If science fiction captures the
concerns and fears prevalent in the era in which it was written, I
can only come to the conclusion that people in the mid-60's were
scared shitless of children.
Think children raised by wolves are
bad? Think again. Children raised by children are even scarier. At
least, I assume that's how people felt in the 60's. Or at least
that's what the writers felt. I can only assume that they were
parents.
Frankly, if children were anything like
how they were portrayed in Miri, I'd be scared of children, too. The
children in Miri are not just obnoxiously disobedient, they even have
a penchant for violence and murder.
What's that?
The children didn't kill anyone in this
episode?
Apparently, denial isn't just a riverin Egypt. You can't tell me that they learned that bonking someone
on the head with an object with some heft to it (like, say, a hammer)
is an efficacious means of depriving them of life just by reading it
in a book. For one thing, I doubt those little savages could read.
No, rest assured, they learned all that through experience.
300 years of murderous experience.
Bonk bonk on the head!
Bonk bonk! Bonk bonk! The head being bonked is Kirk's
Besides the interesting views on
children that must have been held by this episode's writers, Miri is
notable for being the first of the "another Earth"
episodes. However, this angle isn't used to its full potential and
it really wouldn't make any difference to the story if it were
expunged. Also of interest is the continuing evolution of the
Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate; Spock and McCoy go at it like an old
married couple but I'm not sure if their catty exchanges really count
since McCoy was going mad due to the effects of an alien plague.
Spock continues to display emotion and a dry sense of humor. And
Janice Rand reveals to Kirk that she's been trying to get him to
check out her gams for quite some time. I bet she's embarrassed she
let that slip out. I guess the take-home lesson of all this
is, if you're going to contract a killer virus that makes you go mad
and causes you to reveal your embarrassing secret longings, avoid
hanging around people about whom you have those embarrassing secret
longings.
Yeoman Rand finally
gets Kirk to notice her, although not under the best of circumstances
