MIRI | S.1.E.8
Star Trek - The Original Series
Original air date: October 27,1966
Captain’s Log, Stardate 2713.6
SYNOPSIS
The Enterprise discovers a planet exactly like Earth, but the only inhabitants are children who contract a fatal disease upon entering puberty.
CANON CONTEXT
In the early 70’s the BBC chose, after receiving many complaints from viewers of this episode, to exclude it from reruns due to the subject matter of madness and violence. It was feared that youth, watching this episode, would find themselves influenced negatively by it, regardless of what time of the day or night it was aired. It wasn’t until the early ‘90s that the ban was lifted.
RECAP
A classic tale of Peter Pan and Wendy is how I would describe this episode, except with a bit of a diseased twist.
It all starts with a team going down onto a planet that is nearly identical to Earth. Only difference is, no one is there, although they think. Their first encounter is with a “grup” (aka grown-up) that has the disease.
This disease was a result of doctors over 300 years ago trying to find a cure for all diseases that would enable longevity of life. It backfired and as a result, any adult past the age of puberty got infected and died almost immediately. And yet, there are all these children, how?
Turns out, for every century that passes, the children on the planet only age one month! Mathematically speaking that doesn’t seem to make much sense. But it’s Star Trek so we overlook the obvious absurdity of it all. At least, I do.
The main character, Miri, who reminded me a lot of Wendy from Peter Pan, clearly has a crush on Captain Kirk and in this way presents as someone entering puberty, therefore the disease is imminent. Much more mature and level-headed than the main boy who is the oldest and yet, all about playing childish games. I’m not sure if it was intentional to make the two older children like Peter Pan and Wendy, but the fact that he was wearing green, I mean…come on…
As the disease progresses in the crew who are all mature in age, they start to shows symptoms of irritability and quick to anger. This isn’t helped by the fact that the children decide to take away their communicators so they can’t get the answers their need from the ship to find an antidote. When Miri discovers there might be feelings between yeoman Janice and Captain Kirk, she devices a plan to kidnap her out of jealousy. I won’t go into the clearly flimsy way in which she is tied to a chair.
The captain makes one final plea for the children to let him help them before it’s too late. See, their food supply (that they had over 300 years worth of) is nearly gone with maybe six months left, so if the disease doesn’t get the older ones, starvation will kill the younger ones. Yikes!
In the end, the kids give back the communicators and all is saved! Captain Kirk leaves a medical team on the planet with a children and sends a message to star fleet who will follow-up with a team of teachers to help the children in whatever they may need.
I want to mention one thing about the children, like all young actors from the 60’s and 70’s, they were brilliantly creepy. Not sure what it was about children back then, but man, could they do some stellar acting. This episode was no exception. Those kids carried this one for sure. I only wish they had been utilized a bit more.
DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT?
Yeoman Rand: Miri... she really loved you, you know?
Capt. Kirk: Yes.
[pause]
Capt. Kirk: I never get involved with older women, Yeoman.