I never thought Kirk was creepy with Miri. Kirk was uncomfortable. Also even though Kirk never explicitly said it he was uncomfortable around children in general, so it made sense that his interactions with all the kids came off as awkward. It seems that being uncomfortable around kids is a Starfleet captain’s trait other than Sisko. The first time I saw this I was a little kid, before TNG. I remember being on the adult’s side, thinking those kids were total assholes.
Agreed. It's become a minor social obsession to label every other thing as "creepy", but this episode definitely isn't. Yeah, he played into her crush, but hello? Lives being saved? I think it's handled very well, what with Shatner clearly understanding this isn't any kind of flirting on Kirk's part and playing the discomfort as well as his deep sympathy for her and the other kids. How do you handle someone too young getting a crush on you? Oy. (And yeah, these kids were little monsters. I saw this as a kid and hated them. They needed to have grownups around, and that wasn't a thought I had very often.).
I didn't think he was creepy at all. He recognized that she was crushing on him, but from his end all he did was try to earn her trust to save everyone's lives. He was very deliberate about NOT flirting with her.
When 24th century Trek gets bashed for overusing the Holodeck-goes-haywire episodes, I simply point out the tons to parallel Earth and alien illusions simulating Earth (a'la "Spectre of the Gun") episodes of TOS and politely say, "please hush".
I was an 11 y.o girl on 1966. I didn't think the Kirk/Miri interactions were cringey. I could understand that Miri developed a crush on Kirk. I had a crush on him! And Kirk's gentle treatment of her seemed natural and appropriate. Maybe now I should look at their relationship differently, but I don't.
Given what we know about Roddenberry and Berman and the rest of the brass who oversaw _Star Trek_ in the 20th century, it's a miracle that we _didn't_ get an episode that was _Lolita In Space._ I'm amazed we dodged that bullet.
Fun fact: actor Phil Morris, who is a kid in this episode, would go on to appear in STIII:TSFS, DS9's "Looking for Par'Machi in All the Wrong Places", "Rocks and Shoals" and in VGR's "One Small Step". He would also have a reoccurring role as Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld.
Phil Morris is the son of Greg Morris, of Mission: Impossible fame. He played the son of his father's M:I charater in the sadly all too short lived 1989-1990 M:I sequel series. (Greg also appeared in one episode, playing the same character he did in the original series.) That series is the last M:I thing that exists are far as I'm concerned. The Tom Cruise garbage is not M:I, just generic action moveis that have the name tacked on to try to make money. Greg Morris famously walked out of the first Tom Cruise movie because of how it insulted the cast of the show, and for being just terrible in general.
I believe the '89 Mission Impossible series was primarily a result of a writer strike; the producers were just recycling M:I scripts from the '60s. And yes, the Tom Cruise M:I movies can die in a fire while sucking a bag of dicks. While Star Trek receives well-deserved accolades for casting Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, Mission: Impossible doesn't seem to get much recognition for Greg Morris's character Barney Collier, a tech wizard and entrepreneur, which in the mid-60s was a White coded character type. Morris didn't "play Black", and the show didn't make any reference to the character's race at all. One might argue that M:I's color-blind contemporary 1960s was as much a fantasy as Star Trek's 23rd Century Utopia.
@@steveng.clinard1766 It was. Originally they were just going to remake M:I. But then they cast Peter Graves, and they decided to make it a sequel instead. And in the end, the writer's strike ended, so only a few episodes were recycled. But yeah I agree with you about the original M:I being pretty progressive.
@@steveng.clinard1766 Agreed about Barney being a socially important character. James Kinchloe over on "Hogan's Heroes" was another one, the radio / tech guy who was treated as an equal and compatriot of the others. They occasionally made jokes about his skin tone, but it was always the same joke, that he couldn't possibly pass for German. That's it. Other than that (and one time when the Nazis said something vaguely disaparaging about him), he was just one of the guys.
Fun facts: The two children of Greg Morris from the original Mission Impossible are child extras in this episode. So are Gene Roddenberry's two daughters and also Bill Shatner's two youngest daughters.
I wonder what those children ate. Kirk says at one point they're about to run out of food, but it's been hundreds of years. This civilization must have been seriously stocked up in case of emergency - we could learn much from them.
There was a scene that answered this question that got cut from the episode but showed up in the episode novelization: they ate canned food. "But we have mommies," Miri assured them. When Kirk asked what she meant, she replied, "You know, mommies," and made the gesture of using a manual can opener. Upon seeing this, Rand turned her back and threw up. Seems there's a stigma against cans in the future, who knew?
This story could have been set on a colony and function reasonably well, but wouldn't have the 60's kids run wild visuals as easily, perhaps? But in any case, can we forget the wisdom that this episode introduced into my social group of weirdos when we caught it in rerun: "Bonk bonk on the head, captain lovey-dovey." Truly words to recall at the most critical of inappropriate times.
I always saw it as a "dangers of playing God" warning. Several TOSs have that theme. The fact that it's Earth like, is a "but there for the grace of God go us." As one who time traveled through the 50s and 60s, I can say for sure that religion, even in scifi, was a much bigger influence than today.
I first saw this episode when I was young (maybe around 7 or 8?) and the beginning part with the bicycle and being attacked by the old guy scared the ever lovin' crap out of me. Like pure terror, nightmares for a couple days kind of scared.
Not Jeff here. I first saw this episode in the first run as an 8 year old, and was scared by the nasty gray welts on a black and white TV. I really liked the character Miri and her kindness and intelligence. As I got older and saw it in reruns, I identified with her fear of becoming a grup, something that I've managed to avoid so far. The last time I saw the whole episode, as an adult, I realized that the story wasn't about a disease threatening the crew, it was about a child deciding to take a risk to help others, and thereby becoming an independent adult. She grows up, but doesn't become a grup. Kim Darby was everywhere in the 60's and 70's. She and Ron Howard seemed to be the only working kids in Hollywood. She was a terrific young actress, and I enjoy her performances to this day. As for the parallel Earth, I suspect that since the show was chronically over budget it was easier to do a rewrite and shoot on a backlot rather that build an alien set. Miri does stand out in the fact that the other Earth was an afterthought instead of a plot driver or commentary. As a matter of fact, I had forgotten about it until you pointed it out in this video! Peace and long life, from Not Jeff.
I always figured that they went with parallel-Earth shtick on this one so that the disease would be something that the away team could readily contract.
Story-wise, sure. In reality, these episodes happened because the producers needed to save money, so justifications would be found for using the Desilu backlot.
Loved your analysis. I'm probably reading too much into this episode, but in response to 'why the duplicate Earth' might have been commentary on our growing fears of biological warfare, or the reckless curiosity of making dangerous microbial hybrids just to see if it can be done. Anyway, rock on!
Miri was one of the first episodes I ever remember seeing (along with Balance of Terror) as a weeone. The "kid" at the beginning was the stuff of nightmares for me, especially as he breaks down over the trike.
Yeah, that's what I read into it. This is a dig at hippie culture from the generation that lived through the Depression and WWII, although you can also equate the grup-caused plague as a metaphor for the Depression and WWII.
Yeah, the message I always took from this episode is that neither generation is completely bad or completely blameless, but they have to work together to keep the world from ending.
Far from anyone's favorite, but this episode is still memorable in that South Park did a parody and the expression "the before times" having more recently entered the lexicon in reference the time before the Covid-19 pandemic.
To this day, I still, once in a while, say "BONK BONK ON THE HEAD!" and "NO BLAH BLAH BLAH!" This episode was first shown only about 3 years after the film "Lord of the Flies" came out and was a surprise hit. It was also about the time that LOTF was first broadcast on television. "Miri" immediately reminded me of LOTF and I've wondered if it was an influence on the idea of this episode.
There's an episode of Dark Shadows where Dr. Hoffman kills her own mirror universe double by hitting her over the head with a hammer, and I always yell "BONK BONK ON THE HEAD" at the TV.
I saw Miri upon its original airing in 1966, and it holds a special place for me, as it is the first Star Trek episode that I remember watching with my dad.
As you may or may not know, this planet appears again in one of the "Shatnerverse" novels. A group of scientists under the mistaken impression that Captain Picard is going to destroy the universe kidnap him and take him to this duplicate Earth where even though there's no-one living there any more, and all the kids were cured, Picard is infected with the plague as soon as he's beamed down
As a kid who got obsessed with TOS at age 11, Kirk was my first big adolescent media crush... so I found Miri extremely believable. And obviously Kirk was a stand-up guy and wasn't going to do anything genuinely untoward, so that didn't worry me. I did think *her* behavior was kind of cringe, but hey, it turns out she was in the early stages of the disease that makes everyone go crazy, so that wasn't really her fault anyway. Still, as "insert teenage girl into this scenario" episodes go, I much prefer that one MacGuyver episode where he gets wounded and framed during an assassination attempt in Geneva, and a teenage American girl (played by a young Mayim Bialik) going to a Swiss boarding school has to help him. [Side note: I had to go looking for this one to remember the details and in retrospect, there are a surprisingly high number of MacGuyver episodes that can be boiled down to "teenage girl has to help MacGuyver after XYZ happens". I'd never really thought about it, but that show quite liked pairing Mac with lots of different types of people of different ages/races/nationalities/etc. for adventures of the week, which was kind of a fun aspect even if sometimes it was all just a little too... 80s.]
I remember watching this when I was a kid and it freaked me out a bit. Spaceships and little green men were fine, but kids that dressed and looked like I did mixing with the crew of the Enterprise...that gave me a really weird feeling when watching this episode.
I re-watched this recently and thought it was better than you did, but there's no question the Kirk-Miri relationship triggered some cringes. Though I agree one of the aspects of the story was "kids turning into monsters at puberty", I'd add that a major story point was "science going too far too quickly and absolutely screwing everything up". I certainly took that as a the primary message of the episode, with everything else being secondary.
This is an episode I can’t hate, mostly for one reason. Kim Darby. Even as a kid, watching reruns I knew there was something exceptional about her acting. Despite any goofiness or shortcomings of the episode, she elevates all of it.
Darby wound up having a pretty decent career in films and television. Aside from “Miri” she’ll probably be best remembered for her starring role in the original TRUE GRIT.
It really feels like there would have been a good episode to be made about the weird prevalence of planets identical to our Earth, down to the continental distribution, strewn across the galaxy. Did that ever pop up in later shows? Would they each eventually, independently develop a space-faring Federation? (Barring Children of the Corn plagues, of course.)
They didn't say it but I now use some of Discovery as an excuse for the parallel earths. The mirror universe Terran Empire technology was damaging the barriers between parallel universes. So I say the Earths in Miri, Bread and Circuses, and The Omega Glory phased into the prime universe before Discovery blew up the Mirror universe Emperor's starship and source of the problem. Obviously the real reason was to save money using studio backlots.
Why does everyone think the prevalence of "other Earth" planets is so weird? Look at our modern approach to exoplanet research...What do we focus on? Planets that have.....liquid watering theor surface...temperature and atmospheric conditions as similar to Earth as possible....within the "goldilocks zone" of their star...Naturally, because when it comes to the search for extra terrestrial life, we have only one planetary example to look at as an exple of what we know absolutely works...there is undeniably life upon planet Earth...whether you would classifying as "intelligent" life or not is debatable perhaps, but there is undeniably all kinds of life that exists here, so it would seem reasonable to presume that there is at least a chance of finding some kind of life on any other planet with conditions somewhat similar to Earth. Even within our own solar system over the years we have certainly committed more of our space exploration resources to the study of Mars than any other planet in our solar system because, while not an exact match, it is largely regarded as the most similar to Earth of all the others. I think it is reasonable to presume that there are certain needs which are going to be common to life anywhere as far as the development and sustaining of biological processes goes. As such, it is probably not unrealistic to expect that if we do ever begin to discover alien life in the universe, the vast majority is going to come from planets which are not too dissimilar to our precious and puny little Earth.
I think one problem that makes this all sketchy is these children are actually 100’s of years old, so they should be adults in children’s bodies. That can make for its own sort of madness, but not the situation as depicted. Put it this way: when the plague struck, at least the ten year olds on up to young enough to have, say 50 or more years before they seccumb had plenty of to grow up, raise the other children to grow up while studying for a cure.
Kim Darby, who is well know here in Italy, is a very talented actress and as Miri masterfully plays the part of a teenager who becomes an adult. Her character rightly gives the episode its title.
I was 14 years old in 1966 when this early episode aired. Best educated group of under 20 americans up to that point. Youth had their own culture that did not include the over 30 crowd, a different generation entirely. Smoking, sex and drugs were prominent across the country and the divide was very great until the 80’s when the crackdown began in earnest. This story a quick one for the times presented, that’s all.
I got the impression that the reason for the parallel earth here was to explain why Kirk and co. could read the local language. This was clearer in the Blish adaptation, where the food problem is also addressed.(Not adequately , of course)
I feel like part of the reason for the confused and confusing theming is *because* the writers were largely progressive older individuals. This was a period when "Don't trust anyone over thirty" was a common mantra among young activists. The characters in the show, and the writers through them, seem to me to be yelling into the void "Hey, we get that there are crappy 30+ somethings in power, but we're not them, we're with y'all really!" It's giving "not all grownups".
I always thought this is a really good episode, the best of the “Alternate Earth” episodes, although as mentioned it only tangentially fits in that category. Fun Fact: This is the Halloween episode of the first season, which explains the costumes on the kids and the spooky feel.
I'm glad Earth-duplicates didn't turn into a recurring thing in the later series. Alternate Earths works better in time travel or parallel worlds stories (of which there are plenty throughout the franchise) but not so much in strictly space-travel adventures. While I can accept that in an infinite universe, all kinds of unlikely things are possible, there's no particular reason to think they're going to be close enough together to fit in one quadrant of one galaxy.
It would have been interesting if, as the Trekverse developped, they had also encountered duplicate Vulcans, Kronos, Romulus, Andorias, etc., which would ultimately had led to the discovery that the Milky Way was an advanced cilvilization's lab for studying the development of humanoid societies. Of course, that would have introduced far too much continuity in what was fundamentally an episodic television series, but the concept would have been, for lack of a better word, fascinating.
On the one hand, uncomfortable teen-adult interactions. On the other hand, the adult being completely safe and responsible about it. On the gripping hand, the realization that you have to just trust that he'll be that way, and if he wasn't, things could have gone very wrong very easily.
Kim Darby who played Miri in this 1966 episode of Star Trek also played Mattie Ross in True Grit (1969) hiring a violent drunkard federal marshal played by John Wayne to track down her father's murderer in Indian Territory (pre-Oklahoma).
The premise, as silly as it is could have been used so much better. The writers ass7me that a biological teenager must be a mental teenager. Sure, hormones and other physical tra8ts will effect a persons state of being, but these kits are also several times older than anyone on that ship. Miri had centuries of life experiences that must have contributed to her thought processes. In modern times we see similar concepts at work with adolescent immortals like child vampires, where their opinion on their existence eventually comes around to "this is a hellish prison, a curse thats driving me mad" To the shpws credit, they steered well clear of the idea that she may look like a child but shes aktually a centuries old deamon queen or whatever....
Miri was one of my favorite episodes as a kid, and I still like it. One thing that always bothered me was how did John get to be so big without hitting puberty and dying like the rest? Some kind of diminished development? He looks 16, but acts like he's 8.
This ep is a confused allegory about the 60s counterculture and its distrust of "anybody over 30." It's similar to "The Way to Eden," offering a cautionary tale against the excesses of youthful idealism. Roddenberry may have been progressive in his day, but he wasn't a hippy.
I first encountered this story (as I did many of TOS) in the James Blish short stories, and he did a brilliant job of making even the worst come out pretty good (even Spock's Brain). This one had an atmosphere of tragedy and drama more so than many and always struck me as being one of the better ones. As for the parallel Earth, human, and society, just reading a lot of the scifi from the early-mid 20th Century often used the concept. It looks pretty ridiculous to our eyes and frankly showed some of the arrogance of seeing one's own culture as the pinnacle of society but it wasn't uncommon so it's not surprising that TOS used it so often.
If you like, parallel earths, you need to read the long earth series. My theory about parallel earths in Star Trek that are within the prime universe is that there are weak points within the universe where other versions of a planet can pop up. The reason that each version that appears in the original series is a version of earth is due to the composition of the crew of the enterprise. The crew of the enterprise is almost entirely human, and therefore any parallel planets show up would also be earth. If a crew were Vulcan, or Klingon the parallel planets would reflect their home planet. I’m not sure what would happen if you got a Romulan involved.
Ha Ha! You say Kirk's speaking to the kids was made less relevant because of McCoy's actions, but! If not for getting the communicators back, he'd have had no way to tell the ship they were cured and end the episode back on board! . . . is what I would be saying if we all didn't know that the Scotty, upon realizing he hadn't heard from the captain in days, would most likely have been smart enough to just beam a spare communicator down to where the landing party were placed according to their sensor scans. So . . . yeah, I guess it wasn't such a big deal after all. Then again, just as McCoy's sacrifice gave him something dramatic to do, Kirk's rescue of Rand and vital Starfleet property gave him something dramatic to do. You have to use the actors!
Immutable laws of Star Trek episodes: 1) Comet episodes are awesome. 2) Child episodes are horrible. There are no exceptions. I mean, literally no exceptions. In like a thousand hours of Trek, they have never made a good kid episode or a bad comet episode, and I don't know how that's possible.
But they use backlots like that on planets that aren’t exact duplicated and happen to have similar-to-earth cultures all the time. But I guess they hadn’t fallen into that pattern yet, and at this point still thought they needed more justification than they would use in the future.
I think they missed a more interesting direction which the concept could have taken this story. The centuries old kids seem to have not tried at all to organize or rebuild some sort of rudimentary civilization. Many kids are no where near as ignorant and helpless as these kids seem to be. Seems like your average 10-12 year old could have been much more intelligent and ambitious, the more mature ones easily taking on some kind of leadership role. Somewhere out there were sure to be some smart kids, who had experience with farming, carpentry, building electronic and mechanical devices. Since they only aged one month every hundred years, they would have had plenty of time to rebuild. The Star Trek team could have come to a planet that was more like the 1976 movie about a world of kids only, "Bugsy Malone", which starred a 13 year old Jody Foster. It would have been much more interesting to see a world of kids working jobs, driving cars and running a society of kids.
I think she borrowed the idea from a different fandom but in her Trek fanfics PrairieDawn uses the explanation that these aren't random planets that seem like Earth but are actually duplicates of Earth created by members of a super advanced race for unknown reasons, possibly to conduct sociological experiments. In one of her series they duplicate Earth during the time of the Korean war and drop the copy into the edge of Klingon space in the "present day" of the Reboot 'verse resulting in a crossover with MASH.
Seeking out those communicators increased the chance success given available information at the time. McCoy's judgement was also likely made erratic by the disease. Nonetheless, if every action needs to be essential to a successful outcome then the script would unnatural and unnecessarily constraining.
This is one of those episodes where I think it has a great teaser, but I find myself becoming less and less interested in the story as it goes on. I wish they'd done a story about how the duplicate Earth came to be instead.
What I think you, Steve, missed in your review was that this episode was a condemnation of our youth-obsessed culture. The ancient adults on this planet were so obsessed with staying young that they created a pathogen to keep themselves “forever young.” It wasn’t a random mistake that lead here; it was DELIBERATE. I’m surprised you didn’t comment on it from a “genetic manipulation bad” perspective, since that’s another modern perspective one could take here. I think it would be wrong, since recombinant DNA was at least 10-15 years in the future yet. But it’s another modern perspective that could be (erroneously) taken. I DO think it was meant as an exploration of how *manipulating hormones* could go awry, however. This was the time of “free love” and the sexual revolution fueled by wide availability of hormonal birth control. At the time, this was NEW - within the past decade - and it was quite controversial. Control of “hormonal rage” (in women) was part of the selling point of birth control pills. The idea that such manipulations could go completely awry with unintended consequences like these was a very present specter of fear at the time. This episode also appeared right after the 1963 film adaptation of The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. That Book and film would have been very present for most viewers only few years later. That book also has a group of boys isolated on an island, and details how difficult it would be to self-govern, lacking certain adult perspectives. I’d be shocked if Miri weren’t at least in part directly inspired by The Lord of the Flies. As the Wikipedia article says “Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.” Sound familiar? It’s easy to dismiss this episode as “cringe” from our modern perspective. But this is one that I believe truly benefits from looking at the context of the times in which it was written and released. It was never about “Lolita in space” (because, in part, Kirk was never tempted or interested in her). It was, however, about “Lord of the Flies in space,” and also what might happen if these newfangled hormonal manipulations got out of hand.
Am I misremembering...? I thought McCoy injected himself and had a bad reaction to it, and then Spock...fixed it, or something...? And then McCoy finally recovered, proving the cure worked. I dunno, it's been forever since I've seen the episode; I've seen it a couple times but again, been a long time. I could be misremembering.
So yes she's a 13 year old girl, but technically she's a 313 girl what should be like the equivalent elves in Lord of the Rings without the experience or knowledge of having lived that long
The "Another Earth" gimmick is introduced mainly to put an intriguing hook in the end of the short teaser. It also conveniently allows them to save money on sets and props. Beyond that, it's irrelevant to this particular story.
Kind of a muddle. The idea of 300 year old children is awesome, but how the episode handles it is a total disappointment - it’s like they were orphaned 3 years ago, not 300.
While the Kirk/Mirri stuff is strange, it always felt like the kind of thing I'd hear old people at church say about kids, so while creepy just, well now that I think about that, anyway. But to me the worst part os how Yeaomn Rand is treated in this epeisode. Its not the worse thing to happen to or involving her character but thats a big part of the problem. It feels like she is there to swoon over Kirk in a more overt way than normal and to be just a crying woman, and nothing else.
I was 13, what? Nearly 60 years ago? This was cringe then, too. I was embarrassed. Kirk looked so cocky,, like he was irresponsible and women powerless in his presence. Rand, sniveling about her legs? And the pedo potential was sickening. The only thing different, half a century later, is victims sometimes say stuff out loud. I never dated. I ghythe moral was supposed to be something about scientific hubris, but got lost in the mayhem. That part was why I liked it so much. The thought experiments were always my favorite episodes. Great joke, lateral move 💯😜🖖🏼🖖🏽
This video makes me realize how old I am. To show a 13 year old idolizing and feeling sexual attraction to somebody twice their age seems normal to me. It seems like it is a part of puberty. I see Kirk sort of playing with it, but I just do not see him actually meaning what he says. Adults use a jargon or "childs speak" with children that is highly nuanced and dependent on context all of the time. Does that makes sense? Is my reasoning faulty? I am not trying to justify pedophilia. I remember when I was 13 and being attracted to adult women. Maybe if they would have developed this aspect better instead of trying to cram everything into 42 minutes, it might have been explained in more detail.
If you look at this episode, plus, And the Children Shall Lead, and The Way To Eden. You might come away with the ideas that Roddenberry had a thing against the youth culture of the 60s
I always interpreted these types of episodes where the children/child was dangerous as an attempt at scifi Lord of the Flies. So yeah, you could see it as "adults know better" or conversely as "adults are responsible for good parenting /caretaking of the next generation." But yeam, a little preachy & cringey.
In general I enjoy watching your Trek reviews, but sometimes you come to some very strange conclusions. This isn't an episode about how "young people" should just shut up and let the "adults" made the decisions because old people know best, these are literal children who have been left to fend for themselves and become forced to take on caregiver roles which they were never meant for and which is not sustainable because, again, they are children. Children actually do need adults. These children are living awful, tragic lives. We're not talking about boomers telling young people that they need to shut up with their progressive politics, here.
"No 'blah! blah! blah!'--only Shatner could deliver that line with such searing intensity and sincerity.
"Study, study, study, or *bonk* *bonk* !"
I never thought Kirk was creepy with Miri. Kirk was uncomfortable. Also even though Kirk never explicitly said it he was uncomfortable around children in general, so it made sense that his interactions with all the kids came off as awkward. It seems that being uncomfortable around kids is a Starfleet captain’s trait other than Sisko. The first time I saw this I was a little kid, before TNG. I remember being on the adult’s side, thinking those kids were total assholes.
Agreed. It's become a minor social obsession to label every other thing as "creepy", but this episode definitely isn't. Yeah, he played into her crush, but hello? Lives being saved? I think it's handled very well, what with Shatner clearly understanding this isn't any kind of flirting on Kirk's part and playing the discomfort as well as his deep sympathy for her and the other kids. How do you handle someone too young getting a crush on you? Oy. (And yeah, these kids were little monsters. I saw this as a kid and hated them. They needed to have grownups around, and that wasn't a thought I had very often.).
I didn't think he was creepy at all. He recognized that she was crushing on him, but from his end all he did was try to earn her trust to save everyone's lives. He was very deliberate about NOT flirting with her.
A good episode to be a redshirt. They bring down two and not only do they both survive, they don't even seem to get sick.
When 24th century Trek gets bashed for overusing the Holodeck-goes-haywire episodes, I simply point out the tons to parallel Earth and alien illusions simulating Earth (a'la "Spectre of the Gun") episodes of TOS and politely say, "please hush".
At least "Holodeck goes Haywire" is dozens of times more probable than "Parallel Earth".
I was an 11 y.o girl on 1966. I didn't think the Kirk/Miri interactions were cringey. I could understand that Miri developed a crush on Kirk. I had a crush on him! And Kirk's gentle treatment of her seemed natural and appropriate. Maybe now I should look at their relationship differently, but I don't.
Given what we know about Roddenberry and Berman and the rest of the brass who oversaw _Star Trek_ in the 20th century, it's a miracle that we _didn't_ get an episode that was _Lolita In Space._ I'm amazed we dodged that bullet.
Fun fact: actor Phil Morris, who is a kid in this episode, would go on to appear in STIII:TSFS, DS9's "Looking for Par'Machi in All the Wrong Places", "Rocks and Shoals" and in VGR's "One Small Step". He would also have a reoccurring role as Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld.
Phil Morris is the son of Greg Morris, of Mission: Impossible fame. He played the son of his father's M:I charater in the sadly all too short lived 1989-1990 M:I sequel series. (Greg also appeared in one episode, playing the same character he did in the original series.) That series is the last M:I thing that exists are far as I'm concerned. The Tom Cruise garbage is not M:I, just generic action moveis that have the name tacked on to try to make money.
Greg Morris famously walked out of the first Tom Cruise movie because of how it insulted the cast of the show, and for being just terrible in general.
Whoa, that'd hake him the son of Greg Morris, of "Mission: Impossible" and also "Vega$".
I believe the '89 Mission Impossible series was primarily a result of a writer strike; the producers were just recycling M:I scripts from the '60s.
And yes, the Tom Cruise M:I movies can die in a fire while sucking a bag of dicks.
While Star Trek receives well-deserved accolades for casting Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, Mission: Impossible doesn't seem to get much recognition for Greg Morris's character Barney Collier, a tech wizard and entrepreneur, which in the mid-60s was a White coded character type. Morris didn't "play Black", and the show didn't make any reference to the character's race at all. One might argue that M:I's color-blind contemporary 1960s was as much a fantasy as Star Trek's 23rd Century Utopia.
@@steveng.clinard1766 It was. Originally they were just going to remake M:I. But then they cast Peter Graves, and they decided to make it a sequel instead. And in the end, the writer's strike ended, so only a few episodes were recycled. But yeah I agree with you about the original M:I being pretty progressive.
@@steveng.clinard1766 Agreed about Barney being a socially important character. James Kinchloe over on "Hogan's Heroes" was another one, the radio / tech guy who was treated as an equal and compatriot of the others. They occasionally made jokes about his skin tone, but it was always the same joke, that he couldn't possibly pass for German. That's it. Other than that (and one time when the Nazis said something vaguely disaparaging about him), he was just one of the guys.
Fun facts: The two children of Greg Morris from the original Mission Impossible are child extras in this episode. So are Gene Roddenberry's two daughters and also Bill Shatner's two youngest daughters.
I knew about Shatners kids but I didn't know about the others!
Including the one Kirk picks up late in the episode
Which was apparently not in the script, but hey why not?
It would be cool to involve your kids.
One of Mr. Norris' sons, Grant, shared another scene with Kirk early on in ST:III, before going on to star in Mission Impossible himself!
@@ryankirkpatrick959 Isn't that Phil Morris, also known better as portraying Jackie Chiles?
I wonder what those children ate. Kirk says at one point they're about to run out of food, but it's been hundreds of years. This civilization must have been seriously stocked up in case of emergency - we could learn much from them.
There was a scene that answered this question that got cut from the episode but showed up in the episode novelization: they ate canned food. "But we have mommies," Miri assured them. When Kirk asked what she meant, she replied, "You know, mommies," and made the gesture of using a manual can opener. Upon seeing this, Rand turned her back and threw up. Seems there's a stigma against cans in the future, who knew?
This story could have been set on a colony and function reasonably well, but wouldn't have the 60's kids run wild visuals as easily, perhaps?
But in any case, can we forget the wisdom that this episode introduced into my social group of weirdos when we caught it in rerun:
"Bonk bonk on the head, captain lovey-dovey." Truly words to recall at the most critical of inappropriate times.
I always saw it as a "dangers of playing God" warning. Several TOSs have that theme. The fact that it's Earth like, is a "but there for the grace of God go us." As one who time traveled through the 50s and 60s, I can say for sure that religion, even in scifi, was a much bigger influence than today.
I first saw this episode when I was young (maybe around 7 or 8?) and the beginning part with the bicycle and being attacked by the old guy scared the ever lovin' crap out of me. Like pure terror, nightmares for a couple days kind of scared.
Not Jeff here. I first saw this episode in the first run as an 8 year old, and was scared by the nasty gray welts on a black and white TV. I really liked the character Miri and her kindness and intelligence. As I got older and saw it in reruns, I identified with her fear of becoming a grup, something that I've managed to avoid so far. The last time I saw the whole episode, as an adult, I realized that the story wasn't about a disease threatening the crew, it was about a child deciding to take a risk to help others, and thereby becoming an independent adult. She grows up, but doesn't become a grup.
Kim Darby was everywhere in the 60's and 70's. She and Ron Howard seemed to be the only working kids in Hollywood. She was a terrific young actress, and I enjoy her performances to this day.
As for the parallel Earth, I suspect that since the show was chronically over budget it was easier to do a rewrite and shoot on a backlot rather that build an alien set. Miri does stand out in the fact that the other Earth was an afterthought instead of a plot driver or commentary. As a matter of fact, I had forgotten about it until you pointed it out in this video!
Peace and long life, from Not Jeff.
I always figured that they went with parallel-Earth shtick on this one so that the disease would be something that the away team could readily contract.
Story-wise, sure. In reality, these episodes happened because the producers needed to save money, so justifications would be found for using the Desilu backlot.
Loved your analysis. I'm probably reading too much into this episode, but in response to 'why the duplicate Earth' might have been commentary on our growing fears of biological warfare, or the reckless curiosity of making dangerous microbial hybrids just to see if it can be done. Anyway, rock on!
Miri was one of the first episodes I ever remember seeing (along with Balance of Terror) as a weeone. The "kid" at the beginning was the stuff of nightmares for me, especially as he breaks down over the trike.
I _live_ for the, "Spoilers beyond this point" segment.
"don't trust anyone over 30" was a common phrase back then.
I always felt that this episode is pushing back on that notion.
Yeah, that's what I read into it. This is a dig at hippie culture from the generation that lived through the Depression and WWII, although you can also equate the grup-caused plague as a metaphor for the Depression and WWII.
Yeah, the message I always took from this episode is that neither generation is completely bad or completely blameless, but they have to work together to keep the world from ending.
Far from anyone's favorite, but this episode is still memorable in that South Park did a parody and the expression "the before times" having more recently entered the lexicon in reference the time before the Covid-19 pandemic.
To this day, I still, once in a while, say "BONK BONK ON THE HEAD!" and "NO BLAH BLAH BLAH!"
This episode was first shown only about 3 years after the film "Lord of the Flies" came out and was a surprise hit. It was also about the time that LOTF was first broadcast on television. "Miri" immediately reminded me of LOTF and I've wondered if it was an influence on the idea of this episode.
There's an episode of Dark Shadows where Dr. Hoffman kills her own mirror universe double by hitting her over the head with a hammer, and I always yell "BONK BONK ON THE HEAD" at the TV.
Yep. I said a similar thing. Very much influenced by LOTF, subconsciously if not consciously. But I’d bet consciously.
Amazingly, I just watched this episode about 4 hours ago and here you are reviewing it...remarkable.
"She's developing...the disease you perverts!" - Comedy gold.
I saw Miri upon its original airing in 1966, and it holds a special place for me, as it is the first Star Trek episode that I remember watching with my dad.
As you may or may not know, this planet appears again in one of the "Shatnerverse" novels. A group of scientists under the mistaken impression that Captain Picard is going to destroy the universe kidnap him and take him to this duplicate Earth where even though there's no-one living there any more, and all the kids were cured, Picard is infected with the plague as soon as he's beamed down
The mere idea that grups would leave a room without their cellphones is ridiculous.
Yes, but the fact that kids would want to get their hands on those phones makes perfect sense.
As a kid who got obsessed with TOS at age 11, Kirk was my first big adolescent media crush... so I found Miri extremely believable. And obviously Kirk was a stand-up guy and wasn't going to do anything genuinely untoward, so that didn't worry me. I did think *her* behavior was kind of cringe, but hey, it turns out she was in the early stages of the disease that makes everyone go crazy, so that wasn't really her fault anyway.
Still, as "insert teenage girl into this scenario" episodes go, I much prefer that one MacGuyver episode where he gets wounded and framed during an assassination attempt in Geneva, and a teenage American girl (played by a young Mayim Bialik) going to a Swiss boarding school has to help him. [Side note: I had to go looking for this one to remember the details and in retrospect, there are a surprisingly high number of MacGuyver episodes that can be boiled down to "teenage girl has to help MacGuyver after XYZ happens". I'd never really thought about it, but that show quite liked pairing Mac with lots of different types of people of different ages/races/nationalities/etc. for adventures of the week, which was kind of a fun aspect even if sometimes it was all just a little too... 80s.]
I remember watching this when I was a kid and it freaked me out a bit. Spaceships and little green men were fine, but kids that dressed and looked like I did mixing with the crew of the Enterprise...that gave me a really weird feeling when watching this episode.
I re-watched this recently and thought it was better than you did, but there's no question the Kirk-Miri relationship triggered some cringes. Though I agree one of the aspects of the story was "kids turning into monsters at puberty", I'd add that a major story point was "science going too far too quickly and absolutely screwing everything up". I certainly took that as a the primary message of the episode, with everything else being secondary.
Jahn is played by Michael Pollard from Bonnie and Clyde and Little Fauss and Big Halsy - He was probably pushing 30 at this point
This is an episode I can’t hate, mostly for one reason. Kim Darby. Even as a kid, watching reruns I knew there was something exceptional about her acting. Despite any goofiness or shortcomings of the episode, she elevates all of it.
Darby wound up having a pretty decent career in films and television. Aside from “Miri” she’ll probably be best remembered for her starring role in the original TRUE GRIT.
In the end, Kirk said he didn't date older women.
It really feels like there would have been a good episode to be made about the weird prevalence of planets identical to our Earth, down to the continental distribution, strewn across the galaxy. Did that ever pop up in later shows? Would they each eventually, independently develop a space-faring Federation? (Barring Children of the Corn plagues, of course.)
They didn't say it but I now use some of Discovery as an excuse for the parallel earths. The mirror universe Terran Empire technology was damaging the barriers between parallel universes. So I say the Earths in Miri, Bread and Circuses, and The Omega Glory phased into the prime universe before Discovery blew up the Mirror universe Emperor's starship and source of the problem. Obviously the real reason was to save money using studio backlots.
Why does everyone think the prevalence of "other Earth" planets is so weird? Look at our modern approach to exoplanet research...What do we focus on? Planets that have.....liquid watering theor surface...temperature and atmospheric conditions as similar to Earth as possible....within the "goldilocks zone" of their star...Naturally, because when it comes to the search for extra terrestrial life, we have only one planetary example to look at as an exple of what we know absolutely works...there is undeniably life upon planet Earth...whether you would classifying as "intelligent" life or not is debatable perhaps, but there is undeniably all kinds of life that exists here, so it would seem reasonable to presume that there is at least a chance of finding some kind of life on any other planet with conditions somewhat similar to Earth. Even within our own solar system over the years we have certainly committed more of our space exploration resources to the study of Mars than any other planet in our solar system because, while not an exact match, it is largely regarded as the most similar to Earth of all the others. I think it is reasonable to presume that there are certain needs which are going to be common to life anywhere as far as the development and sustaining of biological processes goes. As such, it is probably not unrealistic to expect that if we do ever begin to discover alien life in the universe, the vast majority is going to come from planets which are not too dissimilar to our precious and puny little Earth.
I think one problem that makes this all sketchy is these children are actually 100’s of years old, so they should be adults in children’s bodies. That can make for its own sort of madness, but not the situation as depicted. Put it this way: when the plague struck, at least the ten year olds on up to young enough to have, say 50 or more years before they seccumb had plenty of to grow up, raise the other children to grow up while studying for a cure.
Kim Darby, who is well know here in Italy, is a very talented actress and as Miri masterfully plays the part of a teenager who becomes an adult.
Her character rightly gives the episode its title.
I was 14 years old in 1966 when this early episode aired. Best educated group of under 20 americans up to that point. Youth had their own culture that did not include the over 30 crowd, a different generation entirely. Smoking, sex and drugs were prominent across the country and the divide was very great until the 80’s when the crackdown began in earnest. This story a quick one for the times presented, that’s all.
I got the impression that the reason for the parallel earth here was to explain why Kirk and co. could read the local language. This was clearer in the Blish adaptation, where the food problem is also addressed.(Not adequately , of course)
I feel like part of the reason for the confused and confusing theming is *because* the writers were largely progressive older individuals. This was a period when "Don't trust anyone over thirty" was a common mantra among young activists. The characters in the show, and the writers through them, seem to me to be yelling into the void "Hey, we get that there are crappy 30+ somethings in power, but we're not them, we're with y'all really!"
It's giving "not all grownups".
This is well put.
And explains why it's a bit unclear what the intended takeaway is.
I think someone in the writer's room heard a hippie say "don't trust anyone over 30" and thought... "That would be a good episode!"
I always thought this is a really good episode, the best of the “Alternate Earth” episodes, although as mentioned it only tangentially fits in that category. Fun Fact: This is the Halloween episode of the first season, which explains the costumes on the kids and the spooky feel.
I'm glad Earth-duplicates didn't turn into a recurring thing in the later series. Alternate Earths works better in time travel or parallel worlds stories (of which there are plenty throughout the franchise) but not so much in strictly space-travel adventures. While I can accept that in an infinite universe, all kinds of unlikely things are possible, there's no particular reason to think they're going to be close enough together to fit in one quadrant of one galaxy.
It would have been interesting if, as the Trekverse developped, they had also encountered duplicate Vulcans, Kronos, Romulus, Andorias, etc., which would ultimately had led to the discovery that the Milky Way was an advanced cilvilization's lab for studying the development of humanoid societies. Of course, that would have introduced far too much continuity in what was fundamentally an episodic television series, but the concept would have been, for lack of a better word, fascinating.
On the one hand, uncomfortable teen-adult interactions. On the other hand, the adult being completely safe and responsible about it. On the gripping hand, the realization that you have to just trust that he'll be that way, and if he wasn't, things could have gone very wrong very easily.
Kim Darby who played Miri in this 1966 episode of Star Trek also played Mattie Ross in True Grit (1969) hiring a violent drunkard federal marshal played by John Wayne to track down her father's murderer in Indian Territory (pre-Oklahoma).
The premise, as silly as it is could have been used so much better. The writers ass7me that a biological teenager must be a mental teenager. Sure, hormones and other physical tra8ts will effect a persons state of being, but these kits are also several times older than anyone on that ship. Miri had centuries of life experiences that must have contributed to her thought processes. In modern times we see similar concepts at work with adolescent immortals like child vampires, where their opinion on their existence eventually comes around to "this is a hellish prison, a curse thats driving me mad"
To the shpws credit, they steered well clear of the idea that she may look like a child but shes aktually a centuries old deamon queen or whatever....
oh I can't wait for the return of the archons , One of my favorite of classic trek
Miri was one of my favorite episodes as a kid, and I still like it. One thing that always bothered me was how did John get to be so big without hitting puberty and dying like the rest? Some kind of diminished development? He looks 16, but acts like he's 8.
This ep is a confused allegory about the 60s counterculture and its distrust of "anybody over 30." It's similar to "The Way to Eden," offering a cautionary tale against the excesses of youthful idealism. Roddenberry may have been progressive in his day, but he wasn't a hippy.
When we know that the teenage girls back in the Sixties were mostly crushing on Spock.
I first encountered this story (as I did many of TOS) in the James Blish short stories, and he did a brilliant job of making even the worst come out pretty good (even Spock's Brain). This one had an atmosphere of tragedy and drama more so than many and always struck me as being one of the better ones. As for the parallel Earth, human, and society, just reading a lot of the scifi from the early-mid 20th Century often used the concept. It looks pretty ridiculous to our eyes and frankly showed some of the arrogance of seeing one's own culture as the pinnacle of society but it wasn't uncommon so it's not surprising that TOS used it so often.
If you like, parallel earths, you need to read the long earth series.
My theory about parallel earths in Star Trek that are within the prime universe is that there are weak points within the universe where other versions of a planet can pop up. The reason that each version that appears in the original series is a version of earth is due to the composition of the crew of the enterprise. The crew of the enterprise is almost entirely human, and therefore any parallel planets show up would also be earth. If a crew were Vulcan, or Klingon the parallel planets would reflect their home planet. I’m not sure what would happen if you got a Romulan involved.
Ha Ha! You say Kirk's speaking to the kids was made less relevant because of McCoy's actions, but! If not for getting the communicators back, he'd have had no way to tell the ship they were cured and end the episode back on board! . . . is what I would be saying if we all didn't know that the Scotty, upon realizing he hadn't heard from the captain in days, would most likely have been smart enough to just beam a spare communicator down to where the landing party were placed according to their sensor scans. So . . . yeah, I guess it wasn't such a big deal after all.
Then again, just as McCoy's sacrifice gave him something dramatic to do, Kirk's rescue of Rand and vital Starfleet property gave him something dramatic to do. You have to use the actors!
You could say the kids all come from a Miri Earth. Badum Tsss.
Pity vaccines aren't as easily mixable than metaphors. Also, not a parallel earth in the novelization of the episode.
Rage zombies are still better than The Expanse's vomit zombies.
Ah, science fiction.
Guess they hadn't figured out bio-filters on the transporters yet
Tell 'em, Jim!
Immutable laws of Star Trek episodes:
1) Comet episodes are awesome.
2) Child episodes are horrible.
There are no exceptions. I mean, literally no exceptions. In like a thousand hours of Trek, they have never made a good kid episode or a bad comet episode, and I don't know how that's possible.
What about the _DS9_ episode "Progress?" The kid plot (the Noh-Jay Consortium) is better than the "A" plot (evacuating a Bajoran moon.)
Considering how many people like this episode, I'd say maybe speak for yourself.
I imagine they did the duplicate Earth thing to justify using the backlot.
But they use backlots like that on planets that aren’t exact duplicated and happen to have similar-to-earth cultures all the time. But I guess they hadn’t fallen into that pattern yet, and at this point still thought they needed more justification than they would use in the future.
I luvs me some Grace Lee Whitney, and I do like this episode... just wondering why Rand beamed down empty-handed. No tricorder? Hot coffees?
The original "Don't worry, she's actually a 200 year old immortal, she's just in the body of a 14 year old".
This episode seems like a Twilight Zone script repurposed for ST. A couple of twicks, and this could be a classic episode of the TZ imo.
I think they missed a more interesting direction which the concept could have taken this story. The centuries old kids seem to have not tried at all to organize or rebuild some sort of rudimentary civilization. Many kids are no where near as ignorant and helpless as these kids seem to be. Seems like your average 10-12 year old could have been much more intelligent and ambitious, the more mature ones easily taking on some kind of leadership role. Somewhere out there were sure to be some smart kids, who had experience with farming, carpentry, building electronic and mechanical devices. Since they only aged one month every hundred years, they would have had plenty of time to rebuild. The Star Trek team could have come to a planet that was more like the 1976 movie about a world of kids only, "Bugsy Malone", which starred a 13 year old Jody Foster. It would have been much more interesting to see a world of kids working jobs, driving cars and running a society of kids.
Banned in the UK in the 70s because of the age inappropriate suggested relationship...
Hmmmm. Miri is several hundred years old . Far older than kirk if anyone is making advances on someone to young for them it would be her lol
The writers of the time were the present and future parents of early to mid-Generation X kids.
I have always kind of liked this ep. It's like a warm bath for me.
Shatner admitted that’s his daughter he’s holding in the big final speech scene
I think she borrowed the idea from a different fandom but in her Trek fanfics PrairieDawn uses the explanation that these aren't random planets that seem like Earth but are actually duplicates of Earth created by members of a super advanced race for unknown reasons, possibly to conduct sociological experiments. In one of her series they duplicate Earth during the time of the Korean war and drop the copy into the edge of Klingon space in the "present day" of the Reboot 'verse resulting in a crossover with MASH.
I'm assuming you didn't time every TOS intro to make that opening statement.
I thought the 'duplicate Earths' thing was just about being able to use already constructed sets.
Well, that's the Doylist explanation. The Watsonian explanation is what people still wonder aout.
Seeking out those communicators increased the chance success given available information at the time. McCoy's judgement was also likely made erratic by the disease. Nonetheless, if every action needs to be essential to a successful outcome then the script would unnatural and unnecessarily constraining.
This is one of those episodes where I think it has a great teaser, but I find myself becoming less and less interested in the story as it goes on. I wish they'd done a story about how the duplicate Earth came to be instead.
Miri would be right at home in anime: supposedly physically prepubescent while also being centuries old.
I watched Miri early this year, and I remember enjoying the episode, but yeah a few of the Kirk Miri interactions are creepy.
What I think you, Steve, missed in your review was that this episode was a condemnation of our youth-obsessed culture. The ancient adults on this planet were so obsessed with staying young that they created a pathogen to keep themselves “forever young.” It wasn’t a random mistake that lead here; it was DELIBERATE. I’m surprised you didn’t comment on it from a “genetic manipulation bad” perspective, since that’s another modern perspective one could take here. I think it would be wrong, since recombinant DNA was at least 10-15 years in the future yet. But it’s another modern perspective that could be (erroneously) taken.
I DO think it was meant as an exploration of how *manipulating hormones* could go awry, however. This was the time of “free love” and the sexual revolution fueled by wide availability of hormonal birth control. At the time, this was NEW - within the past decade - and it was quite controversial. Control of “hormonal rage” (in women) was part of the selling point of birth control pills. The idea that such manipulations could go completely awry with unintended consequences like these was a very present specter of fear at the time.
This episode also appeared right after the 1963 film adaptation of The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. That
Book and film would have been very present for most viewers only few years later. That book also has a group of boys isolated on an island, and details how difficult it would be to self-govern, lacking certain adult perspectives. I’d be shocked if Miri weren’t at least in part directly inspired by The Lord of the Flies. As the Wikipedia article says “Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.” Sound familiar?
It’s easy to dismiss this episode as “cringe” from our modern perspective. But this is one that I believe truly benefits from looking at the context of the times in which it was written and released. It was never about “Lolita in space” (because, in part, Kirk was never tempted or interested in her). It was, however, about “Lord of the Flies in space,” and also what might happen if these newfangled hormonal manipulations got out of hand.
Miri is over 300, so it's gross she is going after a much younger Kirk.
They never explain why the kids are still mentally children
Am I misremembering...? I thought McCoy injected himself and had a bad reaction to it, and then Spock...fixed it, or something...? And then McCoy finally recovered, proving the cure worked. I dunno, it's been forever since I've seen the episode; I've seen it a couple times but again, been a long time. I could be misremembering.
A top 10 TOS for sure, maybe a top 5 for me.
thank you, been looking for something good to watch
313 yrs old isn't cringey😂😂😂😂
So yes she's a 13 year old girl, but technically she's a 313 girl what should be like the equivalent elves in Lord of the Rings without the experience or knowledge of having lived that long
The "Another Earth" gimmick is introduced mainly to put an intriguing hook in the end of the short teaser. It also conveniently allows them to save money on sets and props. Beyond that, it's irrelevant to this particular story.
No blah, blah, blah!
Best Star Trek line ever.
Did i miss the last Q episode of TNG? I know Steve was gonna save it for the end of the Q reviews but I didn't see it. 😬🧐
I mostly hate that kid who goes Bonk Bonk and hope he wasn't cured after all.
ST:TOS had some really spectacular, thematically interesting episodes. "Miri" was *not* one of them. I guess they can't all be gems.
Kind of a muddle. The idea of 300 year old children is awesome, but how the episode handles it is a total disappointment - it’s like they were orphaned 3 years ago, not 300.
I always wonder where the brat cast are today now that they don't have to turn into grup-zombies.
While the Kirk/Mirri stuff is strange, it always felt like the kind of thing I'd hear old people at church say about kids, so while creepy just, well now that I think about that, anyway. But to me the worst part os how Yeaomn Rand is treated in this epeisode. Its not the worse thing to happen to or involving her character but thats a big part of the problem. It feels like she is there to swoon over Kirk in a more overt way than normal and to be just a crying woman, and nothing else.
I was 13, what? Nearly 60 years ago?
This was cringe then, too.
I was embarrassed. Kirk looked so cocky,, like he was irresponsible and women powerless in his presence. Rand, sniveling about her legs?
And the pedo potential was sickening.
The only thing different, half a century later, is victims sometimes say stuff out loud. I never dated.
I ghythe moral was supposed to be something about scientific hubris, but got lost in the mayhem. That part was why I liked it so much. The thought experiments were always my favorite episodes.
Great joke, lateral move 💯😜🖖🏼🖖🏽
I don’t think Kirk thought he was irresponsible…
@@johnburns9634 I'm vision impaired. You understood my meaning.
Be a dick on your own time
It’s all shale
I love the bicycle in that Enterprise episode that refers to this one.
This video makes me realize how old I am. To show a 13 year old idolizing and feeling sexual attraction to somebody twice their age seems normal to me. It seems like it is a part of puberty. I see Kirk sort of playing with it, but I just do not see him actually meaning what he says. Adults use a jargon or "childs speak" with children that is highly nuanced and dependent on context all of the time. Does that makes sense? Is my reasoning faulty? I am not trying to justify pedophilia. I remember when I was 13 and being attracted to adult women. Maybe if they would have developed this aspect better instead of trying to cram everything into 42 minutes, it might have been explained in more detail.
Ru
Fi
OOOOOHH
Miri is on the list of "skippable episodes" for me. It's just a bit grating.
It does seem rather confused and pointless.
If you look at this episode, plus, And the Children Shall Lead, and The Way To Eden. You might come away with the ideas that Roddenberry had a thing against the youth culture of the 60s
I liked this episode though
I always interpreted these types of episodes where the children/child was dangerous as an attempt at scifi Lord of the Flies. So yeah, you could see it as "adults know better" or conversely as "adults are responsible for good parenting /caretaking of the next generation." But yeam, a little preachy & cringey.
Teenagers are ... Blah blah blah😂😂😂😂
not the best episode but it has suspense and was a good watch.
First!! Yay!!
In general I enjoy watching your Trek reviews, but sometimes you come to some very strange conclusions. This isn't an episode about how "young people" should just shut up and let the "adults" made the decisions because old people know best, these are literal children who have been left to fend for themselves and become forced to take on caregiver roles which they were never meant for and which is not sustainable because, again, they are children. Children actually do need adults. These children are living awful, tragic lives. We're not talking about boomers telling young people that they need to shut up with their progressive politics, here.