I knew I had to watch this one before my own trepidation made me procrastinate. So, like ripping off a Band-Aid, I watched
The Way to Eden **
...and again, to my surprise, I found it enjoyable. Also, again, it's not "good." It's just not boring and it's a fun time passer. As with The Cloud Minders (thanks
@mb22 for digging up that Gerrold tidbit), there's a good idea buried beneath the execution. But it's filled with silliness and very bad characterization of our crew.
Kirk's "hard-assery" is cranked up to 11.
Chekov is a stiff establishment type. Which is a shame because he and Irina could have been great in this.
Scotty forgot how to have fun.
Even Chapel (no longer blonde at this point except for the Spock's Brain stock footage) is a grouchy schoolmarm.
It's never a good thing when you enjoy the "villains" more than the series leads.
However, Spock is a joy. I had such a great time watching him "reach" these people. And I was impressed with De Kelley firing off the dialog about Severin's illness and how he carries it. Guy sounded like a doctor and it flowed off his tongue effortlessly.
What's funny is that this episode has a lot of connections to Trek's past.
The teaser (or cold open as it's called today), is a near rewrite of the opening to Mudd's Women.
Library cues reference early series music
Spock jams in the rec room and plays some music - a Charlie X connection (even the music he initially plays for Adam is the same).
Scotty phasers a bulkhead to gain entry and there's no beam, ala The Naked Time (reminder: I never watch TOS-R).
Two of Severin's followers were in prior episodes.
Lt. Palmer is back subbing for Uhura (which is too bad - Uhura singing would have been a nice touch and a further Charlie X callback).
The jam session goes on a bit long, but the instrumental Spock plays with the blonde is sweet. I love that it's in the TOS Soundtrack Box Set. The entire crew grooving is hilarious, especially Lemli on the bridge who is just so into it for both songs. Kirk really needs to star playing the radio on the bridge more often.
This is the episode I think of whenever someone says "the musical episode of SNW was JUST LIKE THE ORIGINAL SERIES!" Well yeah, but not a good episode of the original series.
Still, it's better than the two "Space hippie" episodes of Lost in Space. Or the Louie the Lilac episode of Batman... the old men producing these shows didn't really have the understanding of the counter culture to make effective portrayals or statements about them. Spock, at least, was a nice example of understanding over scorn.
Skip Homeier is really good as the insane Severin. The guest cast is great, only the really shoddy work on the bald caps lets them down (even on the laserdiscs the seams are obvious). Charles Napier is great fun as Adam and his death still hits.
The finale is pieced together with some bad reverse shots of Shatner where his expression doesn't nearly match the scene. And I still don't understand why Eden itself was such a hostile environment. Just story irony or was it a Romulan thing? The finale is a little confusing. Kirk states they are beaming the hippies down to Starbase, but they use the same planet shots they did to represent Eden. Again, this isn't TOS-R. So I guess that was fixed.
This episode is not Star Trek's finest hour, but it is entertaining if goofy in execution. It's one of the few which is too tied to its era to be timeless. I would say "hey they should remake this episode and do it better" but Shatner kinda did in 1989....
The question was asked in another thread: when did TOS jump the shark? For me, it's obvious: when Bob Justman left. It really hasn't been the same without him.
Four episodes left.
