THE CREW OF THE USS ENTERPRISE FIND SOME OLD KIDS ON A FAKE EARTH

Episode Title:  Miri

Air Date: 10/27/1966

Written by Adrian Spies

Directed by Vincent McEveety

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Lieutenant Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”             Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie              Jim Goodwin  as Lieutenant Farrell          Grace Lee Whitney as Yeoman First Class Janice Rand            David L. Ross as Security Guard # 1                      Tom Anfinsen      as Crewman                  John Arndt as  Ingenieur Fields    Kim Darby as Miri                      Michael J. Pollard  as Jahn                       John Megna as Little Boy                       Keith Taylor as Jahn's Friend                       Ed McCready as Boy Creature                         Kellie Flanagan as Blonde Girl        Stephen McEveety as Redheaded Boy             Iona Morris as Little African American Girl                            Phil Morris  as Boy - Army Helmet                     Darleen Anita Roddenberry as Flowered Dress Girl                  Dawn Roddenberry as Little Blonde Girl             Irene Sale as Louise        Lisabeth Shatner as Girl in Red-Striped Dress,                  Melanie Shatner  as Brunette Girl                       Scott Whitney as Small Boy

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Fake Earth

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise is responding to distress signal coming from an unexplored region space.  When they arrive at the solar system where the distress signal originated the crew, to their utter shock, find a planet that is an exact duplicate of Earth. The only difference from space is there doesn’t appear to be a very large population and there also are no space vehicles around the planet of any kind.  Unsure of how this duplicate of Earth came to be they still make it a priority to answer the distress signal.

Found a zombie

An away team beams down the planet that is comprised of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Yeoman Rand, and two redshirts.  When they arrive they find this fake Earth seems to be Earth of the past.  Kirk assumes that the early 20^th century but Spock more correctly points out that is from the 1960s. (In other words, it represents the present day when this episode was created and aired.)  Yet the entire society seems to be in a state of decay.  The city looks to have been abandoned for centuries.  At one point they get attacked by a strange zombie creature.  They manage to fight him off but the creature dies as a result.   They come to the conclusion that this distress signal may have been automated.

While looking around the away team gets the impression that they’re being watched and they can hear children laughing in the distance.  Ultimately they find a young girl named Miri.  She is shocked to see them.   In addition to being shocked she is also terrified as she calls them ‘grumps’ and to her ‘grumps’ are always bad.  She explains grumps get sick and when they get sick they get violent.  As Miri spends some time with them she starts to trust the away team particularly Captain Kirk who she develops a crush on.  However her trust also turns quickly to renewed horror when she and the away team discover that they are infected with the same illness as her ‘grumps’ with only Mr. Spock excepted.  Kirk asked Miri if she can take them to the local hospital so they can get some information on what it was that was hurting them.   While all this is going on they’re still being watched by children in hiding.  The leader of the children, Jahn, wonders what it is his friend Miri is doing hanging out with ‘grumps.'

What is Miri doing with the "grumps"?

At the hospital McCoy uses an old-fashioned microscope to identify the disease that they’ve been affected with.  It is something that affects only adults.  The children are alive because even though they are infected their illness will lie dormant until they hit puberty.  What they find strange is everything around them seems to have been neglected for almost three centuries.  If the children die upon attaining puberty how are they replicating the population?  McCoy has the Enterprise send down some 23^rd century medical equipment so they can run tests and try to see what they can do to create a cure for this disease.  In the show they use the word “vaccination” but that term is not correct considering the going to try to cure people who already have the disease and vaccination is more preventative than anything else.

Finding Miri

The research however is going get slowed down when the children cause a distraction allowing their leader, Jahn, to sneak in and steal their communicators.   Now without contact with their ship they are all alone in doing the research, or to be precise is Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock doing it by themselves.  This is difficult for the disease get stronger in them as time goes along.  Before they lost contact with the ship they learned they only had a few days. 

She is a sucker for a pretty face.

While continuing to research the virus it also turns out that the crew of the Enterprise is really talented when it comes to research and sorting of paper files.  One would think that that would be a lost art in the 23^rd century but this crew was right on top of it. Since this is a planet that somehow is a complete duplicate of Earth it means the notes are in English.  No universal translators required here just old-fashioned reading skills.  With their old-fashioned reading skills they’re able to learn the terrifying truth.  This planet during the 1960s had its history deviate with the Federation’s Earth by developing the life extension project.  They believed that they had the ability to extend the human lifecycle so that their bodies only age one month for every century that passes.  Unfortunately the experiment resulted was a carrier virus that caused every single adult human to be turned into a zombie and die.  It did however work on prepubescent children and that is how these kids are still around where it appears the infrastructure has been in a state of decay for three centuries.   

Woman scorned

I originally thought that the crew found the exact hospital where it turns out the experiments were done that led to the creation of this virus was to be a bit of overloaded plot armor.  However they did come to this planet because of the distress signal it makes a little bit of sense the same place that was the origin of the trauma was also the source of distress signal. One can imagine the horror that the fake Earth’s scientists must’ve gone through when their great miracle they thought they were giving their planet backfired and they were surrounded by a world where nearly everyone was rotting from the inside out.

Doctor heal thyself

In response to seeing Captain Kirk comforting Yeoman Rand, Miri becomes the woman scorned and betrays the away team to the other children.  They kidnap Yeoman Rand so Kirk goes to retrieve her.  He confronts Miri and reminds her that she has the virus as well and earlier when they saw her old friend Louise who had succumb to her infection.  Kirk points out that in time she will die just like them without help.  To make matters worse the kids are running out of their food supply. All the stored food from the before times only has about three months left so despite their condition of only aging a month after hundred years they will be dead three months when the food runs out.  This convinces Miri to take her to see the other children.  It takes some time including Kirk surviving an attack from the children when Captain Kirk is ultimately able to convince the children that he has a best interest at heart and he can help them.

While Kirk was away trying to get their communicators back and saving Yeoman Rand, Dr. McCoy decides that he cannot wait and injects himself with the potential cure.  Kirk returns with the children and they all see that Dr. McCoy is cured.  This saves the away team immediately and it saves the children of long-term.  As they return to the Enterprise Kirk explains to the children are going to be taking care of.  The Federation is sending out childcare specialists and resources to help get these kids on their feet.

Additional thoughts: The first thing that one notices in this episode is the casting.  With the setting of an away team from the Enterprise on a planet full of children the studio is required to cast a number of children.  And it appears the way they chose to address this was by having the cast and crew bring over their own children to play the child characters.  Gene Roddenberry brought both of his daughters, as did William Shatner, and Grace Lee Whitney brought her son.  For the older young people the episode had Kim Darby, who would go on to star in  True Grit (1969), as Miri and Michael J. Pollard, who I remember as the magical imp from the 5^th dimension Mr. Mxyzptlk on the Superboy TV series, as Jahn. 

Tied up by a bunch of kids!

                The problems I have with this episode however come down to the devil being in the details.  In the very first scene we see a duplicate Earth.  Okay, so how does this duplicate Earth come to be?  This is one of a couple of big elephants in this room yet it’s one that is never answered.   Did this duplicate Earth slip out of some sort of parallel universal dimension?  We’ll never know they never say.  One of the most important details and is completely overlooked.

                The next issue I have is with these ancient children.  Okay so I understand that these children have been children for now 300 years and in that time have only aged three months.  But as we come to know them it is very apparent that they aren’t mentally deficient in any way; there’s nothing wrong with their minds and yet in those 300 years they have gained neither knowledge nor wisdom.  That is ridiculous when you think about the fact that children learn at a speed multiple times what adults are capable of.  These kids should be pretty self-sufficient yet they all are in danger of dying not because of the potential illness that they carry but because they could run out of food.  Apparently before all the adult humans died they made sure to have at least 300 years-worth of food on storage.  Okay it probably stretched out for 300 years because of a much smaller population.  Which leads me to wonder if there are any other colonies of children in these other cities or did they just all die out?  Again no answer.

Infected Kirk

I felt the food storage was placed in the story to give us a sense of urgency for the children.  You could make an argument the crew should just follow the Prime Directive and leave them alone.  Even if they do naturally perish when they hit puberty it takes them 1,200 years to age a single biological year.   So they started out at five and hit puberty all around the age of thirteen, to them that is 9,600 years of life.  It is not like they’re being cheated.  This also leads me to wonder what the long-term impact is.  Did Dr. McCoy’s serum that the cured the disease in adults also rob these children of their slow aging childhoods?  If so isn’t Dr. McCoy’s cure for them more of a curse as they have more life without it?  Or do they still have their slow aging childhoods and then age regularly as adults?  What does this mean for their children?  If the children inherit their slow childhoods will the parents die of old age long before their child actually ages a single month biologically?  These are also questions to which no answers are provided in the episode.

Telling the kids what is what.

As far as the exterior goes I take it the writers of this episode never read the book The World Without Us (2007) which would make sense considering the book wasn’t published until 31 years after this episode.  For an Earth without functioning adults it was still rather sturdy even after 300 years.  It was useful that all of the written records were still in such fine condition.

I noticed that Sulu and Uhura were not in this episode.  They must’ve been working different shifts this week.  There was no great piloting the need to be done on the Enterprise so having a stand-in helmsman was perfectly fine.  I did wonder what Lt. Farrell, a navigator, was doing filling in for Lt. Uhura.  Doesn’t she have other communications officers working under her who can fill in for her during these times?  Why do they need a navigator for sitting in that chair?  Is Farrell looking to change jobs?  If so he’s got to have to get himself a red shirt.

Speaking of redshirts there were two of them on the away team this time, not counting Rand.  They went to a planet where adults turn into zombies and yet they both made it out alive.  These two are the best redshirts ever, and Captain Kirk should take them on every away mission. 

Even though a lot of my additional thoughts are negative I want to point out that this episode is certainly watchable and it does have a dramatic effect with the virus that leads to a good deal of excitement.  In the end of the day when I want to complain about something I just normally have more to say then when I want to say something good.  Terrible character flaw. 

FINAL GRADE 3 of 5