The Way to Eden

Season 3, Episode 20, Aired
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Episode Summary

The Enterprise picks up a group of space "hippies" looking for Eden.
5.6
out of 10
EPISODE RATING: Mediocre
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Fan Episode Reviews (15)

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  • The Enterprise picks up a group of futuristic hippies, one of whom Chekov has a past with. The group, led by a crazed doctor, are searching for a paradise planet, and will go to any lengths to find it. The infamously bad "space hippies" episode...moreless

    3.5
    "Bad"
    By Jay-Spacedust, Nov 20, 2011 Report Abuse
    Although not a complete classic, the previous broadcast episode, "Requiem for Methuselah", showed that even at this late stage the Original Series was capable of dishing up a semi-reasonable episode. Sadly, with "The Way to Eden", standards really plummet back down, and is a reminder of just how weak much of the third season sadly was. There were some true duds in the third season, and this one may even be worse than the terrible "Spock's Brain"!

    As with many episodes, the story tries to reflect something of the times of which it was made. But whereas others make for interesting analogies, this one just falls flat, and beyond anything else is just pain embarrassing.
    It is an intriguing twist to have Mr. Spock of all people have some empathy with the hippies, but beyond that, very little is interesting about this episode.

    One of the big problems is that the "space hippies" are just not an interesting bunch. The crazy doctor leader (whose ears are enough to make Spock's seem normal!) just doesn't have any of the character or 'oomph' needed for such a story, and his followers are just as dull.
    Charles Napier, a regular TV bad guy of in many guest spots of the 1970s and '80s, seems bizarrely cast here, and Chekov who looks set to have a storyline devoted to him has no spark with his ex-girlfriend, who again is a very weak character.

    Then there are the songs, most of which seem added in just to fill the running time, and which have some truly horrendous lip-syncing.
    The regular crew (bar Uhura, in one of just a couple of episodes where her position is filled by another crewmember) seem to just go through the motions here, practically acknowledging that this is a truly bad story from start to finish.

    All-in-all, I'd put this in the worst three episodes of the Original Series. The show is clearly on its last legs by this stage, and this episode feels like one of the final nails ion the once-great series' coffin.moreless

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    3 0

  • Every time you eat a steak, a space hippy's hackysack goes in the sewer.

    2.0
    "Terrible"
    By Gislef, Nov 20, 2011 Report Abuse
    Yes, it's the "space hippy" episode. The main problem is that it's written by Arthur Heinemann. Heinemann is a competent dramatic writer but s.f. is never his strong point. "Wink of an Eye" was equally weak (although I have a soft spot for his third ST story, "The Savage Curtain."). He must have been at least 40 when he did this episode, and knowledgeable on the counter-culture, he ain't.

    As such, the hippies engage in stereotypical counter-culture behavior and do a few musical numbers, and they come across as being written by... well some guy in his 40s who watched a sit-in or two on the TV.

    The actor not withstanding, Dr. Sevrin never comes across as a charismatic leader. There's some potential to portray him as a Jim Jones-type cult type, but it never gels. The anti-tech message is interesting (particularly in technophile Roddenberry's "ain't science grand?" Trek universe), but again it never goes anywhere. Sevrin is declared insane, and that's it: nothing to see here, move along.

    Walter Koenig actually gets to do some emoting, and demonstrate some of the talent he'll show later in B5. Leonard Nimoy is oddly cast as sympathetic/curious to the hippies: an attempt to cash in on the character's heightened popularity in the third season.

    Charles Napier is just... weird. I imagine his friends pull out this episode and make him watch it when they want to give him a hard time.

    The Eden allegory is anvilicious and having Adam die from eating an apple crushes everything below the weight of irony. The idea of a planet with totally acidic plantlife (apparently an odorless acid) is mildly chilling, but you wonder how Adam made it to a tree and ate some fruit without noticing.

    Overall, you can give this one a pass unless you're looking for amusement value.moreless

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    5 1

  • Turn on, tune in, and drop out! The hippies are feelin' groovy. It's the Brady Bunch on acid meets the Manson Family, and they're sticking it to THE MAN, er, Captain Kirk. Spock can grok it, tho.moreless

    1.9
    "Abysmal"
    By altotick, Nov 20, 2011 Report Abuse
    Seriously, though. This is a really bad episode that almost deserves the "Jumping the Shark" rating. It's approaching the "Poochy" level of badness of adding some "hip" and "relevant" characters to try garnering falling ratings. It both capitalizes on the hippie movement and critiques the hippie movement at the same time. How's that for confusing?

    Chekhov's girlfriend has perhaps an even more hokey accent than he does and the two of them have even less chemistry than Anakin Skywalker and Queen Amidala in Episode II. Talk about painful to watch. They're wretchedly bad.

    Meanwhile the show manage to include a few musical numbers lip synced and played on prop swords with strings and bicycle wheels. Amazingly these instruments sound like guitars. Spock's Vulcan instrument sounds like a guitar with a little bit of organ in the background. Those are some hep space cats. The groovy spell their music casts on the crew is funny. The people dancing and grooving to the music look really awkward. Also the "Wilma Flinstone" girl in the band (you'll know who I mean when you watch) looks a little out of place and embarrassed.

    Meanwhile, any sense of why these kids might be doing what they're doing is completely missing. Though there was a reference to "Planet Tiburon," it's about as much context as we get. Tiburon is a rich, white enclave in the Bay Area across the bay from San Francisco. Presumably, many of the rich white parents of the 60s were confused as to why their promising and smart kids were hanging out in the Haight-Ashbury or Berkeley and rebelling against authority, dropping out of school (or life), smoking a lot of dope, having a lot of sex and "ruining" their upper-middle-class achievement potential.

    At least the hippies of the 60s had some legitimate reasons for rebellion, even if a good number of them were simply protesting so that they could smoke more weed and make more love. Certainly it can be argued that the Vietnam war, minority civil rights, womens rights, free speech, and environmental concerns were all issues that deserved to be addressed. Who can blame hippie kids for feeling they had to create their own culture in opposition to a culture that refused to address many real issues and pushed to maintain the status quo. That, plus they were feelin' groovy and indulging their hedonistic side.

    But since The Enterprise and The Federation is pretty much portrayed as a Utopia (aside from a few jerks in Star Fleet Command and women being mini-skirted and sexified), why are the kids starting a counter-culture? There is something vague about computers in there, but is there any reason they'd doing anything beside simply indulging themselves?

    It's a weak episode, though entertainingly bad at times.

    You've also got to love the one hippie dude's prosthetic elephant ears.moreless

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    2 0

  • Awful episode, yikes.

    2.5
    "Terrible"
    By NHLFever, Oct 06, 2011 Report Abuse
    Under the dictionary heading short-sighted (if insulting and lazy were already taken), I expect to find a reference to this plot. I doubt there's a single worse example in all of trek, of contemporary sociopolitical entities shamelessly shoving aside any semblance of intelligent, thoughtful consideration of the trek universe or the future. This is the richness of trek, pimped out heartlessly to the cheapest, most temporary of all things, a brief few years of regional pop culture.

    Not that ST is in any way free this the rest of the time. The entire series explores the great galaxy of the unknown and diverse, and by that I mean the great galaxy of all things essentially familiar to 1960's America, with alien names. Every few episodes the enterprise 'against astronomical odds' runs into a culture, what do you know, again exactly like earth inhabited by attractive fair-skinned human look-alikes. Of course we can't crucify it for that, it definitely made new strides in a revolutionary direction and I'm sure every other show of the era was 100 times more culturo-centric than trek.

    But onto the matter at hand. Brutal, shameless selling out in this episode. Hippies? I can't tell whether the episode is trying to give a moral lesson in support of their worldview or just use them because it was a familiar cultural device. ST is no stranger to the classic 'establishment vs not-the-establishment' story, but in those cases the rebel/whatever groups at least had some conceivable point or plausible goal. This group of clowns appear to be culturally contrarian simply for its own sake. Their goal is getting to Eden, but not only is it a random, meaningless and unexplained goal disconnected from anything else in ST, it also has not the slightest analogy to the real life hippies of the time. I'm thinking the conversation went like this:

    Writer 1: Hey you know hippies are kind of a thing now hey?
    Writer 2: You're right. ok let's put them into an episode, we'll get the kids watchin!
    Writer 1: Good point, well what do hippies do?
    Writer 2: They sit around and wear flowers.
    Writer 1: Ya but I mean for the show - what is there actual goal?
    Writer 2: No idea, but we better give them something.
    Writer 1: To the writing room!
    Writer 2: You mean that room where you keep all the previous sci-fi scripts and your xerox machine?
    Writer 1: Quit bothering me, I'm working here.

    Or something along those lines. With no appreciation of what the hippie movement stood for, the hippies were given a random goal with no bearing on their real-life counterparts. Not that those guys did anything meaningful either, but still. That same goal could have (and has) been better used by Alien Of The Week and thereby had a reasonable chance of making sense or at least existing in some reasonable way within the trek universe. Spock playing with them was goofy, and when he actually starts grooving his head to the beat, you just feel sorry for the guys who wanted to, you know, actually keep a real show going instead of this pathetic dunce-fest.

    In reality I really enjoy trek and most of the episodes, and I'm comforted by the one transcendent and universal truth that trek conveyed beyond all others - that in a time of turmoil it reminded us that no matter what size, creed, color, form, home planet or value-system someone can hold, females will always have nice legs and wear 60's miniskirts.moreless

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    3 0

  • The crew of the Enterprise go headin' out to Eden. (Yay, brother).

    6.0
    "Fair"
    By Celedorian, Oct 06, 2011 Report Abuse
    Yes, it's one of the most infamous Star Trek episodes, right up there with "Spock's Brain" on the "campiness" scale. The silliness stems from the fact that the episode was written about young people by an old person (Arthur Heinemann). It's sort of like having your grandfather write a story about you and your teenage friends. Then there's the problem of Heinemann (at producer Fred Freiberger's request) changing the lead female part from McCoy's daughter to a love interest for Chekov. In one swift stroke (done so because Freiberger didn't want it insinuated that McCoy is enough to have a grown daughter, which might make people begin to think of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy as "old,") Heinemann took away our reason to actually care about the hippies and turned Chekov into the rigid, inflexible voice of reason you'd expect from someone older. (Meanwhile, Spock is the groovy, understanding character who knows how to "speak hippy". Go figure.) On the plus side, the episode is a ton of fun for its cheesiness and has some funny songs.moreless

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    1 0
 

Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

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    • When Irina comes to visit Chekov in Auxiliary Control, she tries to find out more about it. However, she acts as if she doesn't have a clue what it does, despite the fact that she attended Starfleet Academy for at least some period of time. Edit
    • Sulu tells the captain that they're leaving the Neutral Zone and headed into Romulan space. But when did they get into the Neutral Zone? It's a violation to even be in the Neutral Zone, and Sulu would have warned them before they entered it. Edit
    • Adam's hand moves when he is announced as being "dead." Edit

  • Notes

    ADD NOTES
    • Charles Napier's (Adam) acting debut. Edit
    • This episode is Skip Homeier's second appearance on Star Trek. His first was as Malekon in the second season episode "Patterns of Force." Edit
    • The original draft of this episode was much different than what appeared on screen. The original script dealt with McCoy and his granddaughter, Joanna, with Kirk, not Chekov, falling in love with her. The script was heavily rewritten and the McCoy angle was dropped, but several novelists have used the initial idea for their books. Edit

  • Quotes

    ADD QUOTES
    • Adam: Stiff man puttin' my mind in jail, and the judge band the gavel and say, "No bail!" Gonna lick his hand and wag my tail... Hippies: Herbert! Herbert! Herbert! Herbert! Edit
    • Spock: Many myths are based on truth. Edit
    • Tongo: Tell Herbert it's no go! Hippies: No go! No go! Edit

  • Allusions

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