“Shut up, hippie.”
- anonymous bumper sticker author
Gene Roddenberry, creator and executive producer of Star Trek had a great love for humanity. Episodes such as “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” were effective parables outlining the evil of racism and prejudice on par with other socially conscious science fiction of the 60s like Planet of the Apes or The Twilight Zone’s “Obsolete Man” and “Eye of the Beholder.” Roddenberry believed very much that we will never conquer interstellar flight and extraterrestrial colonization until we as a people conquer our hate. That’s why in addition to uber-Aryan James T. Kirk manning the Enterprise, you’ll also find Scotty, the booze-swilling engineer from Scotland. Uhura, Nubian goddess of communications. Sulu, the Asian pilot co-navigating with the Russian Chekov. And Spock, a deformed autistic case probably from somewhere in the Middle East. The message is clear – put aside our petty racism and nationalism, and we can fly into space like Captain Kirk and fuck three-tittied Martians. But Roddenberry wasn’t always about the love. There was one group of people he despised. Gene Roddenberry hated hippies.
Filthy, lazy, drug-smoking hippies. What have they given the world besides drum circles, patchouli oil and tofu? Hippies are to society as the appendix is to the human body – completely fucking useless. And much like the appendix, sometimes hippies get inflamed for no reason and need to be removed. When the 60s started, hippies were all about free love and experimentation which sounds harmless. But left to their own devices, everything imploded before the decade’s end. STDs ran rampant thanks to all the fuck-making. Heroin replaced marijuana as the drug of choice on Haight-Ashbury. And flower-power preachers incited their congregation toward grisly murders. Read your history books - Charles Manson was a smelly hippie too. Consequently, on February 21st, 1969, Gene Roddenberry cried, “ENOUGH!” and aired a cautionary tale entitled “The Way to Eden.” And believe it or not, the villains in this episode were space hippies.
- anonymous bumper sticker author
Gene Roddenberry, creator and executive producer of Star Trek had a great love for humanity. Episodes such as “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” were effective parables outlining the evil of racism and prejudice on par with other socially conscious science fiction of the 60s like Planet of the Apes or The Twilight Zone’s “Obsolete Man” and “Eye of the Beholder.” Roddenberry believed very much that we will never conquer interstellar flight and extraterrestrial colonization until we as a people conquer our hate. That’s why in addition to uber-Aryan James T. Kirk manning the Enterprise, you’ll also find Scotty, the booze-swilling engineer from Scotland. Uhura, Nubian goddess of communications. Sulu, the Asian pilot co-navigating with the Russian Chekov. And Spock, a deformed autistic case probably from somewhere in the Middle East. The message is clear – put aside our petty racism and nationalism, and we can fly into space like Captain Kirk and fuck three-tittied Martians. But Roddenberry wasn’t always about the love. There was one group of people he despised. Gene Roddenberry hated hippies.
Filthy, lazy, drug-smoking hippies. What have they given the world besides drum circles, patchouli oil and tofu? Hippies are to society as the appendix is to the human body – completely fucking useless. And much like the appendix, sometimes hippies get inflamed for no reason and need to be removed. When the 60s started, hippies were all about free love and experimentation which sounds harmless. But left to their own devices, everything imploded before the decade’s end. STDs ran rampant thanks to all the fuck-making. Heroin replaced marijuana as the drug of choice on Haight-Ashbury. And flower-power preachers incited their congregation toward grisly murders. Read your history books - Charles Manson was a smelly hippie too. Consequently, on February 21st, 1969, Gene Roddenberry cried, “ENOUGH!” and aired a cautionary tale entitled “The Way to Eden.” And believe it or not, the villains in this episode were space hippies.
Filthy, lazy, drug-smoking space hippies.
Dr. Sevrin (pictured above) spends his time brainwashing the respectable youth of the cosmos with his hippie propaganda, then turning them against their parents. He’s got his followers convinced there’s a planet named Eden where they won’t have to live under the thumb of authority, which in hippie-speak means they can ball each other without rubbers and smoke as much grass as they want. One of the kids is Tongo Rad (I wish my last name was Rad), son of a Catuallan ambassador.
Tongo Rad’s association with Dr. Sevrin damages the good work his father does for the Federation, but do you think this spoiled brat gives two galactic shits whether or not his fellow Catuallan’s are blasted into oblivion by the encroaching Klingon empire? No, he’s too busy making bongo drums out of hemp.
Speaking of hemp bongos, another misled member of Dr. Sevrin’s crew of malcontents is Adam, an interstellar folk music sensation played by Charles Napier. This is a gifted character actor; you probably know him from more patriotic and authoritarian roles like Col. Briggs on the A-Team.
In “The Way to Eden,” Roddenberry proves that the only thing worse than hippies are space hippies. I watched this episode last night and can't stop thinking about how it is simultaneously the most absurd and most genius episode Star Trek produced during its three year run. Everything in it is some sort of parallel and rebuke of the hippie counter culture. Too many damnations to recall, I’ve decided that a second viewing is required to properly catalogue how effectively Roddenberry motherfucked this movement of shirtless freeloaders. And so, inspired by Johnny Deuce’s past live blogs of the World Cup and Deadwood’s season 2 premiere, I now give you…
Live Blogging Star Trek episode #75: “The Way to Eden”
00:19
The Enterprise finds a stolen ship called The Aurora flying through space. Kirk has orders to detain the vessel, but instead of receiving the Enterprise’s tractor beam, the Aurora hauls ass for the Romulan Neutral Zone. This is like when a dopehead runs from the cops and tries to make it to the Mexican border so that he can hide with the other drug-trafficking illegal aliens.
01:20
The Aurora flies so fast that the ship is going to explode. Seconds before meltdown, Scotty beams the Aurora’s passengers to the Enterprise. Further to the previous car chase analogy, this is like when the fleeing dopehead drives so fast and crazy down the highway that he runs over innocent children and puppies before plowing into a telephone pole.
02:26
Upon teleporting the Aurora’s passengers aboard, Scotty immediately recognizes them as space hippies and makes no attempt to conceal his disgust. Awesome.
04:15
The first thing the space hippies do is sit down in the transport room and refuse to report to sick bay for examination. That’s right – the soap dodgers aren’t on board two minutes before staging a sit in.
05:23
Tongo Rad calls Kirk a “Herbert.” This is the space hippie equivalent of being called a “square.”
06:01
This dialogue below is sampled in the intro of White Zombie’s “Starface” from their superior 1992 release, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1.
Spock: One.
Dr. Sevrin: We are one.
Spock: One is the beginning.
Adam: Are you one, Herbert?
Spock: I am not Herbert.
Adam: He's not Herbert – we reach.
07:05
Kirk informs the flower children that whether or not they recognize authority, he’s still the authority on the Enterprise (I get hard when Shatner says shit like this). Adam replies, “Oh Herbert, you are a stiff!” This line is sampled in the outro of the aforementioned “Starface.” Rob Zombie is officially under suspicion of hippie-dom.
08:11
Chekov tells Kirk that he knows one of Dr. Sevrin’s followers, the girl Irina. They schooled in Starfleet Academy together until she “dropped out.” As in tuned in, turned on and dropped out? Oh Roddenberry, you delicious bastard you.
11:05
Adam plays some sort of space guitar while singing of Eden:
Looking for the good land
Goin’ astray
Don’t cry, don’t cry
Oh, I can’t have honey
And I can’t have cream
Gonna live, not die
Gonna live, not die
Stand in the middle of it all one day
Look at it shinin’ all around me and say
I’m here, I’m here!
In the good land, in the new land
I’m here
Yep. Sounds like Simon and Garfunkle hippie nonsense to me.
14:03
Chekov’s making time with his old girlfriend Irina. Since I could care less about anyone getting space pussy besides Kirk, I lose interest immediately. A quick check of Star Trek's Wikipedia for “The Way to Eden” reveals that Charles Napier actually wrote the songs he sings in this episode. I am appalled.
15:50
The space hippies stage a protest outside the ship’s lab. Imagine that – hippies protesting outside a lab.
16:14
Bones reveals that Dr. Sevrin’s carrying a disease, some junk-gunk called the Synthecoccus Novae virus. Ah, so the space hippie’s secretly spreading space-AIDS with all his free hippie space love. You make me sick, Sevrin.
18:35
Kirk informs the space hippies that Dr. Sevrin will be quarantined until they think he’s medically safe. In response, Adam gets up and sings, “Stiff man putting my mind in jail; And the judge bang the gavel and say no bail; Gonna lick his hand and wag my tail!” Smart money says Charles Napier’s more proud of the scene in Silence of the Lambs when Hannibal Lector eats his face.
21:13
The design on Dr. Sevrin’s oversized ears is so bad it’s brilliant. I bet Gene Roddenberry told the makeup people something like, “…and make sure his hippie ears are big enough so that the scumbag can hear the Grateful Dead from the back of the auditorium.”
24:15
Spock plays his Vulcan harp for Adam. Adam says, “That’s now! That’s real now! I reach that, brother, I really do. Hey, how about a session? You and us? It would sound! That’s what I came for. I wanted to ask great white captain upstairs, but he don’t reach us.” If I hadn’t seen this the night previous, I’d think the “session” Adam’s inviting Spock to would be one of their hippie space orgies. Instead, he’s merely asking him to come to a jam session.
27:35
Irina uses her feminine wiles on Chekov, and he tells her how to fly the Enterprise. She’ll use this knowledge to help the space hippies plan a mutiny. The lesson here is that hippie women are just as deceptive as regular women.
29:25
Adam plays his space guitar at the jam session and sings:
I’m talkin’ ‘bout you
I’m talkin’ ‘bout me
Long time back, when the galaxy was new
Man found out what he had to do
Found he had to eat and he found he had to drink
And a long time later he found he had to think
Yes, think
I’m standing here wondering
What?
If a man tells another man, “Out of my way”
He piles up trouble for himself all day
But all kinds of trouble come to an end
When a man tells another man, “Be my friend”
Uh huh, my friend
Well, what’s it going to be?
There’s a mile-wide emptiness between you and me
Can’t reach across it, hardly even see
Someone ought to take a step one way or other
Let’s say goodbye or let’s say, “Brother”
Brother, brother!
Hey out there (x4)
I see you (x4)
Let’s get together and have some fun
I don’t know how to do it but it’s got to be done
Transcribing these lyrics felt like taking one of those shits in which your sphincter doesn’t cooperate with your colon, and you end up breaking off the deuce with a quarter of it left inside. You won’t feel clean again until taking a shower.
32:45
Spock starts to jam with the space hippies on his Vulcan harp. Watching this feels so uncomfortable that I have to turn off the sound and listen to something else or I might actually die of embarrassment. How about… “Starface” by White Zombie? I’ll copy and paste the lyrics for “Starface” below. Think of them as the mental shower to wipe your anus clean.
September in the rain, her sweat come a frozen onto my skin
Eliminate the outerspace and I’m swingin’ down it again
Synchronize me, fall away
I believe that I’m wicked on the way
Look alive now!
Yeah! Stars explode my eyes
I been down a long time
Days crawl away and die
Forever is a long time
Remember howling crazy like at the moonlight superfly
A penetrating powerman baby, I’m painted in the sky
Iron fister on the hour
Paralyzing demon flower
Yeah! Stars explode my eyes
I been down a long time
Days crawl away and die
Forever is a long time
Surround the pain, the love’s insane
Got a pseudo-systematic gain
Careening through the neon side
A horizontal mind collide
Harum scarum holiday
Double dealing on the ones who say
“Collapse me with a power blast”
Ground to zero rolling fast
Ride the glide, treasure side
Got a wooden symbol soul inside
Freeze the heart, a razor tear
Pack attack she doesn’t care
If the pillow Jacob sky
Snatch the pad, I don’t deny
Been a long time
Been a long time
Step into the wind and watch a red girl come alive
Screaming to the world, “I diggin’ on the fact that you will not survive”
Radiate me, walk away
You shook the devil’s dig-deep hand today
Yeah! Stars explode my eyes
I been down a long time
Days crawl away and die
Forever is a long time
A million miles an hour
Million miles an hour
Million miles an hour
Let’s get inside
37:47
Odd. These White Zombie lyrics make even less sense than Napier’s space hippie word salad, and yet I don’t feel the need to punch something in the throat after reading them. Rob Zombie, you sir are no hippie. Apologies.
38:00
The space hippies highjack the Enterprise and head to Eden (I guess they found the planet while I was listening to the sweet, sweet M3T4L). Dr. Sevrin records one of Adam’s tunes. I’m sorry, but I just don’t have the energy to transcribe another one of these awful fucking songs. I am now convinced that Napier made a career of playing cops, military men and other establishment-type individuals as penance for this role.
40:43
Dr. Sevrin broadcasts Adam’s song through the ship at an ultra high volume, crippling the crew. I find this plot point extremely believable.
41:14
Fucking Napier’s fucking singing a-fucking-gain.
44:37
The space hippies have made it to Eden. Kirk and the usual suspects beam down to recapture them. While there, Chekov touches a flower, and it burns his hand. After a quick tricorder check, Bones determines that all the plants on Eden are full of acid. Acid you say? Hmmm…
45:25
Spock discovers Adam dead on the ground. There’s a piece of fruit next to him with a bite taken out of it. That’s right folks – the hippie died from eating bad acid. Genius. Unadulterated genius.
47:05
Dr. Sevrin doesn’t believe the warning about the acid, eats the fruit anyway and dies. You see kids, when the loud speaker at Woodstock tells you not to eat the brown acid, you’d better listen. Who’s the asshole now, Herbert?
In summation, please enjoy this GIF image.
11:05
Adam plays some sort of space guitar while singing of Eden:
Looking for the good land
Goin’ astray
Don’t cry, don’t cry
Oh, I can’t have honey
And I can’t have cream
Gonna live, not die
Gonna live, not die
Stand in the middle of it all one day
Look at it shinin’ all around me and say
I’m here, I’m here!
In the good land, in the new land
I’m here
Yep. Sounds like Simon and Garfunkle hippie nonsense to me.
14:03
Chekov’s making time with his old girlfriend Irina. Since I could care less about anyone getting space pussy besides Kirk, I lose interest immediately. A quick check of Star Trek's Wikipedia for “The Way to Eden” reveals that Charles Napier actually wrote the songs he sings in this episode. I am appalled.
15:50
The space hippies stage a protest outside the ship’s lab. Imagine that – hippies protesting outside a lab.
16:14
Bones reveals that Dr. Sevrin’s carrying a disease, some junk-gunk called the Synthecoccus Novae virus. Ah, so the space hippie’s secretly spreading space-AIDS with all his free hippie space love. You make me sick, Sevrin.
18:35
Kirk informs the space hippies that Dr. Sevrin will be quarantined until they think he’s medically safe. In response, Adam gets up and sings, “Stiff man putting my mind in jail; And the judge bang the gavel and say no bail; Gonna lick his hand and wag my tail!” Smart money says Charles Napier’s more proud of the scene in Silence of the Lambs when Hannibal Lector eats his face.
21:13
The design on Dr. Sevrin’s oversized ears is so bad it’s brilliant. I bet Gene Roddenberry told the makeup people something like, “…and make sure his hippie ears are big enough so that the scumbag can hear the Grateful Dead from the back of the auditorium.”
24:15
Spock plays his Vulcan harp for Adam. Adam says, “That’s now! That’s real now! I reach that, brother, I really do. Hey, how about a session? You and us? It would sound! That’s what I came for. I wanted to ask great white captain upstairs, but he don’t reach us.” If I hadn’t seen this the night previous, I’d think the “session” Adam’s inviting Spock to would be one of their hippie space orgies. Instead, he’s merely asking him to come to a jam session.
27:35
Irina uses her feminine wiles on Chekov, and he tells her how to fly the Enterprise. She’ll use this knowledge to help the space hippies plan a mutiny. The lesson here is that hippie women are just as deceptive as regular women.
29:25
Adam plays his space guitar at the jam session and sings:
I’m talkin’ ‘bout you
I’m talkin’ ‘bout me
Long time back, when the galaxy was new
Man found out what he had to do
Found he had to eat and he found he had to drink
And a long time later he found he had to think
Yes, think
I’m standing here wondering
What?
If a man tells another man, “Out of my way”
He piles up trouble for himself all day
But all kinds of trouble come to an end
When a man tells another man, “Be my friend”
Uh huh, my friend
Well, what’s it going to be?
There’s a mile-wide emptiness between you and me
Can’t reach across it, hardly even see
Someone ought to take a step one way or other
Let’s say goodbye or let’s say, “Brother”
Brother, brother!
Hey out there (x4)
I see you (x4)
Let’s get together and have some fun
I don’t know how to do it but it’s got to be done
Transcribing these lyrics felt like taking one of those shits in which your sphincter doesn’t cooperate with your colon, and you end up breaking off the deuce with a quarter of it left inside. You won’t feel clean again until taking a shower.
32:45
Spock starts to jam with the space hippies on his Vulcan harp. Watching this feels so uncomfortable that I have to turn off the sound and listen to something else or I might actually die of embarrassment. How about… “Starface” by White Zombie? I’ll copy and paste the lyrics for “Starface” below. Think of them as the mental shower to wipe your anus clean.
September in the rain, her sweat come a frozen onto my skin
Eliminate the outerspace and I’m swingin’ down it again
Synchronize me, fall away
I believe that I’m wicked on the way
Look alive now!
Yeah! Stars explode my eyes
I been down a long time
Days crawl away and die
Forever is a long time
Remember howling crazy like at the moonlight superfly
A penetrating powerman baby, I’m painted in the sky
Iron fister on the hour
Paralyzing demon flower
Yeah! Stars explode my eyes
I been down a long time
Days crawl away and die
Forever is a long time
Surround the pain, the love’s insane
Got a pseudo-systematic gain
Careening through the neon side
A horizontal mind collide
Harum scarum holiday
Double dealing on the ones who say
“Collapse me with a power blast”
Ground to zero rolling fast
Ride the glide, treasure side
Got a wooden symbol soul inside
Freeze the heart, a razor tear
Pack attack she doesn’t care
If the pillow Jacob sky
Snatch the pad, I don’t deny
Been a long time
Been a long time
Step into the wind and watch a red girl come alive
Screaming to the world, “I diggin’ on the fact that you will not survive”
Radiate me, walk away
You shook the devil’s dig-deep hand today
Yeah! Stars explode my eyes
I been down a long time
Days crawl away and die
Forever is a long time
A million miles an hour
Million miles an hour
Million miles an hour
Let’s get inside
37:47
Odd. These White Zombie lyrics make even less sense than Napier’s space hippie word salad, and yet I don’t feel the need to punch something in the throat after reading them. Rob Zombie, you sir are no hippie. Apologies.
38:00
The space hippies highjack the Enterprise and head to Eden (I guess they found the planet while I was listening to the sweet, sweet M3T4L). Dr. Sevrin records one of Adam’s tunes. I’m sorry, but I just don’t have the energy to transcribe another one of these awful fucking songs. I am now convinced that Napier made a career of playing cops, military men and other establishment-type individuals as penance for this role.
40:43
Dr. Sevrin broadcasts Adam’s song through the ship at an ultra high volume, crippling the crew. I find this plot point extremely believable.
41:14
Fucking Napier’s fucking singing a-fucking-gain.
44:37
The space hippies have made it to Eden. Kirk and the usual suspects beam down to recapture them. While there, Chekov touches a flower, and it burns his hand. After a quick tricorder check, Bones determines that all the plants on Eden are full of acid. Acid you say? Hmmm…
45:25
Spock discovers Adam dead on the ground. There’s a piece of fruit next to him with a bite taken out of it. That’s right folks – the hippie died from eating bad acid. Genius. Unadulterated genius.
47:05
Dr. Sevrin doesn’t believe the warning about the acid, eats the fruit anyway and dies. You see kids, when the loud speaker at Woodstock tells you not to eat the brown acid, you’d better listen. Who’s the asshole now, Herbert?
In summation, please enjoy this GIF image.
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