3x03 The Paradise Syndrome

[3.7/10] I’m a firm believer in the idea that there are no inherently bad stories, no indefensible character choices, just those that increase the degree of difficulty (sometimes substantially) of doing them well. But if you’re going to embark on story choices with such difficulty, you better have a pretty damn good idea at how you’re going to tell your story.

Amnesia is a really tough story to do right by. (But I see you, Memento) And it’s even harder to do a “white guy turns out to be the savior of native peoples” story and not have it crash and burn creatively. (Case in point: Avatar.) And as much as I admire Star Trek’s ability to tell creative and unusual story, “The Paradise Syndrome” is a case where it throws two really tough story ideas together and makes a complete hash out of them.

The premise of the episode is fairly simple. Kirk, Spock, and Bones beam down to an idyllic planet, investigating before they attempt to deflect an asteroid that will otherwise lay waste to the planet. They encounter an obelisk with strange markings, which Kirk somehow falls into while Spock and Bones aren’t looking. The two of them beam back up to stop the asteroid, while Kirk gets blasted with a memory/amnesia ray. He emerges from the obelisk and is accepted as a god by the native people who live on the planet (who, in implausible fashion, are what middle-aged writers in the sixties imagined Native Americans to be like), and starts a new life with them.

Let’s get this out of the way. The depiction of the native americans is, at best, well-intentioned by patronizing and offensive. There’s a lot of noble savage business going on, and making Kirk instantly their god has problems totally apart from the hackiness of the storytelling. This show tends to have problems when trying to depict any group of “primitive” people and this is no exception.

But as I often say about even the worst Star Trek episodes, there’s the germ of something decent here. In many ways, “Paradise” works as a half-cocked forerunner to the seminal Next Generation episode “The Inner Light.” Kirk only spends sixty days among the native people, but in that time he builds a life -- marrying, conceiving a child, and living what the show conceives as the simple life, free from the stresses and hardships of command.

That seems to be the theme of the episode. Before he gets blasted with the amnesia ray, we see Kirk admiring the simplicity and tranquility of the locals’ life, something the script underlines by having McCoy reference “Tahiti syndrome” and noting that it typically affects leaders dealing with lots of demands. The Kirk we know is one married to his ship and nominally worried about his crew (despite the fact that he seems to go through ensigns like popcorn). While it’s not done in a particularly interesting manner, there’s juice in the appeal of him leaving all that behind for a normal life, just as there was duty-bound Picard having the chance to raise and family and join a community.

We see the obverse of that idea with Spock in command trying to destroy the asteroid so that it doesn’t destroy the planet. Even the stoic Vulcan is pushing himself to the limit, worried about wrong choices and tireless in his efforts to do what’s necessary to fulfill his duty as a starfleet officer and commander, to where even Bones is worried about his health and well-being.

The problem is that most of this is executed in a, let’s be frank, stupid fashion. Kirk spreading his arms to the heavens is a spangly native tribe-aping outfit before hugging himself is a ridiculous image. The jealous medicine man who tries to hurt and discredit Kirk for usurping ihm is a lazy device to create conflict down on the planet. And we have Kirk bedding yet another local woman because he’s just that irresistible folks, naturally.

It doesn’t help that the resolution is convenient and slapdash as well. Spock figures out the details just in time; Kirk is decried as a false god at just the right moment, and sure enough, they figure out how to re-enter the obelisk, deliver a snootful of exposition, and repel the asteroid just in time. It’s a rushed fix, that isn’t satisfying given how many conveniences, both of plot and emotional develop, the episode takes.

The only interesting thing is the idea of “The Preservers” -- some ancient race who saved humanoid lifeforms at risk of destruction around the galaxy and “seeded” them on other planets. (If I’m not mistaken, the crew from TNG runs into the remnants of the same, or a similar people, and it helps explain the preponderance of forehead-prosthesis aliens in the Star Trek Universe.

But as a whole, the episode leans into those two troubling elements -- a contrived amnesia situation and a white savior situation -- that causes it to stall out before it ever gets out of first gear. It doesn’t help that the episode leads into a lot of Shatner shatnering, with only some stereotypical Native American characters to play off of.

And yet, in the final moments of the episode, where Kirk says goodbye to the woman he married while in his amnesiac stupor, there is still something affecting about it. I am a sucker for the parts of such stories, even bad stories, where these imagined, alternative lives end, which is partly why the ending of “The Inner Life” was so affecting for me. That means that even here, with so much unmitigated crud packed into “The Paradise Syndrome” it’s hard not to find something poignant about Kirk’s taste of paradise ending in such tragic terms.

But that only proves to be a greater indictment of the episode in the end -- showing that there was something salvageable, even transcendent, about some of the ideas in “The Paradise Syndrome” that were smothered by bad acting, cheesy story choices, and problematic parts of the premise that prevented what might have been a good story from being anything other than dull drek.

Another Earth-like planet. Again, our heroes sense the irony here and discuss this similarity briefly. It's fair to say that it makes no sense no matter how hard they try to come up with an explanation. I liked TNG's (?) panspermia explanation better. Both concepts might be related though. At least the planet including the village looks beautiful. I bet they used another movie's set. But that's only the start of parallels: again, there are native Americans. Stereotype 60s fake TV Indians - but that's hardly unique to this franchise. Didn't age well but that's how the business worked back then. Star Trek writers always liked fake indigenous peoples (hello Chakotay :-). And again, that's a story about a pristine culture seriously affected by the crew's actions (mostly unintended though). And again, there's a religious tune to this. And again, the Enterprise crew isn't really concerned how their actions might impact the tribal society.

All this is extremely repetitive. I've seen this before. It's not as bad as I feared though. It's a half-decent story. The captain turns out to be the capable leader we all love but his amnesia mitigates his annoying brashness and cockiness. Nice to see him a bit confused for once. Must have been a field day for Shatner. He's so different! His libido seems to be unaffected by the electric shock though. It also helps that the girl is the usual hot trek babe. I could totally picture him live a simple life with her on such a bucolic planet.

The other plot, with the asteroid, is a good story in its own right. Spock is put to the test. McCoy hates him doesn't he? He's not supportive in any way. Their usual bickering suddenly became serious: it shows how fundamentally different intellectual Vulcans and compassionate human officers approach leadership. The whole asteroid story is totally unconnected to the story on the planet. Not sure why these two stories were combined into one episode. Well, they are connected in the end but this feels somehow forced.