1745

You reach, brother.

1746

I had a mixed reaction to the episode. When the hippies first boarded the Enterprise, I rolled my eyes and thought, “great, another episode where Roddenberry gets to tell us hippies are worthless”. But, no, that’s not where it went.

I really really enjoyed the conversation between Chekov and his lost love Irina. It kind of gets at how people might prioritize different things in life. This is also hinted at in Spock’s attempt at understanding their culture, and telling Kirk he wants to learn from them. So there’s a genuine understanding in the episode that maybe hippies and Buddhists (the two concepts seem to be kind of mixed together here) just have a different way of looking at life, and it doesn’t mean it’s not also valid.

I also loved how Spock talked to their leader about his disease, and after hearing him talk in a way you’d listen to people nowadays talk about pseudoscience and home-remedies, and he goes to Kirk and tells him the man is insane. Buahahahah. I loved that.

I also really liked the character of Adam. I liked the songs and the music in the episode for the most part, despite some sections being kind of annoying.

The funniest/worst moment of the episode was when they beamed down and see that Adam has taken a bite of the poisonous fruit and died. And I think it’s McCoy who reminds them his name was Adam. I’d like to think the other two are looking at him in this moment, thinking about how inappropriate this joke is. :)

1747

I never thought that was supposed to be a joke, but a memorial. Really a reference to the Biblical implications of Adam trying to find his way back to the Garden of Eden. I suppose they could have hit us over the head and named one of the females Eve too, but that would have been a bit over the top.

This episode always resonated with me along with Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”. I assume that couldn’t have been written prior to summer 1969, which was after this episode would have been written. But the two echo similar themes.

1748

Tell me more. (If you get the chance).

1749

Woodstock lyrics

Mitchell performing it, a few weeks after the concert

The song is probably better known as Crosby, Stills and Nash, but Mitchell wrote it.

The line “And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” seems right in line with the ST episode.

1750

My rewatch was not nearly so cringe inducing as I expected it to be; maybe it’s just easier to see it as a historical artifact now. The songs are better than Jaskier’s in The Witcher, at least.

I’ll note that the air date of this episode depicting a band of hippies led by a charismatic but murderously insane messianic figure was six months before the Manson murders, so in depicting that they certainly were in touch with some sort of zeitgeist.

1751

“Spock… what does ‘Herbert’ mean?”
“It is, um… uh, somewhat, um… uncomplimentary, Captain. Herbert was a minor official - notorious for his rigid and limited patterns of thought.”

Continuing the discussion of this week’s “The Way to Eden”, I guess I would say overall that it was a pretty good episode. The space hippies seem to have been written to seem as annoying as possible, to us and to the crew, even though their goal is as Spock states, pretty reasonable. They just want to find a home in the universe to do their hippie thing. But then staging an immediate sit-in and protest when told that they can’t go straight there, to a planet that may not even exist, is just petulant. And then hectoring anyone who disagrees just seems petulant. It did help that Spock was on their wavelength, and able to talk to them. Made them more human, less silly caricatures.

I did like the little subplot between Chekov and Irina, with her parting admonition to “be incorrect”, and his reply of “occasionally.” And I could never hate anything that has Charles Napier, may he rest in peace. One other thing - it had been forever since I last watched this episode, and I remembered at the very end their landing on the planet that burned to the touch and all fruit was poisonous. I remember being a little freaked out as a kid, thinking such planets might out there, that instead of giving life they would kill.

But overall, I found it a little hard to watch mainly because, as others have noted, I kept thinking of Charles Manson and Jim Jones and the sway they held over their followers and what they drove those followers to do. Which is a bit unfair since neither had occurred at the time this episode aired but maybe there really was some weird murderous vibe in the air that Trek just picked up on. OK maybe not.

1752

God bless the fashion/costume designer for this week’s episode. The writer did a good job too.

I’m glad the show is going out strong as we approach these final episodes.

1753

“You only take a mate once every seven years?”
“The seven-year cycle is biologically inherent in all Vulcans. At that time, the mating drive outweighs all other motivations.”
“And is there nothing that can disturb that cycle, Mr. Spock?”
“Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing, Madam.”

Well folks, I discovered that this week’s episode, The Cloud Minders, is the first episode on the last disc of my complete TOS series blu-ray. We’re definitely in the downhill slide here! But, as @Rock8man noted, this is a pretty good one. Not one I recall seeing before, but it was definitely an interesting one, with some nice conflicts and decent acting. I’ll recap a bit below:

The Enterprise finds itself on a mission to save a planet from a plant-related disease, curable only by a certain mineral from another planet, Ardana. Upon entering orbit, Kirk and Spock discover that they’re not beaming to the mines to retrieve this mineral but instead to its shining city in the clouds -

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Figuring this is a mistake, they instead beam directly to the mine but are attacked by the low and devious miners who do all the work around here -

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Luckily the debonair administrator of the cloud city arrives and rescues everyone from a fate likely worse than death -

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Inviting them to rest for a bit, the crew are betrayed and attacked while they rest -

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Luckily, the administrator captures the attacker, and submits her to torture under something called ‘the rays’ -

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But Kirk and Spock make a discovery - the mineral emits stupid gas! Mining the mineral that every planet uses to protect its plant life makes you stupid! Kirk comes to Vanna, who is trying to get her people a better life in the clouds, and both decide to trust each other to hold up their end of things. But Vanna has other ideas -

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So then Kirk gets free and decides to beam the administrator to cave so he can beat the hell out of him. Anyway, it all comes together in the end and Kirk and the administrator decide none of this ever happened, so I’m going to pretend it never happened too.

1754

Well done.

I have to say that I found this episode, The Cloud Miners to be even more evocative than the Cloud City in Empire Strikes Back. There’s something about that scene where the troglodyte throws himself off the balcony down toward the planet surface. I think that image will stick with me for a long time.

I always appreciate a good morality tale, and I really get riled up when a society is exploiting an underclass like they are in this episode. It really pisses me off so much. And that, in turn, gets me really involved in the episode.

1755

There were a couple of things they did in this episode that were different. For one, they had long sections of the episode in which no one from the Enterprise was present in the scene. Like long conversations between the administrator and his daughter. And then they had this scene where we were inside Spock’s brain! Instead of a supplemental log or something that he was dictating, we actually heard Spock’s actual thoughts. It was kind of cute too. He was really attracted to this girl. We wouldn’t have known that for sure without that scene where we hear his thoughts. That’s one consequence of Nemoy having to play Spock so imperturbable on the surface. So the writer got around that problem by having us listen in to his thoughts.

1756

Ah, that explains the bow-chicka-bow-wow music!

(I kid)

1757

And here it is. A solid episode with the most distractingly hot guest star ever…

(sung to the tune of Roxanne by The Police)

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Drooooooxane. You don’t have to wor-ry about Troglodytes…
Those days are over…
You don’t have to work the mines tonight!
Drooooooooooooooxanne!

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1758

1759

I’m not sure I quite followed the opening set up… I think something about a plague (again, there are a lot of space plagues) and then some dude shows up to ask Droxine’s hand in marraige. She rejects him, so of course… he jumps to his death.

And no wonder…

1760

Now do Lwaxanna Troi.

1761

Look at Kirk’s little nod here:

This episode was obviously a reference to H.G Wells’ The Time Machine, with The Cloud Minders as the Eoli(sp?).

1762

“The Savage Curtain”

aka the episode from which there have been half a dozen images posted in this thread already. Aka the episode with Abraham Lincoln.

I quite enjoyed that. I expected it to be cheesy, and it kind of was. But at the same time it was a nice commentary on good and evil using the same means to defeat their enemies. Lincoln says it. And I personally thought back to the fire-bombings in World War 2 before nuclear weapons were used, that seem needlessly cruel. So you have beings exploring these issues via constructing heroes and villains from the crew’s brains and having them duke it out.

I quite enjoyed it. I have to say, how disappointing that Genghis Khan was a non-entity, and Kahless was a wimp. His power seemed to be mimicry.

1763

I’m having a bit of trouble fitting in my weekly viewing of TOS episodes since my wife and both kids are now stuck at home with me. I may be in a holding pattern for a bit, but no need to wait for me.

1764

I found this one awesome. Ridiculous? Yes. But the actor playing Lincoln SOLD it. He was so earnest.

Plus … “Oh my what a lovely Negress!” Ok take it down a notch, Star Trek.

What would be your guy’s pick for a historical 4v4 battle? The problem is, who do you decide is bad? Was Julius Caesar bad? Alexander? How about Robert E Lee? Is he evil? Rommel?

You kinda want not just leaders, but fighters too. George Washington maybe?