This Side Of Paradise message

[Frontis]

Imo Roddenberry wanted to tell us an anti drug message in this episode. Do you agree?
Beside that we got some of the funniest Spock moments...and one of the saddest Spock moments when he said at the end, for the first time in my life I was happy. This gave us a new insight to his personality.
It's one of my favorite episodes.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

You make good points but give the credit to the wrong person(s). The first draft of the teleplay was written by Jerry Sohl; the final by D. C. Fontana.

Sir Rhosis

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

In that we shouldn't allow substances to control our decisions? You could read that into it.

 

[Christopher]

There was a passage in the script, cut from the final episode but present in James Blish's novelization, establishing that the spores had a degree of consciousness, a hive mind that compelled submission and docility in the people the spores infected. So it was intended less as an anti-drug message than an anti-slavery one. Though really it was more the usual TOS theme established as early as "The Cage," that it's better to strive and struggle for accomplishment than live in passive complacency, no matter how pleasant it seems.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I see the episode saying that hedonism (including a druggie lifestyle) is wasteful and unproductive at best, and we must live up to our responsibilities to build and maintain the kind of world we want to live in.

The stagnation of a lazy, pleasure-seeking life is dangerous, because if enough people do it (like when the Enterprise crew get high and quit their jobs), the systems we all depend on will fall apart. In the ship's case, it will eventually fall out of the sky and burn up.

So yeah, I see "This Side of Paradise" as a message episode, an allegory, and it's a message that present-day America could benefit from.

Everyone says that Star Trek is left-leaning, like that's a firm rule, but TOS and the Berman-era spinoffs had a balance of values that we all could appreciate. The heroes were people of duty and responsibility, not hippies, druggies, or subversives. A lot of conservatives love Star Trek.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Plus, if our complacency is ever going to be conquered, we need to start caring.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

So it was intended less as an anti-drug message than an anti-slavery one.

One might make the case that on this single planet, never has slavery been so contented,

 

[Christopher]

One might make the case that on this single planet, never has slavery been so contented,

You could say the same about the Talosians, or Landru, or Vaal, or any of Trek's other metaphors on the same theme. As Scotty said in Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of "How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth," "A cage is a cage no matter how padded the bars." If slaves are content, that doesn't mean the slavery is justified -- it means the slavers have been smart enough to trick their slaves into accepting it. So I really have no idea what point you think you're making here.

 

[Frontis]

You can be slave to a drug, too.

 

[Christopher]

You can be slave to a drug, too.

Of course, but I'm not making an argument, merely stating a fact that's generally not known about the concept of the episode. As written, the spores were not meant to be a drug but a sort of botanical Borg, a hive mind subordinating its hosts. Since that dialogue was cut from the final episode, it comes off more like a drug, and leaves the episode's message more vague.

 

[Frontis]

Anyway, Borg made victims killer machines, the spores made victims hippies. In this case I prefer the 2nd.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Star Trek's "anti-slavery" messages (The Cage, The Apple) would be odd, because in real life, there was no pro-slavery movement crying out for a challenge. To be pro-slavery in the 1960s would have been nuttier than a gag on Laugh-In.

So "We're against slavery" would be a piece of social commentary that required no courage to deliver. We were all against slavery.

No doubt The Cage had a slavery element in the dialogue, but I don't think The Cage, The Apple, The Return of the Archons, and This Side of Paradise are about that. Nobody needed that message.

But there was an emerging drug culture in the United States, in the mid-1960s. Especially pot and LSD.

Those episodes are much more about urging the audience to stay in touch with reality and take responsibility. Do the real things needed in a productive life, even when it's hard. Don't zone out. Don't be a sheep.

 

[Ssosmcin]

This could also be read as a Timothy Leary allegory. "Tune in, turn on, drop out." Everyone on the ship is ready to just get with the spores, be happy and love on one another in nature. Kirk, though, he's the Dad, who tells them to all get jobs.

 

[1001001]

Kirk, though, he's the Dad, who tells them to all get jobs.

And get a damn haircut!

 

[fireproof78]

Those episodes are much more about urging the audience to stay in touch with reality and take responsibility. Do the real things needed in a productive life, even when it's hard. Don't zone out. Don't be a sheep.

Dragnet did the same.

 

[Henoch]

It's the anti-communism message. Shame the Federation lost that battle.

 

[BillJ]

Not sure I'd want to leave, honestly. I can be a vegetarian.

 

[Poltargyst]

This could also be read as a Timothy Leary allegory. "Tune in, turn on, drop out." Everyone on the ship is ready to just get with the spores, be happy and love on one another in nature. Kirk, though, he's the Dad, who tells them to all get jobs.

He's such a Herbert.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

So "We're against slavery" would be a piece of social commentary that required no courage to deliver. We were all against slavery.

Those episodes are much more about urging the audience to stay in touch with reality and take responsibility. Do the real things needed in a productive life, even when it's hard. Don't zone out. Don't be a sheep.

It's defining enslavement to include addiction or any blissful acceptance of being controlled by an outside element with no free will or moral agency.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

But it's also a ten-percent tragedy* for Spock in the sense he has to turn his back on the total enslaving happiness that has been thrust upon him for the only time in his life to date. And it's certainly reflected in the episode's music.

*(And maybe even higher.)