Captain's Blog pt. 82: The Way to Eden

Earlier in this series, I wrote: "If Star Trek: The Motion Picture is the TOS finale that we never got, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is the bloated mash-up of "Way to Eden," "By Any other Name" and "This Side of Paradise" that we really never needed."

We've covered the other two, so let's turn our attention to:

February 21, 1969

Like "Spock's Brain," there's an awful lot of missing the point with this episode. Here are just two examples: 

"I would've been a lot more patient with this one if it weren't for the songs. The action stops cold every time Napier picks up his whatever-the-hell-it-is and starts warbling. I think Sevrin's quest is foolishly naive, and the condescending emptiness of his followers is nearly intolerable, but at least those have something to do with a story. At least all the "Herbert" crap has a point. The singing is just the worst kind of padding, and it burns more than a few Edenic bushes ever could." - Zack Handlen, AV Club

Or David Mack's at Tor: "As for the hippies’ songs… oh, good lord. Some things are good. Some are so bad that they become hilariously good. The songs in this episode fall into neither of those categories; they are simply, unforgivably awful... I suppose we should be grateful that William Shatner didn’t sit in to do his spoken-word rendition of 'Rocket Man.'"

Talk about booking yourself a room on the Do Not Pass Go Do Not Collect $200 Express. Who wouldn't want Shatner to break into his rendition of "Rocket Man," at any time, in any place? That isn't even "crazy talk;" it's "call the authorities" talk.

The songs are awful? Wow, well-spotted. (In other feats of evaluative insight: water is the essence of wetness.) To these people, I say "Herbert! Herbert!" (and almost certainly urinate on their rugs.)

I mean, holy effing duh.

I'm not saying you should put them on playlists or anything, just that the awfulness of the songs is not a barrier to enjoyment of this episode; it is at least 2/3ds of what there is to enjoy. I mean, do people want a Space Hippies episode without these ridiculous songs? i.e. Oh, I could've taken it more seriously if only they had been singing "Masters of War?" To exclude "Stepping Into Eden" from the "so awful they're hilarious" category is a staggering failure of classification to me.

I should probably start off with this episode's Memorability factor, which is really the main thing it has going for it. Except it's not so much Memorability as it is Notoriety: (15)

Take this away from the episode and there's really nothing to it, which is why I started things off with these ridiculous objections. It'd be like removing Abraham Lincoln from "The Savage Curtain." Who in their right mind would do this? The episode is memorable because it's so bizarre and so freaking square. 'Nuff said. 

Script and Theme: (3 / 4) So, let's start with the script. With the exception of Dr. Sevrin's speech about "this... stuff you pump into the air" - a speech I love and, as with Peter Cook's tirade against God at the end of Bedazzled (the original, obviously - I tried to find a clip for you, but no luck; it's in the Quotes section of the imdb, should you care to have a look) find eeriely and depressingly prescient - the script kind of sucks.

Characters who have never before displayed rigid authoritarian intolerance are suddenly hateful. (Chekov is usually mentioned here, and rightly so, but Nurse Chapel, too, gets some lines that make her sound like the intake nurse at Camp X-Ray.) The sensibility of Trek seems turned on its ear to accommodate the plot, which is never a good idea. Dr. Sevrin's takeover of the ship / theft of the shuttlecraft is very convenient. The planet is freaking named Eden. So on and so on.

The theme itself is about as redundant to TOS as you can get. It's almost as if someone watched older episodes and decided what was missing from the other dozen cautionary tales of Paradise was subtlety. Sure we've done this before, one can picture Doug Cramer saying, but can we have a literal poison apple on a literal planet called Eden?

"His name... was Adam." (Holy moley. And the score for this scene, with the orchestrated "Ya-aay Brother" melody recalled is so amazingly ill considered i.e. awesome.)

Hippie stinkfoot.

"Plus," Cramer continues, "maybe something with hippies."

D.C. Fontana's original script was entitled "Joanna" and was about Dr. McCoy's adult daughter coming aboard the Enterprise. (The idea was resurrected for TAS, if you recall from way back in Captain's Blog pt. 3 or 4, as "The Survivor.") After seeing what direction the story was headed after substantial rewrites, she opted to use a pseudonym, which is why we see Kramer's name in the credits:

Arthur Heinemann wrote the teleplay for "Wink of an Eye," which we'll be getting to soon.

Two things that amuse the crap out of me (outside of Yaaaaaay Brother and all that:) 1) the fake hippie dialogue ("Wow, that's really now!") and 2) this guy on the bridge during the hippies' performance, which is, for some reason, piped all over the ship:

So, so awkward.

Before we move on: imagine replacing the space hippies with the Black Panthers. Now that would have been a cringeworthy, probably-equally-if-not-more-hilarious slice of 60s generation gap for the ages. I hope the IDW reboot series does this, if it continues re-imagining TOS.

I hope the same for "Charlie X."

Kirk and the Gang: (10) I was going to go with only 5, but I get such a kick out of Spock's bonding with the Space Hippies.

This gesture giving Adam permission to pick up his "axe" is great really now. They reach, man, they reach.

As is Spock's reaction to this bit of blaaaow-ed out enthusiasm.

No one really has all that much to do, but there are still some fun bits. It's always a pleasure to see the cast react to some broadcast of pain.

Some unintentionally funny subtext here with Sulu. You make it sound tempting... (but no.)

Visual Design: (2) In case this post hasn't been Space Hippified enough:

 

The Aurora. (Who cares.)

The original Eden.

And the digitally remastered one.

Internal Logistics: (.5) As with evaluating the musical merits of "Stepping Into Eden," I consider sussing out how well this reflects 23rd century mechanics and infrastructure somewhat misguided. But the big sticking point is Chekov.

I mean, does anything really have to be done to Chekov to make us understand why he would not be totally supportive of the idea of his ex-girlfriend throwing in with Dr. Sevrin's gang? Isn't their absurdity self-evident without turning him into an angry jarhead?

And what is up with this endless zoom-in during his and Irina's big scene?

Closer...

Closer...

I can taste your fear on my tongue.

Guest: (4) Oddly enough, I find the guest performances in this episode to be a real hoot. Not just Charles Napier:

He's gonna liii-ive, not dii-ie. (He wishes. RIP, Charles Napier.)

"And what the hell would you do, Trautman? Pay blackmail money to ransom our own men and finance the war effort against our allies? You wanna bomb Hanoi? A couple of forgotten ghosts?"

Skip Homeier, another Outer Limits alum, plays Dr. Sevrin, the L. Ron / Charlie Manson of the bunch.

He also played Melakon in "Patterns of Force."

And Mary-Lynn Rapelye plays Irina. She runs a bed and breakfast in Maine these days. She returns in the Phase II episode "To Serve All My Days."

Title: (1) I never liked "The Way to Eden" as a title. Because it's not about the way to Eden, neither the planet nor the concept, nor is it ironic enough to really bedazzle. Plus it undermines the episode's real strength, which is its batshit insanity. Ergo, a better title: "The Ubiquitous Dr. Spacegrove." Or maybe even just "We Reach the Now."

Total Points Awarded: 39.5