Introduction

“Miri” is the eighth episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series, Star Trek.

In the episode, the Enterprise discovers an exact duplicate of Earth, where the only survivors of a deadly man-made plague are some of the planet’s children.

Outline

The Enterprise answers an automated distress call from a planet resembling Earth in every detail. A landing party of Captain Kirk, First Officer Spock, Chief Medical Officer Dr. McCoy, Yeoman Janice Rand and two security personnel find an abandoned, 1960 Earth. When they examine a tricycle they are attacked by a strong, disfigured man. After Kirk hits the man three times, the man has a seizure and dies. A mysterious figure catches their attention, and they investigate.

They discover an adolescent Miri, who ran away from them because “grups” (“grownups”) killed and maimed children before dying. She and her friends are “onlies”, the only ones left.

The landing party, except for Spock, notice purple lesions on their bodies; Miri tells them that these are the first signs of the disease and they will soon become like the other adults. The party find a medical research laboratory and look through documents for clues to the disease, and discover that it is a side effect of a life-extension experiment, affecting those who have reached puberty; death follows a brief period of violent madness. The “children” are over 300 years old, ageing one month every century.

Spock learns that when the disease begins, its victims have seven days to live. Although he is apparently immune, he considers himself a carrier who could infect the Enterprise if he returned.

The other children, mistrustful of the “grups”, meddle with their plans. Jahn, an older boy and the self-appointed leader of the children, steals the landing party’s communicators, rendering McCoy’s search for a cure impossible without the Enterprise’s computers. Miri opposes the children’s mischief and remains near Kirk; when Yeoman Rand panics at their impending fate and Kirk comforts her, a jealous Miri runs away and schemes with her friends to kidnap Rand. Another girl goes insane and attacks Kirk before she collapses and dies after Kirk uses his phaser, only set on stun. Jahn’s line while banging the hammer on the table is “bonk, bonk on the head” (repeated continuously), which the immature-acting children then mimic.

McCoy and Spock, drawing on their own knowledge, pursue a discovery of McCoy’s that may lead to a vaccine that can prevent the fatal disease from killing them and the onlies. However, without the ability to check their work with the ship’s computers, the vaccine they create may not be a cure, but a deadly poison. They have no way to tell.

Miri is confronted by Kirk, who tells her that she and the onlies will contract the disease if they do not help him find a cure. She brings Kirk to where Rand is being held; he confronts the children, but at Jahn’s urging, they swarm and gang up on Kirk and one beats him with a hammer.

An injured and bleeding Kirk then angrily begs the children to think of the youngest onlies, who will be helpless when the older ones are dead. He points out that almost all of the food in the town has been eaten, and soon there will be none left. The children will starve within six months. Convinced, Jahn gives the communicators back to Kirk.

He rounds up the children and returns to the laboratory, finding that McCoy has collapsed after injecting himself with a dose of experimental serum. The doctor’s sores begin to fade; the serum McCoy devised without the assistance of the ship’s computers is the cure for the disease the scientists 300 years ago had been searching for.

Back on the Enterprise after vaccinating everyone, Kirk asks “Space Central” (the only episode in which this entity is referred to, presumably before the term “Starfleet” became standard in the series) to send teachers and advisers to help the children improve their lives. Dr. McCoy suggests that they also send a few truant officers. Kirk assures him the staffers will be all right.

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Production & Filming Details

• Director(s): Vincent McEveety.
• Production: Desilu Productions (1966-1967) and Paramount Television (1968-1969).
• Distributor(s): Paramount Pictures (1966-2006), CBS Paramount Television (2006-2007), and CBS Television Distribution (2007-Present).
• Original Network: NBC.
• Release Date: 27 October 1966.
• Running Time: 50 minutes.
• Country: US.
• Language: English.