episode #78 - The Promised Planet

This episode is an odd combination of disturbing and the usual silliness. Smith, as usual, takes the lion's share of the silly scenes: he's imparted with a wig and starts to channel that sixties hippie lingo - yeah, man! (though the youngsters refer to him as "Methuselah"). There's a 'dancing room' in which youths are programmed to dance when the music starts up (Penny/Angela Cartwright turns out to be a natural dancer, btw). It all recalls the TOS effort in the same vein, The Way to Eden - the one with those space hippies - which was not one of the better episodes.

It's also an outer space take on the Peter Pan legend, a fantasy of unrestrained youth, but there's also a hint of the cultism and communes which did not always have a pleasant result in real life, especially when impressionable young people were pretty much being brainwashed. It's the whole theme of the organized, level nuclear family - The Robinsons - vs. the anarchic style of society's outlaw youth. I may have seen this when it first aired in '68 - I was just old enough to have started watching TV - and this may have influenced some of my impressions of sixties youth culture, which was pretty warped going by the presentation here. BoG's Score: 5 out of 10