TOS S01E08, Miri

Dir. Vincent McEveety, Wri. Adrian Spies

The Summary: The Enterprise finds a twin Earth filled with children with incredibly prolonged lifespans but who die when they become adults. After contracting the disease that causes this phenomenon, the crew must race against time to find a cure.

The Good: Bones’ reflective moment with the tricycle is nice. The introduction of the child people is very effective and feels legitimately tragic. We get to see Kirk do his first awesome communicator flip open The kid with the creepy mask is a solid horror image, and the dark take on the Lost Boys idea is really cool. It feels like there are actual stakes with the plague and the race against time. Miri (Kim Darby) herself is well-acted, and another example of a talented guest star elevating a Trek episode with some thoughtful work. This episode has a great, weirdo premise very much in keeping with the style of early Trek. Kirk being mobbed by a swarm of kids is great imagery, and we get another solid Kirk speech about wanting to help them. It’s not an all-timer, but it’s solid.

The Bad: There is a pudgy, balding redshirt who so transparently does not care about any of this that he actively ruins his (thankfully few) scenes. Janice is still here and is very very weird in this episode in particular. The loss of the communicators is a contrived way to extend the episode because it ultimately doesn’t matter by the time the episode is actually over. It transparently feels like wheel-spinning in an otherwise pretty tensely plotted episode. Some of the children are definitely a little rough, acting-wise. I am furious that they never explain why there’s a perfect copy of Earth a million miles away from everything else in the universe. I cannot understate how frustrating this total lack of explanation is. There are some very creepy dramatic choices in how Miri is presented as a character.

The Review: The summary says pretty much everything necessary for this one. The lives of the crew are in the hands of a bunch of near-feral children, and Kirk has to manipulate them to get his people out of harm’s way. This episode is the source of much disagreement among my friends and me. Most of this disagreement is centered around the presentation of Miri as a character, and I believe that’s the central thing that needs to be addressed in any review of the episode. Miri is one of the oldest and therefore most reasonable of the children (and also, therefore, one of the closest to death). In general, she is presented visually and thematically as one of Kirk’s many conquests over the course of The Original Series. This is problematic because Miri is supposed to be a young teenager, which is really creepy. While most of my friends seem to think that this is damning beyond redemption, I think the potential creep factor is mostly just due to changing norms regarding how adults interact with children. In my opinion, Kirk isn’t predatory, but he is manipulative. It is my assumption that anyone who spends any amount of time with a child understands that they sometimes have to be manipulated because they are impossible little jerks. That’s how I read his behavior, at least. I see it as paternalism (which could be read creepily, for sure) and necessary manipulation of a childlike mind so that they don’t all die. I mean, the worst he does is call her a very pretty girl, which actual dads do all the time, and normal adults used to do all the time before we decided that complimenting a young person’s appearance made you a sex predator.

I will definitely acknowledge that the director made a lot of very bad decisions here–the soft focus and glamour lighting absolutely make Miri seem like an object of sexual desire, which is super creepy (Darby was 19 when the episode was filmed, but is supposed to be playing someone pre- or mid-pubescent). There’s definitely a battle between the text and the presentation here, and I would find no fault with anyone put off by that presentation. I’m still onboard with this one, but each individual should probably check it out and form their own opinions.

Other than this central issue, the episode is pretty solid. The stakes are high and the tension is maintained relatively well over the episode’s length (it certainly has fewer pacing issues than most others from this period). There’s some good pathos to the situation the children find themselves in, and the crew’s reaction to it is dramatic and interesting. There’s some good horror-adjacent imagery with the creepy kids and the mob they form, and a satisfying conclusion to it all. The total lack of explanation for the situation they find themselves in is frustrating, but unfortunately emblematic of early Trek. Somebody came up with a weird idea and no one really even bothered to ask how or why that situation would arise. It just generally adds to the sense of the insanity of the Trek universe. Sure, there’s just another Earth somewhere else, frozen at a particular moment historically, populated by feral children who live for hundreds of years. Why not? It’s not like there’s going to be a bunch of sequels to this show that have to deal with any of this craziness!

The Score: