Star Trek TOS S1E24: This Side of Paradise

The lurking fear of hippie paradise.

See the Star Trek TOS Rewatch Index page for links to all the episodes covered so far.

“THIS SIDE OF PARADISE” Rating: 9.8/10

Star Trek did its first riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers in “Return of the Archons,” a muddled anticommunist parable that gets lost in ramshackle world-building. Undeterred, writers D.C. Fontana and Jerry Sohl tried again a few episodes later with “This Side of Paradise”. The result is a feverish, gloriously ridiculous classic of anti-hippie paranoia. It’s a stern Reefer Madness for the space age, and the series’ first near-perfect episode.