Rating: 
Summary: Leonardo DaVinci Meets the Space Hippies
Review: Wow! Could you get two episodes more different than these?The better of the two - though the less entertaining - is "Requiem for Methuselah," which brings Kirk, Spock and McCoy into contact with a cultured older man named Flint (James Daly) and his daughter Reena (Louise Sorel), on an otherwise abandoned planet where the Enterprise can obtain much needed Ritalin (not the kind you're thinking of). How exactly these two came to be out in the middle of nowhere - and fully self-sufficient - is a mystery for the three Enterprise principals to solve, along with that of Flint's unprecedented collection of entirely unknown and uncatalogued DaVinci paintings, Brahms and Beethoven symphonies, Shakespeare sonnets, etc. And just what, exactly, is his relationship to his "daughter," who truly is "the only girl in the world"? This one performs much like the 1950's classic film, Forbidden Planet. The performances are quite good, Sorel especially, whose particulars are as much a mystery to herself as they are to everyone else. The scenery is sumptuous. "The Way to Eden" was the inspiration for the equally laughable later movie series entry, Star Trek V. Truly, nothing is ever funnier than Establishment portrayals of Counterculture, and that's what this one is all about. The Enterprise picks up a handful of space hippies from a stolen space shuttle, who go around preaching, like, really groovy peace-'n-love, man, to the starship's crew - an', like, y'know, Captain Kirk is just so, I dunno, like, not receptive, man. But - WHOA! - SPOCK really groks their scene, dig? He's sympathetic to their desire to find the mythical planet Eden (our equivalent of Atlantis), even if their leader is a middle-aged mad doctor who's a real head-case (Skip Homeier). Well...things don't turn out well. (Bummer!) A prize, to anyone who can watch more than five minutes of the Space Hippies and not crack a smile. If you're not laughing within ten, there's something wrong with you. If you're not cat-calling within fifteen, you're in severe need of medical attention.
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