User reviews

Enterprise encounters a planet that is a duplicate of Earth and populated by children.

I enjoyed the themes explored in this episode and think it works pretty well as a medical drama with some impressive performances.

I appreciate ticking clock drama and even though you know they will be okay in the end I felt the pressure along with the characters to find a resolution. As it unfolds we have some good Kirk, Spock and Bones interaction which for me this is the best aspect of the episode. There is also a good scene with Kirk and Yeoman Rand which works not just for the suspense, but also as character development for her and the young girl Miri.

The use of a disease as metaphor for all the negativity associated with adulthood is an interesting concept. Particularly the scenes of jealousy from Miri and violence from the other children. Although some of the scenes between Kirk and the children cross the line of annoying, I have two children and know from experience that they can be just as difficult as portrayed here, just without the violence.

I also like the scene where the diseased adult attacks a member of the landing party and behaves aggressively whilst obsessing over a child's bike. I'm guessing this adult was desperate to get back to a simpler, more innocent and distinctly less diseased period of his life.

Miri is a good character and is portrayed well by Kim Darby. She is approaching adulthood and her scenes with Kirk are good. In fact it's too good, as I felt sympathy not just for her medical condition, but in the way Kirk interacts with her. Kirk comes across as creepy due to his manipulation tactics. I'll be kind to William Shatner and put it down to the cheesy lines he's given and the old-fashioned Star Trek tendency to have male characters flirt in a rather patronising way. DeForest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy and Grace Lee Whitney are all excellent.

Visually it is pretty good with the colourful Enterprise interiors as striking as ever. On the ground my favourite image is of a hand wiping some mud off a glass door to reveal Spock in the distance before he approaches and peers through. Also the dusty laboratory set is pretty effective.

There are a few things that require suspension of disbelief. Particularly the duplicate Earth. I'm not really sure what it's all about other than the makers not being bothered with too much set design. Also, how the children have been surviving for such as long time and some of their behaviour is a bit silly.

I think overall it is an enjoyable entry from the first series.

Kirk and the gang encounter a group of children, living on a planet where the adults seem to have disappeared a long time ago. Upon arrival, they find a man dying in agony and don't understand the how he arrived at his condition. Investigating further, they come upon what appear to be children who act like six year olds, even though they are actually 300 years old. Dr. McCoy comes to the conclusion that there is something about the planet that causes a horrible demise when puberty is reached. Kirk tries to negotiate with the kids because they think the adults are responsible. Kirk meets Miri (Kim Darby) who develops a crush on him. Unfortunately for her, she is beginning to show symptoms similar to the dying man. She has another ally, a young man played by the very strange Michael J. Pollard who was the driver in the "Bonnie and Clyde." The kids just won't trust the crew and this presents a problem for Kirk, who begins to turn on the charm. The kids are really freaky and play violent games and won't listen to reason. Why after 300 years they have not evolved any further than they have is a real mystery. Will the condition that is affecting Miri be circumvented? That is the question.

Miri is one of the strongest and most gripping episodes of the original Star Trek, providing a pretty shocking spin on the age-old post-apocalyptic Earth scenario (except for the fact that none of this takes place on Earth, obviously).

The location is a planet which is an exact replica of Earth: same continents, atmosphere, buildings (albeit a bit old-fashioned) and people. Actually, there's a problem with the people: the planet is inhabited exclusively by children. No Stephen King-like twists (à la Children of the Corn), though: as Miri (Kim Darby) explains to Kirk, all the adults were wiped out several years ago by a virus which doesn't affect children. Dr. McCoy quickly comes to the conclusion that the virus works only on individuals who have already reached puberty, and with every crew member of the Enterprise - apart from Spock, as usual - starting to show symptoms, their exploratory mission becomes a race against the clock to find an antidote before someone gets killed, be it by the virus or Miri's more uncooperative "peers".

A lot of science-fiction thrives on the idea of what our planet would be like without specific groups of people. In this case, however, the story serves as a much more potent reflection on a seemingly trivial theme like puberty: a simple plot gimmick like a virus becomes a powerful metaphor, using the opportunities given by the sci-fi context to explore previously uncharted territory and delivering a compelling portrait of young people yearning to be part of the grown-up world even though they aren't quite ready for that yet (this is most obvious in the case of the titular character and her feelings for Kirk). The fact that it's a tense and scary story helps a lot, too.

A virus has swept another Earth, it's created a sizeable dearth, of adolescents or older, outlook is over, new offspring will not see a birth.

A virus developed in a lab on a doppelganger Earth kills off anyone entering puberty, shouldn't put ideas into the minds of certain folk would be my suggestion.

The science fiction premise in this one is faulty - it's better suited for one of those parallel dimension stories or alternate histories. In another part of the galaxy, the Enterprise comes across another Earth; this is an exact duplicate of the Earth we know, except that on this one, in the 1960s, an artificially-created plague wiped out all adults, leaving children who age only a month for every 100 years. This begs a question: if no plague had occurred, would this Earth's civilization have progressed to form its own Starfleet and then the two Starfleets would run across each other and..? Of course, it's ludicrous and just an impossible set-up - an Earth with the exact same continents - the odds are probably trillions to one against.

The set design was pretty good for a TV series: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Rand and two red-shirts beam down into the middle of a dilapidated city. So, we are to assume they weren't able to detect the still-lethal virus in the air; the landing party all contract the disease and are slated to die in a week, except Spock, who is a carrier and is stuck on the planet regardless. A bunch of kids scamper amid the ruins and cause some trouble by stealing the communicators. Kirk & McCoy start to swipe at each other in frustration as the deadline looms. I'm wondering if there is a correlation between no fatalities occurring during a Trek story and so-so episodes of the first season; there's some tension but a ho-hum tone by the end. With many of the characters being juveniles, there's too much 'bonk-bonk on the head' and repetitive-style silly dialog which was designed for children to verbalize.

These were early roles for Darby, playing the title character, and Pollard as the weird-looking main troublemaker with the strange name. She went on to "True Grit" in '69 and he to "Bonnie and Clyde" in '67. Darby was somewhat touching as the girl on the verge of womanhood, while Pollard...well, he applied some method acting but he seemed anywhere from 15 to 35 years old in his scenes; I couldn't decide on which. This episode was also probably the closest that Kirk and Rand came to admitting they had romantic feelings for each other. Rand (Whitney) was booted off the show soon after.

Stardate 2713.5 through 2717.3 Approximately 2266

The crew of the Enterprise pick up a distress signal from a mysterious planet that is an exact duplicate of Earth. When Kirk, Bones, Spock, and Janice arrive on the planet they learn that not only is it an exact copy of their home planet Earth, but one that is stuck in 1960. Soon after their arrival they are attacked by an old man-child that Bone's determined has a very high metabolic rate which makes the attacker grow old abnormally fast.

Turns out this planet is fully occupied by children, and when the children enter puberty they contract a disease that makes them grow old rapidly and become violently insane. Luckily for the children who reside on this mysterious planet, it takes them hundreds of years to enter puberty, making each child hundreds of years old. Kirk and gang run into a frightened girl named Miri who is right on the cusp of a womanhood awakened by Kirk's charm.

I have a few gripes about this episode, the first being the simplistic view of children, Especially children who managed to become hundreds of years old. In this episode the children on the planet are significantly older than the crew who came down to investigate and for some unexplained reason the children act like caricatures of themselves. They sing silly songs to taunt, they play silly games, and they can't grasp concepts a impaired teenager could figure out. You would think with hundreds of years worth of experience under their belts these kids would be much sharper than the way they are portrayed. When Kristen Dunst was cast in Neil Jordan's "Interview with the Vampire" (1994), she was only 12 years old. But the writer, Anne Rice, understood that if a child became immortal and was permanently stuck in a 12 year old body she would have much of the same worldly wisdom as an immortal adult.

I guess the bigger complaint I would have concerning the children would be that they are all played by child actors. Child actors are generally the absolute worst and I hate seeing them on screen unless they are one of the rare talents. So when you give incompetent child actors a script that makes them act like what an adult thinks a kid acts like you'll more than likely end up with more than a few embarressing moments.

This brings us William Shatner. In many ways Willilam Shatner reminds me of Nicolas Cage. Love them or hate them both actors give whatever role they are in their absolute all. I happen to love this kind of "putting your whole naked self out there for the world to see" kind of acting. Shatner says the most absurd lines (like "NO MORE BLAH BLAH BLAH!") to a group of children with a hilarious amount of sincerity and conviction. This is not my favorite episode of TOS but it's another check in the "William Shatner is pretty cool" box.

All in all, there are far too many embarrassing, blatantly '60's, moments for me to give this episode a high rating. Cringe factor aside though, there are many unanswered and potentially more interesting aspects. The biggest unexplored question is why is there an exact duplicate of 1960's Earth floating around in open space? It seems ridiculous but it's never really answered, and the crew never seemed all that surprised that this planet exists. I feel that this would disturb me far more than old children.

After reading some of the reviews, I see what I may have failed to previously consider in terms of the quality of the script and the acting in this episode. But, to be honest, I just never liked this one and always found it drab, slow and dull and the kid actors, extremely annoying. Never center a script around kids because they can't act; this one is no exception. I have to admit, though that as sci-fi drama, this is in fact a very good episode. I just never cared for it and found it hard to watch.

Kim Darby is very good in the lead role as the adolescent on the verge of womanhood - and death as it turns out, because of the disease. Michael J. Pollard's typical weirdness fits perfectly in this developmentally-warped environment. I'd say that the premise and the script are both very strong and the acting is as good as any we've seen in TOS.

The interplay between Spock and McCoy and also between Kirk and Yeoman Rand is entertaining. Its really a shame that G. L. Whitney was written out of the series, supposedly because of a sexual assault allegation against a network executive. Had she been able to stay, I'm sure she would have gone on to solidify her position as one of the main cast figures of TOS, like Sulu, Urhura, Checkov or Chapel.

The basic storyline was fine, with the children & virus, but there was no point to their planet being a duplicate Earth.

The environment could just as well -- and more plausibly -- have been an Earth-like planet colonized by earthlings in the very early days of space travel, and forgotten by history. Some feature of the planet could easily have accounted for the longevity of its inhabitants.

There was no follow-up or explanation of the duplicate Earth aspect of the story, and the story would have been just as good without it.

"Miri" (Oct. 27, 1966) Old TV Guide synopsis: 'The Enterprise crew battles a terrifying plague on an earthlike planet. The disease prolongs life in children - but kills adults.' An interesting crossover with LOST IN SPACE that features LIS alumni Michael J. Pollard and Keith Taylor from its black and white first season (Pollard was a whopping 27 at the time). The title character is played by 19 year old Kim Darby, whose blossoming womanhood means a death sentence once children reach puberty on this planet, the result of biological warfare from centuries ago, spreading rapidly among the Enterprise landing party. Grace Lee Whitney enjoys her last substantial role as Janice Rand, while William Shatner's two young daughters join their father among the taunting children. John Megna had memorable roles opposite Bette Davis in "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte," and Leslie Nielsen for one of the most frightening episodes of THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR, "The Magic Shop."

This was one of the most chilling episodes of the series. As I was watching this I got a sudden sense about those kids---and kids they were, with their fun and games and pranks, but with a strong undercurrent of fear. They were terrified of the fate that awaited them as they entered adolescence---and no matter what they did they were powerless to escape. So Kirk and Co. had to find a cure for the terminal illness, and it was Dr. McCoy who found it; he stuck his neck out and tested it on himself and discovered that it worked. And finally, when the captain, addressing the kids, said "I'm a grup---and I want to help you", they listened. So after all the trials and tribulations and anxieties all was satisfactorily resolved. A good story---and a message of hope.

Kim Darby and Michael J. Pollard guest star in this Star Trek prime episode where Darby is in the title role. They are 300 year old children on this planet, a handful of survivors whose growth has been slowed, but not halted. When they reach puberty they will die of the same plague that their parents did.

When the Star Trek away team beams down, they all with the exception of Leonard Nimoy due to his Vulcan anatomy all start coming down with what killed the inhabitants.

William Shatner has an interesting problem, the only ones who can help are the kids, but they are children and reason like children. But Darby is entering puberty, we know because she finds the grown up captain of the Enterprise attractive.

By the way the Enterprise away team are referred to as 'Grups' a slang contraction for grownups. And Grups are the enemy of kids.

An interesting episode to say the least.

Season 1, episode 8. The Enterprise gets a distress call from a planet that just like Earth in every way except the only people there are children. The crew that beamed to the planet and found out that all adults have died from a mysterious disease and upon puberty the children will catch the disease and die as well. The captain and crew have caught the disease and it spreads fast. This disease also makes an adult angry - causing arguments. Mr. Spock seems to be the only one immune but as he clearly states he's still a carrier and wants to get back to the ship. To make matters worse Miri is entering puberty and starts to have feelings for Kirk... she is also jealous over Janis Rand. She wants to help the captain and crew, to find a cure but she is scared and jealous. Can Kirk find the rest of the kids get their help along with Miri? Can Dr. McCoy find a cure before it's too late?

If you want to see some very bratty and crazy kids... then this episode is full of them. Rather interesting episode how it all plays out.

8/10