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The Enterprise are in hot putsuit of a space cruiser that's not only stolen but also about to enter Romulan territory which might cause an intergalactic incident. But apparently, those piloting the ship are no experts as they're overheating it, and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) can only just order to beam them over before the shot blows up. The group of beamed-over people poses a bit of a challenge for Kirk as they are a cult of space hippies led by Sevrin (Skip Homeier) who want to shake the shackles of civilisation and find the planet Eden to start anew in the promised land - of course, they don't know where Eden is. Rather unexpectedly, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) finds common ground with the hippies, to the point that he makes music with them, and promises to help them in their search for Eden if they follow the ship's ground rules - after all they're not to be treated as prisoners anyway as one of them is the son of a high ranking Starfleet official. Ship doctor Bones (DeForest Kelley) does a medical check on them all and finds only Sevrin resisting it - because he has some kind of disease that makes him slowly psychotic and that could affect those around him. Consequently, Sevrin is isolated, but by then the others have already put plans in action to take over, and during a concert organized by their singer and chief musician Adam (Charles Napier) with Spock in a guest spot, they finalize the takeover and fly the Enterprise to what they perceive as Eden. Only Eden proves to be a death trap full of acidic plants and poisonous fruit - but Sevrin prefers to die eating an apple to give up on his beliefs ...

Now an episode with Charles Napier as a singing space hippie sure can't all be bad ... and this one isn't, but not only for Napier but also its very timely approach to things: Now sure, the depiction of hippies is clichéed to the max, sometimes even bordering caricature, but the story, in the person of Spock, actually takes their demands and expectations seriously, and actually manages to ask questions that seem to be sympathetic to the hippies' cause - especially in the scenes when Chekov (Walter Koenig) finds his former girlfriend (Mary Linda Rapelye) among the hippies. The show also seems to be somewhat prophetic when it comes to the hippies mad leader, foreshadowing Charles Manson's family and their crimes (this episode debuted on February 21st 1969, the Tate-Lo Bianco murders didn't happen until August 8th and 9th of the same year). That all said, I'd be hard pressed to call this one an actual classic in any real sense of the word, but certainly one of the better and more interesting episodes of the budget deprived season three of Star Trek.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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