Star Trek TOS Rambling: This Side of Paradise
When I was a young child, I always had very, very mixed feelings about the episode This Side of Paradise. This is because I had a horrible, horrible crush on Mr. Spock. As a result, for me the episode was good because it showed that Spock really was capable of falling in love. Hooray! On the other hand, it was bad because it showed Spock falling in love with a girl who was not me. Booo!
I'd be a lot more embarrassed to admit this if I weren't fairly certain that nearly every female on my flist has fallen in love with a fictional character at one point or another.
Anyway, I did always find the episode fascinating for entirely different reasons, and that's because I was always deeply fascinated by events that alter characters' minds and emotions without it being direct, thoughtless mind-control. I can't say why exactly, but this is a theme I've dug since I was very young, and that I still dig today. I think at least part of it has to do with the fact that one way to explore a character's normal behavior is through compare and contrast when some external force is supplanting that normal behavior. This sort of thing really only works when the characters' personalities are well-established to begin with - if there's no way to tell 'This is not normal,' a lot of the interest is lost. Either way, this is a theme that Star Trek tends to use a lot. That, time travel, and god-like aliens with reality-warping powers are pretty much their three plot staples. Still, there's a lot of fun to be had with personality modification, time travel, and god-like aliens with reality-warping powers, so I'm inclined to forgive them!
Oh, anyway. The plot. The Enterprise heads to a planet that is constantly bombarded by Mysterious Space Rays that are known to destroy animal tissue after about a week's exposure. They're there to check up on an agricultural colony that was established three years ago, and to evacuate any survivors. Why the Federation waited three years to check up on a colony being bombarded with mysterious space rays that take a week to kill someone is pretty much beyond me. Anyway, they get to the colony and discover, much to their surprise, that everyone's still alive. Not only that, but every individual in the colony is in perfect health, in some cases to the point where pre-existing medical conditions have vanished. The colonists absolutely refuses to be evacuated For Their Own Good, insisting that they have found paradise.
Then a local plant shoots confetti space spores all over Spock, and he becomes sappy and insubordinate and gets all lovey dovey with one of the colonists (whom he knew from elsewhere). He decides to settle down in the colony, and flatly informs Kirk that they won't be evacuating. Over time, more and more crewmembers succumb to the lure of the confetti, going so far as to transport the space plants to the Enterprise, where the ventilation systems distribute the spores. The crew all decide to go join the colony where they can live sappily ever after, protected from the freaky space radiation by the freakier mood-altering plants. Before long, Kirk is the only one not affected, and the only one left on his ship. It can maintain orbit, but without a crew, it won't go anywhere, leaving Kirk abandoned and alone with his truest love, but unable to take her out of the sorts of dates she's come to expect. That is, until the space plants shoot confetti all over him, too, and he gets ready to leave. Some part of him refuses to abandon the Enterprise, however, and he eventually works himself up into a rage - at which point the spores lose their control. That's when he realizes that strong negative emotions drive them away.
Kirk manages to lure Spock back on the Enterprise with a story about needing to grab some last supplies, where he proceeds to emotionally abuse his First Officer until Spock gets pissed off enough to beat the shit out of him. Then Spock calms down, figures out what's been going on, and helps Kirk build a subsonic transmitter designed to piss everyone in the colony, crewmembers and colonists alike, off. Fistfights break out everywhere, followed by people coming to their senses and realizing that they were nucking about accomplishing nothing, and hey, what's humanity without challenge? Then they all clamber back to the Enterprise and head off, the colonists deciding to find a new world to settle where they can have a true sense of accomplishment as oppose to existing in a happy but somewhat drugged stupor and letting the spores take care of them.
I'm pretty sure there's some sort of "Drugs are bad" message wrapped up in all of this. Along with messages about how humanity requires challenge to thrive and advance, that we're not meant to be continuously happy, and so forth.
Quotes I liked:
SPOCK: Captain, this planet is being bombarded by Berthold rays, as our reports indicated. At this intensity, we'll be safe for a week if necessary. But
KIRK: But these people shouldn't be alive.
SULU: Is it possible that they're not?
The Enterprise really has encountered weirder at this point. Sulu's question is valid.
KIRK: It's like a jigsaw puzzle all one color. No key to where the pieces fit in. Why?
And we all know that Kirk doesn't like mysteries because they give him a tummy ache (see: The Man Trap). Except I find it hard to accept, given that he's a firking space explorer.
SPOCK: Nothing. Not even insects. Yet your plants grow, and you've survived exposure to Berthold rays.
LEILA: That can be explained.
SPOCK: Please do.
LEILA: Later.
SPOCK: I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question.
Quit being so sexist, Spock! You know damned well human males pull the same bullshit on you on a regular basis!
LEILA: Its basic properties and elements are not important. What is important is it gives life, peace, love.
SPOCK: What you're describing was once known in the vernacular as a happiness pill. And you, as a scientist, should know that that's not possible.
KIRK: Spock. The frequency is open, but he doesn't answer.
MCCOY: That didn't sound at all like Spock, Jim.
KIRK: No. I thought you said you might like him if he mellowed a little.
MCCOY: I didn't say that.
KIRK: You said that.
MCCOY: Not exactly. He might be in trouble.
It amuses me that Kirk takes the time to bicker with McCoy over whether or not McCoy ever wanted Spock to chill out.
No quote, but a note: the way McCoy's southern accent suddenly gets much, much stronger when he gets spore'd annoys the heck out of me. >:(
SPOCK: It's impossible to say. They drifted through space until they finally landed here. You see, they actually thrive on Berthold rays. The plants act as a repository for thousands of microscopic spores until they find a human body to inhabit.
ELIAS: In return, they give you complete health and peace of mind.
KIRK: That's paradise?
ELIAS: We have no need or want, Captain.
SPOCK: It's a true Eden, Jim. There's belonging and love.
KIRK: No wants. No needs. We weren't meant for that. None of us. Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is.
ELIAS: We have what we need.
KIRK: Except a challenge.
KIRK: What can you expect from a simpering, devil-eared freak whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia?
SPOCK: My mother was a teacher. My father an ambassador.
KIRK: Your father was a computer, like his son. An ambassador from a planet of traitors. A Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity.
SPOCK: Captain, please don't
KIRK: You're a traitor from a race of traitors. Disloyal to the core, rotten like the rest of your subhuman race, and you've got the gall to make love to that girl.
SPOCK: That's enough.
KIRK: Does she know what she's getting, Spock? A carcass full of memory banks who should be squatting in a mushroom, instead of passing himself off as a man? You belong in a circus, Spock, not a starship. Right next to the dog-faced boy.
Spock does not like having his parents and girlfriend mocked. >:(
KIRK (after getting the shit beat out of him by Spock): Had enough? I didn't realize what it took to get under that thick hide of yours. Anyhow, I don't know what you're so mad about. It isn't every first officer who gets to belt his Captain. Several times.
SPOCK: You did that to me deliberately.
KIRK: Believe me, Mister Spock, it was painful in more ways than one.
SPOCK: That may be correct, Captain, but trying to initiate a brawl with over five hundred crewmen and colonists is hardly logical.
SPOCK: Captain. Striking a fellow officer is a court martial offence.
KIRK: Well, if we're both in the Brig, who's going to build the subsonic transmitter?
SPOCK: That is quite logical, Captain.
SPOCK: I have a responsibility to this ship, to that man on the Bridge. I am what I am, Leila, and if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else's.
So loyalty to the Captain and to the Enterprise is more important to Spock than the love of a beautiful woman.
And people wonder where those fics come from.
LEILA: I have lost you, haven't I? And not only you, I've lost all of it. The spores. I've lost them, too.
KIRK: The Captain discovered that strong emotions and needs destroy the spore influence.
LEILA: And this is for my good?
ELIAS: Well, Doctor, I've been thinking about what sort of work I could assign you to.
MCCOY: What do you mean, what sort of work? I'm a doctor.
ELIAS: Not any more, of course. We don't need you. Not as a doctor.
MCCOY: Oh, no? Would you like to see how fast I can put you in a hospital?
ELIAS: I am the leader of this colony. I'll assign you whatever work I think suitable.
MCCOY: Just a minute. You'd better make me a mechanic. Then I can treat little tin gods like you.
MCCOY: Well, that's the second time man's been thrown out of paradise.
KIRK: No, no, Bones. This time we walked out on our own. Maybe we weren't meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through. Struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums.
KIRK: Poetry, Captain. Non-regulation.
Full transcript for the interested.
I'd be a lot more embarrassed to admit this if I weren't fairly certain that nearly every female on my flist has fallen in love with a fictional character at one point or another.
Anyway, I did always find the episode fascinating for entirely different reasons, and that's because I was always deeply fascinated by events that alter characters' minds and emotions without it being direct, thoughtless mind-control. I can't say why exactly, but this is a theme I've dug since I was very young, and that I still dig today. I think at least part of it has to do with the fact that one way to explore a character's normal behavior is through compare and contrast when some external force is supplanting that normal behavior. This sort of thing really only works when the characters' personalities are well-established to begin with - if there's no way to tell 'This is not normal,' a lot of the interest is lost. Either way, this is a theme that Star Trek tends to use a lot. That, time travel, and god-like aliens with reality-warping powers are pretty much their three plot staples. Still, there's a lot of fun to be had with personality modification, time travel, and god-like aliens with reality-warping powers, so I'm inclined to forgive them!
Oh, anyway. The plot. The Enterprise heads to a planet that is constantly bombarded by Mysterious Space Rays that are known to destroy animal tissue after about a week's exposure. They're there to check up on an agricultural colony that was established three years ago, and to evacuate any survivors. Why the Federation waited three years to check up on a colony being bombarded with mysterious space rays that take a week to kill someone is pretty much beyond me. Anyway, they get to the colony and discover, much to their surprise, that everyone's still alive. Not only that, but every individual in the colony is in perfect health, in some cases to the point where pre-existing medical conditions have vanished. The colonists absolutely refuses to be evacuated For Their Own Good, insisting that they have found paradise.
Then a local plant shoots confetti space spores all over Spock, and he becomes sappy and insubordinate and gets all lovey dovey with one of the colonists (whom he knew from elsewhere). He decides to settle down in the colony, and flatly informs Kirk that they won't be evacuating. Over time, more and more crewmembers succumb to the lure of the confetti, going so far as to transport the space plants to the Enterprise, where the ventilation systems distribute the spores. The crew all decide to go join the colony where they can live sappily ever after, protected from the freaky space radiation by the freakier mood-altering plants. Before long, Kirk is the only one not affected, and the only one left on his ship. It can maintain orbit, but without a crew, it won't go anywhere, leaving Kirk abandoned and alone with his truest love, but unable to take her out of the sorts of dates she's come to expect. That is, until the space plants shoot confetti all over him, too, and he gets ready to leave. Some part of him refuses to abandon the Enterprise, however, and he eventually works himself up into a rage - at which point the spores lose their control. That's when he realizes that strong negative emotions drive them away.
Kirk manages to lure Spock back on the Enterprise with a story about needing to grab some last supplies, where he proceeds to emotionally abuse his First Officer until Spock gets pissed off enough to beat the shit out of him. Then Spock calms down, figures out what's been going on, and helps Kirk build a subsonic transmitter designed to piss everyone in the colony, crewmembers and colonists alike, off. Fistfights break out everywhere, followed by people coming to their senses and realizing that they were nucking about accomplishing nothing, and hey, what's humanity without challenge? Then they all clamber back to the Enterprise and head off, the colonists deciding to find a new world to settle where they can have a true sense of accomplishment as oppose to existing in a happy but somewhat drugged stupor and letting the spores take care of them.
I'm pretty sure there's some sort of "Drugs are bad" message wrapped up in all of this. Along with messages about how humanity requires challenge to thrive and advance, that we're not meant to be continuously happy, and so forth.
Quotes I liked:
SPOCK: Captain, this planet is being bombarded by Berthold rays, as our reports indicated. At this intensity, we'll be safe for a week if necessary. But
KIRK: But these people shouldn't be alive.
SULU: Is it possible that they're not?
The Enterprise really has encountered weirder at this point. Sulu's question is valid.
KIRK: It's like a jigsaw puzzle all one color. No key to where the pieces fit in. Why?
And we all know that Kirk doesn't like mysteries because they give him a tummy ache (see: The Man Trap). Except I find it hard to accept, given that he's a firking space explorer.
SPOCK: Nothing. Not even insects. Yet your plants grow, and you've survived exposure to Berthold rays.
LEILA: That can be explained.
SPOCK: Please do.
LEILA: Later.
SPOCK: I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question.
Quit being so sexist, Spock! You know damned well human males pull the same bullshit on you on a regular basis!
LEILA: Its basic properties and elements are not important. What is important is it gives life, peace, love.
SPOCK: What you're describing was once known in the vernacular as a happiness pill. And you, as a scientist, should know that that's not possible.
KIRK: Spock. The frequency is open, but he doesn't answer.
MCCOY: That didn't sound at all like Spock, Jim.
KIRK: No. I thought you said you might like him if he mellowed a little.
MCCOY: I didn't say that.
KIRK: You said that.
MCCOY: Not exactly. He might be in trouble.
It amuses me that Kirk takes the time to bicker with McCoy over whether or not McCoy ever wanted Spock to chill out.
No quote, but a note: the way McCoy's southern accent suddenly gets much, much stronger when he gets spore'd annoys the heck out of me. >:(
SPOCK: It's impossible to say. They drifted through space until they finally landed here. You see, they actually thrive on Berthold rays. The plants act as a repository for thousands of microscopic spores until they find a human body to inhabit.
ELIAS: In return, they give you complete health and peace of mind.
KIRK: That's paradise?
ELIAS: We have no need or want, Captain.
SPOCK: It's a true Eden, Jim. There's belonging and love.
KIRK: No wants. No needs. We weren't meant for that. None of us. Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is.
ELIAS: We have what we need.
KIRK: Except a challenge.
KIRK: What can you expect from a simpering, devil-eared freak whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia?
SPOCK: My mother was a teacher. My father an ambassador.
KIRK: Your father was a computer, like his son. An ambassador from a planet of traitors. A Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity.
SPOCK: Captain, please don't
KIRK: You're a traitor from a race of traitors. Disloyal to the core, rotten like the rest of your subhuman race, and you've got the gall to make love to that girl.
SPOCK: That's enough.
KIRK: Does she know what she's getting, Spock? A carcass full of memory banks who should be squatting in a mushroom, instead of passing himself off as a man? You belong in a circus, Spock, not a starship. Right next to the dog-faced boy.
Spock does not like having his parents and girlfriend mocked. >:(
KIRK (after getting the shit beat out of him by Spock): Had enough? I didn't realize what it took to get under that thick hide of yours. Anyhow, I don't know what you're so mad about. It isn't every first officer who gets to belt his Captain. Several times.
SPOCK: You did that to me deliberately.
KIRK: Believe me, Mister Spock, it was painful in more ways than one.
SPOCK: That may be correct, Captain, but trying to initiate a brawl with over five hundred crewmen and colonists is hardly logical.
SPOCK: Captain. Striking a fellow officer is a court martial offence.
KIRK: Well, if we're both in the Brig, who's going to build the subsonic transmitter?
SPOCK: That is quite logical, Captain.
SPOCK: I have a responsibility to this ship, to that man on the Bridge. I am what I am, Leila, and if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else's.
So loyalty to the Captain and to the Enterprise is more important to Spock than the love of a beautiful woman.
And people wonder where those fics come from.
LEILA: I have lost you, haven't I? And not only you, I've lost all of it. The spores. I've lost them, too.
KIRK: The Captain discovered that strong emotions and needs destroy the spore influence.
LEILA: And this is for my good?
ELIAS: Well, Doctor, I've been thinking about what sort of work I could assign you to.
MCCOY: What do you mean, what sort of work? I'm a doctor.
ELIAS: Not any more, of course. We don't need you. Not as a doctor.
MCCOY: Oh, no? Would you like to see how fast I can put you in a hospital?
ELIAS: I am the leader of this colony. I'll assign you whatever work I think suitable.
MCCOY: Just a minute. You'd better make me a mechanic. Then I can treat little tin gods like you.
MCCOY: Well, that's the second time man's been thrown out of paradise.
KIRK: No, no, Bones. This time we walked out on our own. Maybe we weren't meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through. Struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums.
KIRK: Poetry, Captain. Non-regulation.
Full transcript for the interested.