Miri by: Adrian Spies and directed by: Vincent McEveety

 

“Miri” is written by Adrian Spies and directed by Vincent McEveety.  It was filmed under production code 12, was the 8^th episode of Star Trek Season 1, and was broadcast on October 27, 1966.

 

“Miri” is kind of an odd episode to discuss, mainly because my thoughts on the proceedings are a bit of a jumble.  On paper, it should work: it’s a race against the clock on a planet that looks just like Earth though technologically is in the 1960s where a man made plague causes adults to rapidly age after slowing down the aging of the children.  There are no adults able to care for the children, as they all degrade into childlike monsters and quickly die.  This as a premise is great and should be brilliant with the crew of the Enterprise beaming down to the planet, swiftly being infected, and having only about seven days to find a cure while the children essentially try to thwart them due to distrust of adults.  There are a lot of ideas in that description, but the episode itself is really split into several directions so none of them get particularly explored.  The most interesting thread is dropped after the pre-titles sequence, being the planet matching the geography of Earth.  It’s established that this is a planet where there haven’t been any human colonies or mapping so the people on the planet are not humans, just evolved to look like humans which is fine but the lack of exploration as to why this planet is Earth means there’s just an unanswered question over the viewer’s heads.  It’s also unnecessary since there is a distress signal being sent out into space on a frequency which is why the Enterprise finds this planet in the first place.  That’s enough motivation to get the characters there and to get the story to happen.

 

The child characters are also set up by crossing the Lost Boys from Peter Pan and the characters from Lord of the Flies but aren’t exactly fleshed out characters.  There are three main child characters, Miri, Jawn, and the boy, played by Kim Darby, Michael J. Pollard, and John Megna, but there is also a chorus of children generally cast from the crew and cast.  This means that they don’t quite get lines or characterization outside of group chants, but the dialogue given to any of the children attempts to follow rules of language degeneration with grown-ups becoming ‘grups,’ fooling around or games in general becoming ‘foolies.’  This largely fails due to the extreme repetition so the children at points only speak in this language degeneration, especially describing the punishment of adults is this short chant that just becomes annoying.  The trained child actors are okay, with Darby as Miri being the most interesting as she examines what it means to grow up and begin romantic feelings, but Megna’s boy is being given direction to shout his lines while Pollard is trying.  Really the acting that’s interesting is the interplay between William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, and Grace Lee Whitney as the tension is palpably growing as the time.  This is enhanced by Vincent McEveety’s excellent direction that really plays up the tense desperate atmosphere throughout, enhanced by the first use of location filming for the series which just helps make this episode feel different from the seven previous episodes and a larger scope.

 

Overall, “Miri” is an episode that honestly has a lot going for it in terms of its ideas, but Adrian Spies’ script is one that opens with a lot of intrigue but there are so many plot threads introduced than promptly dropped.  It also has not aged incredibly well since the main female guest star, a child, is set up to develop romantic feelings for Captain Kirk (luckily he doesn’t reciprocate and it’s joked about at the end).  There’s a brilliant science fiction story buried in here but it really doesn’t add up to something particularly good.  5/10.