Miri : TOS Episode 12 Original Air Date 10/27/1966 Stardate 2713.5

Miri - Star Trek TV Episode [ Synopsis | Editorial Reviews ]
Production # 12
Air Date: 10/27/1966
Stardate: 2713.5

The U.S.S. Enterprise answers an old distress signal to find an unnamed planet that is almost an exact duplicate of Earth in the 1960s. A landing party beams down and discovers that 300 years before, the natives of the planet conducted experiments to prolong life, but had instead created a deadly virus. The virus killed all adults by rapid aging and madness. In children, the virus slowed the natural aging process greatly, leaving them in a state of prepubescence for centuries.

There are no adults on the planet, only children, and they survive the best they can without adults to aid them. The landing party contracts the virus, except for Spock, who becomes a carrier of the disease. Until a cure for the disease can be found and created, the landing party is confined to the planet. To return to the U.S.S. Enterprise would mean a rapid spread of the disease.

The landing party attempts to make friends with the children, but they vividly remember the horrible deaths of their parents and refuse to have anything to do with them. One of the older children, Miri, falls in love with Kirk and tries to help him with the other children until she begins to see Yeoman Rand as a rival for the captain's affections. Stung, Miri helps Jahn, one of the boys, to lead the children in a campaign to harass the U.S.S. Enterprise crew members. When Kirk tries to reason with the children, he is badly beaten.

One of the older children begins to exhibit symptoms of the disease and Kirk convinces them that they all will get the virus and die horribly, when they finally reach puberty. Using himself as a guinea pig, McCoy creates an antidote from old research notes found in the planet's lab, and finds the cure. The doctor says that the Federation will probably send supervisory personnel to colonize the planet and take care of the children.

The continuing adventures of the starship Enterprise, as recorded for posterity on DVD, move into their sixth volume with a very interesting pair of shows from the original series. "Miri," one of the most popular episodes, featured a couple of soon-to-be-semi-icons from two very different kinds of films from the late 1960s: Michael J. Pollard (who would appear in Bonnie and Clyde) and Kim Darby (John Wayne's costar in True Grit). The intriguing story concerns a race of children on an Earth-like planet who are in fact 300 years old, kept pristine in the summer of their lives by a disease that also causes madness and death with the onset of adulthood. The Enterprise's landing party, including Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), are instantly contaminated and forced to remain on the planet until McCoy can find an antidote. In the meantime, Darby's character, Miri, falls for Kirk and becomes jealous of his attentions toward anyone else. Easily one of Star Trek's strongest shows, "Miri" is a must-see for Trekkers and Trekkies.

Also on this disk is "The Conscience of the King," a memorable drama about a traveling Shakespearean troupe led by one Anton Karidian (Arnold Moss), who may or may not be the same man as Kodos the Executioner, former governor of a Federation planet who oversaw the mass murder of thousands of people rather than watch them starve to death during a food shortage. (Shortly after the deaths, Federation supply ships arrived and Kodos disappeared, right around the time that Karidian arrived as a classical actor touring the planets.) A nice twist: among victims of Kodos's wrongheaded mercy killings were relatives of Captain Kirk (William Shatner), adding a personal note to the mystery of Karidian/Kodos. Well-written (by Barry Trivers) and sensitively directed by a not-well-known but very interesting Hollywood filmmaker, Gerd Oswald.--Tom Keogh