It goes without saying that I will mock the “space hippies” episode mercilessly. The plot is that Dr. Sevrin, a bald-headed space hippie with c-shaped ears and his five disciples are looking for the planet Eden where all proper space hippies should live. He steals a star cruiser but the Enterprise catches him and his merry band. Sevrin has space plague so he needs to be isolated. But the disciples help him to escape and he uses ultrasonics to disable the crew and the hippies steal a shuttle craft to land on Eden. But the plant life is full of acid and poison and so the hippies burn their feet. When Kirk and company come to rescue the losers, they find one of the hippies named Adam dead through eating an apple (how ironic). And when Kirk tells Sevrin that he is being rescued he follows Adam in eating a poisoned apple and dies. It’s a ridiculous plot but the details are even worse.
The hippies are always protesting against the military authority that Kirk represents. They call him “Herbert” which Spock explains is an uncomplimentary comparison to a character who was a small-minded bureaucrat. Kirk takes offense when told this. That I found funny. Adam and one of the girls are some kind of pathetic rock music duet. They sing a few songs that are very awful to hear. And another one of the girls is an old girlfriend of Chekov. So, we have to listen to the ex-lovers bickering over their lost love. And finally, Adam strikes up a friendship with Spock based on their mutual love of music. This forces us to listen to Spock and one of the girls playing a duet on space harps or something. And during this shindig we see random crew members rocking out by spastically moving their arms and legs in time to the beat.
But the worst thing of all is just seeing these rejects. Adam is some kind of pop-eyed freak dressed in a tie-dyed loin cloth and go-go boots who spouts synthetic hipster lingo. One of the half-undressed girls is way too out of shape to be showing so much skin. And the third male hippie has nylon purple hair and is wearing what looks like a dress.
I feel if they wanted to do this episode correctly, they should have hired the fake rock and roll group the Monkees to appear on the show painted green or something. That at least would have shown the right attitude toward bad music of the time.
Just for the sake of fairness, Adam did say one witty thing in the show. After having his physical examination, he recited:
“I’m gonna crack my knuckles and jump for joy
I got a clean bill of health from Doc McCoy.”
With that deathless couplet I’ll end this review by kindly rating it a 5 // 4.
Ugly guest stars.
The finest crew in all of Starfleet outwitted by a bunch of society’s rejects.
Really, Really, bad music.
A plot so simple that my 9th grade English comp teacher would have failed me for it.
Other than an object of derision, there is nothing to recommend this episode.
And we’ve come full circle. This episode could be made today with transgender weirdos and social justice warriors. If they’d let me play captain I’d jettison the lot of them into space out the trash chute. And I’d toss out Spock’s Vulcan harp too.