"This Side of Paradise" is a snooze-inducing look at what can happen when people get lazy. Enterprise visits a colony bathed by lethal Berthold Rays (that are mild enough however allowing a week's exposure for visiting starships). Instead of an extinguished agricultural colony though they find the inhabitants in good health and content. They don't want to be removed from their spindly crops and dead animals, but it's not only Kirk's job to do so but also his compulsive wont. TOS returns to this theme again and again yet nowhere else is it expressed so blatantly, so personally, or so drearily. At least beautiful outdoor scenery enhances the tedium.

At the root of the mystery are strange spore shooting pod-plants that immunize their hosts against the deadly rays simultaneously invigorating them with peace and contentment. The downside is a confusing concept not well expressed. "Maybe we weren't made for paradise," Kirk ponders, champion of an idyllic 23rd century, espousing an extreme view that by its imperfect nature humanity is unfit for paradise but should be extracted even using violence if necessary. The first point seems self-evident while the second just seems wrong.

Jill Ireland stars as the lovelorn Leila Kalomi, fool for loving an overgrown jackrabbit no matter how often that damned Ruth flute plays. How much can she love him when she can't even find his heart with her hand? She deserves less sympathy as a lover and more apprehension as a stalker. Frank Overton as fellow pod person Elias Sandoval died shortly after this episode, eerily mocking the fringe benefit of the spores, and looks it with a tired, forced performance. The silly plants look like unrealistic props to match their unnatural power to creep up and spring all triffid-like on a puzzled Kirk. Next time watch where you throw your plants Jim-boy!

Despite what should be mutinous tension the cast shows little enthusiasm. Kirk doesn't want to lose his ship even if it means using his cool suitcase. Spock makes lip service about self-made purgatories but he's clearly better off too. The deep Southern part of McCoy gets full exposure as does his medically (if not alcoholically) informed threat to put Sandoval into a hospital. Perhaps they sense the plot hole gaping like a subsonic transponder. The ending leaves it wide open that Omicron Ceti III could be used as a perpetual fountain of youth, shipping in the sick and shipping out the made-well after a few days with only some abusive if not downright insulting language.