's folks don't have this, since our heroes' assessment of their settlement is thorough, and there is no commentary on machines being present against Sandoval's claims, or having gone mysteriously missing even though blatantly fitted for. The model of mere sustenance farming, even if with a bit more ambition than the drugged-out colonists actually achieved, seems fully supported, then.

Although I guess we could argue that ye olden way of sustenance farming from Sandoval's POV might involve fusion-powered hovertractors pulling every plow, just like back in the days of Sandoval's great-grandparents - and Kirk's team found those tractors, lined up under their forcefield shelters, suitably antique and in line with Sandoval's propaganda and thus not worthy of comment.

So no insects to pollinate any flowering plants among the crops. So pollinating them is another task for the colonists.

Happily, no insects are involved in the pollination of the crops we witnessed there! Wind will suffice.

Kelowitz's observation that the barn wasn't built for cows

Umm, no - he says this is a barn, and then says it is being misused as mere storage. Much like the fences are there for the animals that don't exist.

So to me living in the Sandoval colony would seem a lot like being condemned to hard labor in prison.

And Sandoval just words that differently. And then arranges for an interstellar expedition to achieve it. Him and his folks loving it that way doesn't seem to be in any doubt at any point of the adventure.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[johnnybear]

The barns and fences were obviously built for the livestock which came with them to Omicron but the animals died years before the Enterprise arrived! With no animals to protect the barns were changed to storage! How do we know that the plants or the spores didn't pollinate themselves? The plants were very capable of thriving upon dangerous radiation that anything else would have been pretty simple for them!
JB

 

[Ssosmcin]

Umm, no - he says this is a barn, and then says it is being misused as mere storage. Much like the fences are there for the animals that don't exist.

Nope, as @MAGolding quoted...

KELOWITZ: (opening up the barn door) Hey.
SULU: What is it?
KELOWITZ: No cows. This barn isn't even built for them, Just for storage.

Emphasis mine. It wasn't made to hold anything but storage. As if the cows died before they erected the barn.

 

[johnnybear]

Maybe the plants 'spore effects' gave the colonists not only good health, quality of life and regrown organs but also a form of immortality? At least a much longer lifespan than was usual in the twenty third century!
JB

 

[Phaser Two]

The barns and fences were obviously built for the livestock which came with them to Omicron but the animals died years before the Enterprise arrived! With no animals to protect the barns were changed to storage! How do we know that the plants or the spores didn't pollinate themselves? The plants were very capable of thriving upon dangerous radiation that anything else would have been pretty simple for them!
JB

They could also move around the bridge of a starship! Very impressive.

 

[MAGolding]

The barns and fences were obviously built for the livestock which came with them to Omicron but the animals died years before the Enterprise arrived! With no animals to protect the barns were changed to storage! How do we know that the plants or the spores didn't pollinate themselves? The plants were very capable of thriving upon dangerous radiation that anything else would have been pretty simple for them!
JB

I was talking about the about the plants native to Omicron Ceti III and the plants brought by the colonists, not about the strange alien spore planets.

 

[Commishsleer]

Reminds me of 'Insurrection' and 'Return to Eden'.
Back to nature is good if your job isn't emptying the toilets.

 

[johnnybear]

Who wouldn't want that life on Omicron Ceti Three today if it was real and there was no sinister motive behind it as we saw in the actual episode?
JB