Jenny McCarthy and Space Hippies

Santa Bot space hippies (Photo credit: shoveling_ferret)

Watching The Way to Eden, best known as the space hippy episode. Given Kirk's inability to keep it in his pants, you'd think he'd welcome a bunch of free-love types, but, no, he's all "get a haircut and lose the interstellar patchouli."

Anyway, the crazy, self-centered, irresponsible leader of the hippies, Dr. Sevrin is carrying a highly virulent disease that cannot be cured but can be prevented via vaccine. He apparently decided not to get the vaccine and has been knowingly wandering the galaxy exposing people even though he's been told how dangerous this is.

Why does this sound familiar?
Oh, right.

Anyway, the space hippies are annoying as hell and their drum circle sucks. Wow does it suck. Damn. 1969 in LA and they couldn't find better hippies? I mean, they could have paid them in pot and let them wear their own clothes. Instead they clearly let some 50 year-old dude who was a fan of the Monkees hire these assholes. "Yep, this is totally counter-culture. Them kids will totally boogy to this."

Also, Spock jamming with the hippies is physical painful to watch.

And could they possibly have been any more heavy-handed with the whole "the planet is made of acid!" thing? Burny acid, not trippy acid. Worst trip ever.

Apparently this episode didn't suck so much in the first draft. One of the hippies was supposed to be McCoy's daughter and Kirk was supposed to be all "mmmm, space hippy." And, obviously, McCoy was going to be all "you're gonna be dead, Jim." The original writer, the awesome DC Fontana asked they change her credit to an entirely different name, in fact, because she thought it sucked so hard.