TOS 9: Miri

Original air date: 10/27/1966
Star date: 2713.5

Summary: The Enterprise responds to a distress signal coming from an unknown planet, and the crew is shocked to find that it appears to be an exact duplicate of Earth.  A landing party beams down, consisting of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Yeoman Rand, and two anonymous security officers.  Judging by the architecture of the buildings they find, Spock estimates the era to correspond approximately to the Earth's 1960's.

In a search for other inhabitants, the crew finds Miri, a young girl on the cusp of puberty.  Miri is initially afraid of the crew --- 'grups' she calls them, short for grownups.  The crew gradually figure out that all adults on the planet were wiped out by a plague of sorts, one that only affects grownups, and claims children as they enter puberty.  The disease was an accidental side-effect of research which drastically slows the aging process.  The children on the planet are all over 300 years old, but are still physiologically children because their bodies only age by 1 month every century.

Since all members of the landing party are now infected, Spock and Bones must race against time to find a cure, and their efforts are hindered by the children, who mistrust all 'grups' since grownups become violent and frightening as they succumb to the disease.  A cure is developed just as Miri is starting to show signs of infection.

Of the nine shows I've seen so far, I think this was one of the better ones.  The dynamic between Kirk and Miri --- a young girl blossoming into womanhood, and developing a schoolgirl crush on the dashing Captain --- is fun to watch.  And the whole "Lord of the Flies" angle is truly chilling when the children kidnap Rand and use her as bait to lure Kirk into a trap.

Unfortunately, there is one rather glaring problem with the writing that gets in the way of the story, and that is the two security guards who beam down with Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Rand.  The guards are present for about the first 20 minutes, then they conveniently disappear and aren't seen again until the climactic scene, when we don't know whether McCoy has killed or cured himself with the vaccine he and Spock developed.

Miri is happy to hang out with the Enterprise crew, but the rest of the children hide from them.  So, why not send the security guys to go find them?  Spock believes that they can't be found, that they know the terrain too well, "like mice", but I'm pretty sure two trained Starfleet security officers could track them down.  Similarly, when the children sneak in to the lab and steal everyone's communicator, why aren't the security officers dispatched to try to get them back?  And wouldn't the security guards have their communicators with them?  So Spock and McCoy should still be able to use those communicators to talk to the Enterprise.

When Rand is kidnapped, why don't the security officers go look for her?

Why does Kirk go alone to find the kidnapped Yeoman Rand, instead of taking the security guys with him?  The answer is obvious; if the security guys are there, we can't play "Lord of the Flies".

But the aspect of the vanishing security officers was hard to overlook.

There's another elephant in the room, which is that the kids looked like they'd been living without adults for maybe a month.  If they'd really been without adults for more than 300 years, then they would probably be much dirtier and either naked or wearing rags instead of raggedy clothes.  Plus, they either would have some hidden cache of food or become hunter/gatherers in order to feed themselves.

Now, I understand that the writers want to tell a story which is a variation on the "Lord of the Flies" theme, and I understand that they only have 50 minutes to do it in.  So details like these are necessarily swept under the rug.  I'm fine with that, provided they stay under the rug.  But late in the show, Kirk mentions something about the childrens' food supplies running out.

NO!  NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!  Either ignore the whole question of how they've remained alive this long, or address it properly, but DON'T DO THIS!  Now the writers have made the viewer think about the question of where the children have gotten their food, water and clothing for 300 years, and now the viewer is thinking "Gee whiz.  Did they, like, have a 300-year supply of SPAM that just ran out, or what?"

A more glaring problem, actually, and one that could have been easily taken care of, is that the landing crew is on the planet for 7 days (except for the security guys who, as I mentioned above, must have been off on a smoke break somewhere), and they look like they've been there 7 hours.  Yeoman Rand's basket-weave hairdo looks exactly the same, even though I very much doubt she's washing it every night and reassembling it every morning, and the men are all clean-shaven for all 7 days, even though they have much more pressing matters to attend to than shaving.

Other observations about this episode:

The crew seems remarkably unconcerned when they learn a plague wiped out all the adults on the planet, even though Kirk had just subdued an infected individual by punching him in the face 3 times.  Fist to face, blood, saliva, you'd think he might decide to wash his hands about then.

For that matter, the crew seems remarkably unconcerned when they learn they're all infected with a plague that wiped out all the adults on the planet.  Why didn't they beam down wearing protective gear, like Spock and Tormolen did at the beginning of The Enemy Within?  Not that it did Tormolen much good.

Sure is convenient for the plot that all of the landing party --- by which I mean everyone but the AWOL security men --- left their communicators unattended in the lab where the children could steal them.  Even Rand left her communicator behind when she went out for a walk with Miri.

Thinking that she and Kirk are going to die, Rand admits feelings of attraction for Kirk for the first time (that we know of), telling him that she always wanted him to look at her legs --- which now have purple blisters on them, due to the infection.  Kirk has never admitted feelings of attraction for Rand (that we know of), though of course his evil duplicate Jirk confessed an attraction for her in The Enemy Within, right before he attacked her.

I understand they have other things on their minds, but they show remarkably little curiosity about how a 1960's Earth showed up "hundreds of light years" from our Earth.  Spock notes that it is the "third planet" from their sun; but no one looks to see whether our whole solar system is duplicated.  Even at the end of the show, when the crisis is over, they just set course for their next destination, with no further investigation to this stunning development.

Those Starfleet uniforms sure tear easily.

The Moral of the Story: From Kirk, when Rand asks him why Miri is hanging out with the landing party: "I think children have an instinctive need for adults.  They want to be told right and wrong."