“Look at yourselves! Look at what you’ve become! What you’ve achieved here has redefined your potential — the potential of man. Just as I knew it would. You are the living proof.”
We … weren’t … meant for … PARADISE, Mr. Spock! “Paradise” is such an Original Series episode; names and places might be changed, but I can see Captain Kirk being thrown into the box for locking horns with the leader of a cult of luddite survivalists, and then using his imprisoned martyrdom to give the cultists doubts about their beliefs. Maybe get Bones in there in place of O’ Brien, but this is still a classic story, and what’s great is we’re with Sisko the entire time. Sisko and O’ Brien are in charge of a planet survey searching for suitable locations for colonies. Again, I have to question why two key senior officers are away from the station in a potentially dangerous situation, but I understand the conceit of having the leads do all the work on a television show.
They beam down to a planet after a scan reveals that humans are living there. They are greeted with a bow and arrow. Not a nice way to meet people. I would’ve smelled trouble right there (as would Sisko and O’ Brien), but there seems to be a dampening field blocking out all communications, tricorders, and phasers. Their technology is useless. Sisko and O’ Brien are taken to a respectably populated encampment built around a crashed ship.
The leader of the encampment, a woman named Alixus, starts in immediately with the recruitment speech. It all sounds like something a Sociology major would spit out; creating the perfect world, the perfect people, ripping apart the chains forged by an unhealthy dependence upon technology. Alixus even speaks of “core identity,” and you don’t have to be a Sociology major to understand the phraseology of a cult leader, and yes, Alixus has turned her colony into a cult, but it seems only she and her son are true believers. Sisko’s mission is not to join a cult, but to find a way to escape the electro-magnetic dampening of their systems. Alixus gives Sisko and O’ Brien rooms in exchange for chores. Everybody has to earn their keep on her world, which is fair.
What isn’t fair is that Alixus refuses to see the benefits of modern medicine when one of her own falls ill. She insists on using herbs and poultices to cure illness and looks at any attempt by Sisko and O’ Brien to retrieve their medkit as a waste of time. Alixus sees that Sisko is going to be trouble, so she sends one of her attractive females to try to massage and seduce him. Oh girl, you have no faith in medicine. Sisko rebuffs the woman’s advances. Alixus punishes Sisko for the actions of O’ Brien who was caught trying to find the source of the damping field.
Alixus puts him in a punishment box with no food or water for a day. Cool Hand Sisko! Miles figures out there’s something in the woods that’s blocking their electromagnetic signals, and he’s rigged up a homemade compass to track the damping field. It turns out Alixus developed a machine (the ‘ironing’ is delicious) to block out all electronic signals and deliberately strand her party on this planet so she could put her survivalist theories into practice. That’s fine, but the fact that she didn’t tell anyone except her son is what annoys me. O’ Brien shuts down the device and frees Sisko from the box. He tells the colony what he found and frankly, I expected the reaction to be much more vocal, but Alixus is a master manipulator.
She turns it around on them, reminding them of how stupid and backward they were before adopting her lifestyle. Yes, you’re right, Alixus, I was a major-league slut! Even more ridiculous, other than Alixus and her son, nobody wants to go home! Really? They all want to stay because this is “their home.” They’ve only been stuck on this planet for ten years. It’s not a home. It’s a death-trap! But no, they want to stay. I guess I was wrong for expecting a full-on riot after the revelation of Alixus’ deception, but I wasn’t expecting everybody to stay. The final image of the episode is interesting—that of two of the colony’s youngest, a boy and a girl, staring at the punishment box.
Star Trek Rewind explores the Star Trek universe. From Archer to Janeway, Kirk to Picard, and Georgiou to Sisko — boldly read what no one has read before!
