Yet Chekov's gal knew that Severin had adjusted the volume to kill and didn't do anything to stop him.Knowing that Chekov as well as everybody else on the Enterprise would be killed so the 5 of them could live the good life.
What they believed was the good life.
Witness:
1. There's no water anywhere in sight and it would likely be as toxic as the food and vegetation and soil (the metaphor not being "don't smoke the grass" but "Eden is self-protecting", which is ironic since Federation societies were self-protecting (biological developments such as new or mutated bacterial and virii notwithstanding) and they were "trying to get to the other side where the grass was greener". Except it wasn't greener. It was the most toxic.
2. No animals, tasty or otherwise
3. Not many trees - the current crop of poison pears would otherwise last them how long, unless there's a big forest offscreen somewhere? They'd likely want to settle down at some point and create a society that-- oh, wait...
4. No caves - couldn't he pilot the thing closer to a cave with nearby stream where Lumpy the dinosaur and the Sleestak hung out at?
5. Sevrin's still a certifiably insane nutter, conflating the eeeeeeeeeevil of a planned society with being a fish out of water and not knowing even the most rudimentary basics.
6. If he spread his disease to others knowingly, will they forgive him or... what - when they start developing symptoms, of which the chances of that are higher than the lot of them becoming asymptomatic carriers.
Okay, for a 48 minute story this episode was definitely going to cut some corners and there are many philosophical points of interest to carry the thing, even if most of them relate to what-ifs and offscreen scenarios. The story as shown reveals the midpoint and tells just enough background to explain Sevrin. The ending was pretty fast and sold as just being all poison is either trying to end the story as 4 minutes remained and being the tail-end of season 3 when nobody cared anymore, or it's hoping the audience will sit there and fathom all these nuances out since Trek was seen as a nerdy thing back then or whatever. Considering this was the same day and age where John Lennon did nothing but scribble out jibber-laden songs that
mocked people who read too much into things, (yes, plural and he admitted it), we will never know. And, yes, I love this story and have probably read way too much into it. Like Troi told Data, sometimes a cake is sometimes just a cake.
Irina, like most of the other hippies, genuinely believed what Sevrin was saying and may have felt cornered or if nothing else feeling there was nowhere they could go. The episode doesn't go into much depth but, again, late season 3 and all... I'm amazed any of them showed concern. The episode had potential but easily could have been fleshed out in one or more directions. Tongo Rad sometimes looks sinister but apart from knowing he's the son of a diplomat we've nothing to go on. Is Adam sincere for the beliefs or wanting control like how Sevrin is using them. And Sevrin too - the line between control of his group and really believing Eden is very fuzzy.
And, of course, Herbert - on top of every other Christian reference (and the garden of Eden became forbidden to humans...), there's that chap - Herbert Armstrong - that I completely forgot about. He had a thing or few to say about the hippie movement, apart from a dichotomy - of which the "Eden" story also seems to want to mention but remains fuzzy and uneven on that as much as it does other characters and story elements.
Kirk should have left them on the planet.
He was probably thinking of it but opted not to. Not just because of Tongo Rad's diplomatic status, but because of a need for a fair trial, a la Khan. He'd only leave them if they went too far - and the only time that happened was Kruge (TSFS) but by then he was a fugitive anyway.
A good thing about the episode was that Spock actually was more susceptible to the ultra-sonic ray and went down first. Usually season 3 writers forget about Spock's abilities - like his superior hearing.
That was a nice bit the writers remembered, for sure.
I'm still confused as to how the Enterprise crew survived?
1. Kirk is too tough and lives just long enough to turn off the ultrasonics.
2. Severin miss calculated the time delay and restarted the ultrasonics too late allowing Kirk to recover enough to turn off the ultrasonics.
3. One of Severin's followers tampered with the time delay or intensity setting allowing Kirk to recover enough to turn off the ultrasonics:
a. Irina Galliulin who loved Chekov or just didn't want to kill anyone.
b. Tongo Rad, technically capable and didn't want to kill anyone.
(editing post to include yours)
1. Agreed! (It's always Kirk, hehe)
2. Very likely; the miscalculation was due to haste, insanity, and/or other factors, since:
3. We see Sevrin directly tamper with the controls. I don't recall seeing anyone change them around afterward.
