TOS S1E9 "Miri" Review by AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

Hold on folks, this one gets awkward. The Enterprise gets an old Earth SOS distress signal, and finds that it's coming from a planet that mirrors Earth in every way geographically. They beam down, and sure enough they're in the 1960s, with the same buildings and cars that Earth had at that time. Now right off, I'm going to lodge my biggest complaint about this episode. Why does the planet resemble Earth in every way? This goes not only unanswered, but completely unexplored. It's never commented on again throughout the show. Now, I am willing to dismiss this duplicate Earth thing as just something that happens in fictional space; I have no problem with that. In this pretend universe, it's likely that you'll run into identical planets. Fine. But then why include this aspect in the show if you're not going to explain or at least discuss it? The fact that the planet this story takes place on is identical to Earth has absolutely zero to do with the plot. Why couldn't it have just been another planet with a numerical name? Why inject this puzzling aspect as the teaser at the start and then go on to tell a story that doesn't even involve it?



Anyway, on the planet they're attacked by an adult-sized zombie with a child's brain. They beat it up, because why not? It dies, and then they hunt down a child and terrify her. There's what feels like ten minutes of her screaming not to hurt her, and them replying that they're not going to hurt her. It's gripping stuff. Eventually she tells them that her name is Miri. Kirk immediately hits on her by telling her how pretty she is. She acts shocked even though she must feel pretty because she's the only normal looking kid on a planet of the ugliest children in all of existence. It's obvious that she instantly falls in love with Kirk. Kirk discusses this with the others, and there's lots of awkward talk about how she's "becoming a woman," as if this is justification for Kirk to lead her on. One scene has her standing off to the side just staring down at her own chest in wonder. In another scene they're trying to keep her hormone-riddled self busy by having her pointlessly sharpen pencils. Nice. At one point Kirk takes Miri to go look for something, and he grabs her by the hand and escorts her out like they're two young love birds. Yeoman Rand is understandably taken aback by this, and she says to Spock, "That girl," but Spock finishes her sentence with "is at least 300 years older than you." Oh ok, that makes it alright. The captain just left with a barely pubescent child that doesn't even know what puberty or love is and it's ok because because technically she's of legal age. But the look on the face of Rand is not outrage, it's...jealousy! She's upset that her crush is maybe falling for some upstart tart. Jeez.

I've gotten a bit ahead, so I suppose I should explain what's going on here. All the adults are dead of a virus, and the children are aging one month every hundred years. As soon as they hit puberty, they get the virus and go mad and then die. The away team, composed of Kirk, Spock, Rand, McCoy, and a couple redshirts all have the virus now too. Well, Spock is a carrier. The rest of the kids, since they have no interest in mating with the visitors, stay hidden away. They're dirty, and ugly, and they have funny ways of talking like calling grown-ups "grups" and children "onlies." They also love to say "bonk bonk" which is a cute word for murdering a grup by bashing in their head. They're also very good at staying out of sight while ominously chanting "nyah nah nah nah nah" in the creepiest way possible. They steal the crews communicators, because they're always leaving those things lay around. Don't they have a belt clip?

Miri gets jealous of Rand as well after she witnesses the Yeoman throwing herself at Kirk. Miri devises a plan where the kids kidnap (or grupnap?) her to lure Kirk to their hideout, so they can bonk bonk him. (For the record, I feel like an idiot writing this.) She changes her mind when Kirk explains to her that she has the disease now since she's growing up, and they will all die unless they get the communicators back so they can work on a cure with the help of the ship. Kirk confronts the ferrel children, and wins them over with an impassioned speech about how it's no longer the grups that hurt them, but as evidenced by the blood flowing out of him, it's now them that hurt the grups. Wow, heavy man.

"Bonk bonk! Bonk bonk!"

So they formulate a cure, and head back to the ship. They contact a team to help the children get their lives together, and bail on the Earth clone planet before the clean-up crew even arrives. On the bridge, Rand comments to Kirk that the girl sure did really love him. He responds, "I never get involved with older women." But then he gazes off for a few seconds and his eyes say that he would totally like to get involved with some sweet, sweet Miri. Eww.

Eww.

Ok well how do we sum this up? On the negative side we have the clone Earth plot device that is presented for no reason and then completely dropped. We have Kirk at least flattered by the idea of a way too young girl in love with him, which also turns out to be completely unnecessary for the plot. We also have a ridiculous group of over-the-top bonkers children. On the plus side we have a zombie like disease, a race of humanoids with a genetically-engineered prolonged life, and a typical scenario where they must rush to find a cure. It seems fairly balanced but the creepiness factor steers "Miri" towards Meh.

Published June 3, 2017