Peaceful, non-violent existence on a nice planet, having fun, making love, and watching the clouds!!!!
Part of me wished kirk would have joined his crew on Omicron Ceti III
- Thread starter Vaughn Falstaff
- Start date
But what about all the lives he and his crew saved afterwards? Including Earth...even the universe once or twice? We'd never have made it to TNG...
Not me. The spores always made me sort of mad. I was on Team Kirk. However, Spock's line at the end never fails to make me tear up.
It's true that if Kirk hadn't fought off the spore effects he'd never have saved the galaxy from the Klingons, the Denevan Amoebas, the Doomsday Machine, the Vampire Cloud and many other disasters but what a fantastic way of life!!!!
I used to dislike this episode as a child, not much action, Spock acting silly and in love and everyone ignoring the Captain but as an adult I would love that kind of life!!! Working for your community instead of keeping the rich well fed, being happy without any of life's worries and being content with what you have! Sitting under a tree on a hot afternoon and relaxing sounds good to me!
JB
I used to dislike this episode as a child, not much action, Spock acting silly and in love and everyone ignoring the Captain but as an adult I would love that kind of life!!! Working for your community instead of keeping the rich well fed, being happy without any of life's worries and being content with what you have! Sitting under a tree on a hot afternoon and relaxing sounds good to me!
JB
This would have made “This Side of Paradise” the series finale.
And they’re drugging each other. Very bad.
Letting the love of his life fall out of orbit...
not if they continued the show planetside! (i kid)
You are forgetting that survival in a farming community involves hard physical labor.
You are forgetting the lack of intellectual stimulation in a farming community compared to being in science lab on a starship.
So the life on the planet would have been torture to someone like me, except that I would have enjoyed it due to the drugs that the spores would have filled me with.
It kind of reminds me of Q's line from "Encounter at Farpoint":
And Q talked like that was a bad thing.
I always hated Kirk's line:
And actually most of the crew of the Enterprise have a pretty easy life outside of their jobs, which are mostly a lot easier jobs than being subsistence farms, who usually have to fight their way through, struggle, claw their way up, scratch for evr inch of the way. That is how they would have had to struggle to stay alive against weather and other natural forces on Omicron Ceti III. Only the spores would not have let them be as unhappy as they should have been but would have made them contented with their hard struggles.
Kirk didn't save the crew from paradise, he saved the crew from hell disguised as paradise.
You are forgetting the lack of intellectual stimulation in a farming community compared to being in science lab on a starship.
So the life on the planet would have been torture to someone like me, except that I would have enjoyed it due to the drugs that the spores would have filled me with.
It kind of reminds me of Q's line from "Encounter at Farpoint":
And Q talked like that was a bad thing.
I always hated Kirk's line:
And actually most of the crew of the Enterprise have a pretty easy life outside of their jobs, which are mostly a lot easier jobs than being subsistence farms, who usually have to fight their way through, struggle, claw their way up, scratch for evr inch of the way. That is how they would have had to struggle to stay alive against weather and other natural forces on Omicron Ceti III. Only the spores would not have let them be as unhappy as they should have been but would have made them contented with their hard struggles.
Kirk didn't save the crew from paradise, he saved the crew from hell disguised as paradise.
I guess De Salle's line that the community almost only grows crops for practical food purposes, added with the apparent temperate climate, and lack of animal rearing, and Sandaval's line about leading a simple life, suggests the hard graft of contemporary farming isn't something they have to endure.
If the spores hadn't arrived, the colony would probably desire more than a simple life food-wise, (and probably have retained more technology. Its possible they destroyed it all when they became infected, as we don't see any. Not even remenants of the ship), and their mentality would have been a lot different to the 'simplicity = paradise' that the spores provided.
The agricultural angle that the colony arrived with, may have also added hardship if they were seeking results etc, beyond food-growing, but also purposeful challenge (indeed Sandaval, once free, wants to get back to 'work').
If the spores hadn't arrived, the colony would probably desire more than a simple life food-wise, (and probably have retained more technology. Its possible they destroyed it all when they became infected, as we don't see any. Not even remenants of the ship), and their mentality would have been a lot different to the 'simplicity = paradise' that the spores provided.
The agricultural angle that the colony arrived with, may have also added hardship if they were seeking results etc, beyond food-growing, but also purposeful challenge (indeed Sandaval, once free, wants to get back to 'work').
This Side of Paradise was the first episode I remember watching, and as much as I’m a ST fan, it was albout Spock for me back then.
I later learned to loathe those scenes where Spock loses his controls and becomes a big pile of sickly sweet treacley emotionalism. If that’s what Leila knew she was getting when she drugged him without his consent, she needed a restraining order - and he dodged a bullet.
A gorgeous, self serving bullet living on a stealth back-to-the-land movement hippie commune, getting high off on plant spores 24 hours a day.
Len must’ve had fun during his love scenes with Jill Ireland, knowing her jealous husband, Charles Bronson, was there on the ‘set’ staring daggers at him.
I later learned to loathe those scenes where Spock loses his controls and becomes a big pile of sickly sweet treacley emotionalism. If that’s what Leila knew she was getting when she drugged him without his consent, she needed a restraining order - and he dodged a bullet.
A gorgeous, self serving bullet living on a stealth back-to-the-land movement hippie commune, getting high off on plant spores 24 hours a day.
Len must’ve had fun during his love scenes with Jill Ireland, knowing her jealous husband, Charles Bronson, was there on the ‘set’ staring daggers at him.
I wonder if there are any photos of Charles Bronson on the set? Or if he was at all jealous of those scenes with his wife and Spock? I'd imagine he would have been very professional about it! How long before this did Jill and David McCallum split up? I know Bronson and McCullum appeared in The Great Escape together back in 1963...
JB
JB
How could we tell? The heroes stop behaving like their employer insists they behave. How is this proof of removal of will? For all we know, it's merely removal of inhibition, so that the "victims" in fact display more free will than Kirk ever did.
One of the things the employer insists on is ambition, and the "victims" perhaps display little by Starfleet's standards. But they certainly pursue their immediate goals with vigor and success - and they have had no issues sustaining their hardy homestead for several years, even with the planned-on cattle dead, and are not indicated to be running out of anything anytime soon. So they apparently merely gave up the wrong sort of ambition.
From where I'm looking, everybody is consenting. There's no evidence of any forcing going on, save for Kirk's actions. The spores just ask "Do you want to quit?" and everybody says "Hell, yeah, right now!" without hesitation. Sure, their employer is disappointed - but it's hardly a case of them being the only employees, and the starship was considered expendable anyway. The galaxy isn't markedly less or more secure as the result of these people quitting. It's just that little bit happier.
Timo Saloniemi
The Spores protect the people on Omicron Ceti Three from Berthold Rays so I'm sure a little infection or two is no problem to these bulbs of the paradise planet! 
JB
JB
I may be misremembering because I do that alot, but I think Nimoy told that Bronson anecdote in his update to I Am Not Spock, titled I Am Spock.
It may have been one of those in-jokes among actors that Bronson would have been in on. *Shrugs
Then blow the spores on everyone when they join the colony, then slap them back to normal.The Spores protect the people on Omicron Ceti Three from Berthold Rays so I'm sure a little infection or two is no problem to these bulbs of the paradise planet!
JB
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