There is a character in this episode called Tongo. He might as well be called Torgo, as this is arguably the most riffable episode of Star Trek I've yet come across.
That means it's awful in a funny way. Well, somewhat.
We see the Enterprise as traffic cops, chasing down a stolen cruiser, which blows up after overloading its engines, but not before Scotty manages to beam its six-person crew (including an ambassador's son) on board...
Who turn out to be hippies...
****
When TV programmes try to capture youth subculture, the results can be often cringeworthy... and this is definitely one of those cases. The hippies, with the exception of their leader Dr Sevrin (more on him later), are very much of the peace and love, "flower power" variety.
Also one of them happens to be an ex-girlfriend of Chekov, "treating" us to a painful attempt at a Russian accent and dressed in another "William Theiss Special" that shows off midriff, back and legs. She is also a Starfleet Academy dropout, so they're clearly not missing much there. Chekov is written very rigid here; the original story concept was to have Kirk fall in love with Joanna but no-one properly changed the script.
D.C. Fontana got her name taken off the credits and replaced by "Michael Richards" in protest over the rewrites of her concept - her original idea had involved McCoy's daughter and was rejected. I can see why.
These hippies are awful... like nauseatingly bad. If any of the people here had drug dealers, I would imagine that they'd not be happy if they were watching this episode. For example, they call authority figures they don't like "Herbert". Over and over again - with Kirk being one of them. Spock is fine - they "reach" with him.
This was an executive's idea - Douglas S. Cramer may have been taunting his predecessor. Their outfits are bizarre, the hairpieces on the men something to behold and their "groovy" attitude is like so "far out" it's basically coming back in. I burst into laughter several times at this episode. They're also "musicians", but rather bad ones. We get two original songs here that mainly serve to pad out the episode to the required runtime and test your sanity in listening to them. One of them rhymes "mind", "find" and "rind", which is one of the rhymes of all time...
I was reminded of some of the movies I've seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000 which gave you similar audio experiences, like Hobgoblins.
This lot, who would infuriate a regular person let alone whatever the 1960s called the MAGA group, are led by Dr Sevrin, played by Skip Homeier (who had been in "Patterns of Force" as Melakon) with distractingly large prosthetics on his ears. They want to go to a possibly mythical planet called Eden so they can live out new lives free from the Federation Man. The rather big problem is that Sevrin is a carrier of a deadly bacteria that will do nasty things to any pre-warp civilisation... and even bigger that he's completely insane, refusing to believe his diagnosis. I immediately thought of Charles Manson, who was active at this time - other commentators have gone for Timothy Leary, who had a lot of friends in Hollywood at this time, but was probably not flattered at the comparison.
Kirk refuses to go to Eden, so this lot decide to take control of the ship. Staging a concert, Sevrin and another of the hippies manage to sneak into the "auxiliary control room", knock out the guard... then take control of the systems. This ship has been hijacked by many god-like beings over the years, but getting taken over by this people is just plain embarrassing.
Heading into Romulan space at stupidly fast speed, they manage to get to this place and take a shuttle down to the surface. Then the awful truth is discovered; it looks lovely, but is completely toxic to humanoid life with the grass causing severe burns to the bare feet of the hippies... but a hippy called Adam (see what they did there?) and Sevrin both consume the local fruit to fatal effect.
The others are taken off and dropped off, then Kirk delivers a rather awful last line. "We reach... Mr Spock".
For the record, I watched this episode without consuming alcohol or any non-prescribed drug. I can't imagine it would be much better even if stoned.
Conclusion
This is the least favourite episode of Walter Koenig and the late James Doohan. It's also to be me arguably even worse than "Spock's Brain", with about the same level of logic.
Crow T. Robot would be ashamed if he wrote this script.
2/10
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