“Miri” is an episode that is a severe let down. It begins, intriguingly enough. And the first few sequences almost effortlessly establish a mystery and mood that are utterly compelling. Deep in the far reaches of the galaxy, the Enterprise finds an exact replica of Earth, circa 1960, that appears to be completely uninhabited. It’s a great idea but, unfortunately, shortly following this success, the episode presents a premise that is so completely ridiculous that you have to scratch your head in bewilderment. Worse yet, the episode completely ignores any thematic benefits that could have been raised by having a duplicate Earth as its setting.

When Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Yeoman Rand and two security officers beam down to the duplicate Earth, in the United States, of course, the episode has a distinct “Twilight Zone” feel to it. And from this starting point, any number of ideas could have been raised, comparing the histories of the real and duplicate Earth. But instead, we’re subjected to a cockamamie premise in which the inhabitants of this duplicate Earth decided to try some experiments to prolong life. It’s not a bad idea for a story, particularly if you want to create a “Prometheus Unbound” kind of story about the dangers of out-of-control experimentation, but the consequences this experiment sabotages the rest of the episode.

As it turns out, the experiment was, in large part a failure, causing all of the adults to die from an incurable disease. However, the children do survive to live prolonged lives – with just one catch. When the children finally do reach puberty, they contract the same disease and they, too, quickly die. The result is that, aside from the Enterprise crew, the episode is populated by children all acting as annoying and ridiculous as they possibly can. It’s the worst sort of cacophony that was only topped by episodes of Battlestar Galactica 1980.

The first third of the episode, as the Earth is discovered and the mysterious circumstances on the Earth are uncovered, are handled fairly well. But somewhere past the 15-20 minute mark, the episode becomes intolerable – and only gets worse as the story unfolds. Kirk and Spock and McCoy make their discoveries with the help of a young girl, called Miri. She quickly develops an attraction to Kirk, who reciprocates the attention as a means to help his team figure out the mystery. Even so, the scenes between a grown man and a pre-pubescent girl come across as exceptionally awkward nowadays. I guess that speaks to the “innocence” of forty years ago. But still, the love-triangle involving the jealousies of both Mire and Yeoman Rand become exceptionally problematic for the episode.

In the end, we’re forced to endure a number of subplots involving the children causing havoc for the Enterprise crew and a final speech from Kirk in the midst of a couple dozen children who spend every possible moment shouting and chanting and grating the nerves of the audience. The speech itself is all about trying to reason with unreasonable people. There was nothing else to it, either in terms of character development or theme.

And really, that’s the primary failing of this episode. The annoying children could be tolerated (sorta) if there had been a legitimate commentary on … well, on anything. There was no commentary on what it means to pass through puberty from childhood to adulthood. There was no commentary on the premise of recklessly abusing science. And the whole concept of a duplicate is completely ignored. No reason was given for its existence, either for the episode or for the story. It served only to provide an interesting setting and was, therefore, a wasted opportunity.

“Miri” gets credit for what it did well for the first fifteen minutes or so of the episode. Beyond that, the rest was simply abysmal. This is an episode that can be (and should be) ignored. In fact, an episode like this one is probably the reason why William Shatner is so widely panned as an over-actor. Unlike an episode such as “The Enemy Within” the outbursts of anger and frustration serve no purpose and are jarringly juxtaposed with his saccharine-sweet flirtations with Miri.

Filed under: Original Series