"The Way To Eden" causes more than a few cringes but deep down, though it's a bit too odd and a lot too campy, remains too much fun not to love. The episode might not have aged as well as others, but it never exploits the silly subject and often excels in production (consider the chilling "friendly" montage). Many valuable Trekuialisms originate here, from "I reach" to "Herbert!" or even "Yeah, brother." Only the awful hairpiece makeup (easily ascribed to the demands on an overworked makeup department) deserves a demerit. But to see Spock jam in session on the Vulcan harp? Priceless!

Kirk's in an unusual position here. His Federation responsibilities force great white captain to be diplomat, not soldier, and this baffles him initially. It's amusing to see how quickly ("By all means") he turns the situation over to Spock, complete with perplexed headshake when his First Officer stuns everyone by greeting the "One" group. The crew enjoy a good concert but little screen-time; McCoy and Scott complain true to form but Sulu jams, and issues one of the series' most inadvertently funny lines (spoken to a female hippie). It's clearly Chekov's time to shine (again) with a beautiful girl (again) and he does, later paying for it as usual with a good acid-burn scream.

TOS veteran Skip Homeier convinces everyone that Dr. Sevrin is, of course, insane. One wonders why the space hippies didn't realize his death-wish earlier oh say, when he tried to blow them up. Why they follow him through theft, sabotage, and even murder remains unexplained. Yet though the space-hippies are strange they are talented also. Charles Napier delivers a fantastic performance as the affable Adam, down to singing his own songs and persuading Spock to play. Drop in Mary-Linda Rapelye as drop-out Irina Galliulin and she turns on as Pavel's old flame casually chiding him as "so correct." Former red-shirt Victor Brandt appears as the purple-hair-plugged Tongo Rad, such a cool confident curiosity it's a shame we never saw more Catullans.

In the end, Spock encourages the remaining hippies to continue their search, redeeming their effort regarding Eden with his instructions to "Find it or make it." As for the planet itself, they must have had some idea where to start looking as they ended up reasonably close before being intercepted by Enterprise. Had they chartered rather than stolen the Aurora they'd probably all be dead by plasma-weapon or poison apple. But at least now some survive to shake on a session another day.