Redux - The One with the Space Hippies

This was one of the first episodes I put out here, and I'm a little surprised I haven't redone it yet. 

The Star Trek (Original Series) episode The Way to Eden is REALLY the one with the space hippies. It's one of the most generally disliked episodes, because of how over-the-top it goes in an attempt to be up-to-date and hip and with-it.  But on reviewing from a generational perspective ( and about 50 years after broadcast) it isn't as horrible as it might have looked. 

I originally called it "Synthococcus Novae" after a fictional bacterium that's a sub-plot in the episod, and I started thinking of it while watching the recent increase in COVID during the summer, and hearing people talk about how they were affected (and how their kids were affected) by COVID in the year 2020 and 2021

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A look at how the GI generation (born 1901-1924) viewed the Boomers (born 1943-1960) as shown in the Star Trek Original Series episode "The Way to Eden" - also known as "The One with the Space Hippies."  By extension, this suggests how Hero generations, including Millennials (born 1982-~2005) along with the GIs, view Prophet generations (like the Boomers).

Originally started from how people view cleanliness today and how it is likely similar to how people saw it during World War II. It all ties together.

Attributes of the Prophet and Hero archetypes come from Generations (1991), the Peer Personalities chart on p. 365. I use them in my Stories blog (stories.generationalize.com) where I've found them an effective way to identify different generations/archetypes.

Did you know that Skip Homeier, the actor who played Dr. Sevrin,  also played Melakon, the villain in the episode "Patterns of Force" (aka "The One With the Nazis")? 

 

Shout-out to Memory Alpha, which had additional useful information about the timing of when the episode was written: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Way_to_Eden_(episode)