For those who are new to my episode reviews, you can find the post where I establish my point criteria here
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| Miri |
Episode Overview – Amazed to discover a planet
that is identical to Earth, Kirk beams down with an away team. Shortly after
they are attacked by a deranged man who shortly after dies. They soon meet
Miri, a young girl on the verge of puberty, and learn that all the adults, or “grups”
as they are called, have died, and that only children remain. It does not take
long for Kirk and the away team to learn that they have contracted the virus
that has wiped out the adults in the population, and it is soon a race against
time for not only Kirk and his away team, but for the children, starting with
Miri.
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| Kirk, Rand, McCoy, and Miri |
Episode Score – 7/10. Not a bad episode. The children
are a little “Lord of the Flies” on the creepy factor, but it is a nice story.
My biggest criticism is that there is no apparent purpose for the planet to be
virtually identical to Earth. No reason or connection is given as to how this
planet on the other side of the galaxy is so similar to Earth. It is almost as
if the budget didn’t allow them to create anything that would be foreign to our
world.
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| The "grup" |
Relevance – 1 point. The blooming relationship
between Kirk and Rand is touched on here. Other than that, nothing of note.
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| Arriving on the new planet |
Continuity – 2 points. I give a point for story and
universe continuity here, but I have to deduct a point for character
continuity. Try as I might, I just do not buy into the flirtatious nature Kirk
had with Miri. While he never crossed any lines, per se, it just seemed odd. Kirk
was no stranger to flirting with the ladies he encountered, but this was out of
place with him.
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| Jahn and Miri |
Character Development – 1 point. A point for Kirk and Janice Rand. Not much
development here, other than Janice expressing that she had always tried to get
the Captain’s attention. I thought about how McCoy had taken the vaccine
without any verification in an act of desperation, but I am not sure if this
further developed his character or was a result of a desperate situation
combined with the symptoms of the virus affecting his state of mind.
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| McCoy knows how to take one for the team. |
Social Commentary – 2 points. The reason the
children are in the position that they are in is because their parents were
trying to cheat death by slowing down the aging process. While the children had
their aging slowed (about one month of aging occurring in 100 years), the
adults became the dreaded “grups”, covered in bluish scabs and descending into
violent insanity before succumbing to the effects of the virus. A classic tale
of the unintended effects of the futile search for the Fountain of Youth. Star
Trek will deal with that theme several times again. There is also a connection
to the inevitability of growing up. In the case of Miri, it is a literal death
of innocence that she and her fellow “Onlies” faced.
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| You now are the ones with blood on your hands |
Cool Factor – 1 point. Many of the children in this
episode were children of some of the actors as well as Gene Roddenberry. They
were Gene’s daughters (Darleen and Dawn), Grace Lee Whitney’s sons (Jon and
Scott Dweck), and William Shatner’s daughters (Leslie and Lisabeth). The scene
where Kirk enters carrying a little girl (Lisabeth) is just that much cooler
knowing that it was father and daughter.
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| William Shatner and his daughter |
Rank – Lieutenant
(14 points). This is a fair episode. I really dislike the fact that the
whole idea presented at the beginning where the planet is almost an exact
duplicate of Earth is never touched on again. Despite that, I liked the story.
Sadly, the actress who played Yeoman Rand would be fired shortly after the
filming of this episode was completed. She would return for a walk-on scene in
the next episode, but this was the end of the line for the character until the
movies started.
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