"I reach that, brother."

B-movie character actor Charles Napier has passed away. I'll always remember him for his rôle as Adam in episode 75 of TOS, "The Way To Eden". That's the episode where a group of space hippies, led astray by the Timothy Leary-like Dr. Sevrin, try to subvert the the order and discipline of the Enterprise.



Not only was it a typically zany third season installment, but like the earlier pro-Vietnam War episode, "A Private Little War", it illustrates that despite a general Wellsian sense of progressiveness the show never strayed too far from the conservative shibboleths that were de rigueur for 1960's US TV. Even so it's fun to watch Spock get funky in a space hippy jam session. An interesting bit of trivia is that it was originally planned that one of the hippies would be Dr. McCoy's daughter. But since they'd recently added the character of Chekov to the cast to increase the show's youth appeal they changed her into his old girlfriend, Irina.

[via Dangerous Minds]