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Matt and Sean talk about rehabilitation, ethics, and classic monster movie tactics in Star Trek: The Original Series. Does the plot of “Outbreak” work well in the world of Star Trek?
YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/trekintime
Matt and Sean talk about rehabilitation, ethics, and classic monster movie tactics in Star Trek: The Original Series. Does the plot of “Outbreak” work well in the world of Star Trek?
YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/trekintime
Follow us on X: @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
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Creators & Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
In this episode of Trek in Time, we're going to be talking about why in the world was the setup an alternate earth, but no blah, blah, blah. That's right, everybody. We're talking about Star Trek season one, Miri. This is episode number 12 in shooting order, but eighth in broadcast order, which I think is kind of telling because it puts a lot of the primary characters, the big three, right at center stage fairly early in the season.
But at this point, as I was looking at the episodes we've talked about, here we are, we're roughly halfway through all the episodes that have been broadcast. We didn't watch them in broadcast order. But we have covered all of them almost to the halfway mark, which I think is interesting. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time, where we're talking about Star Trek in chronological Stardate order.
And we're also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. And who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, and I write some stuff for kids. And with me, as always, is my brother, Matt. He's that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives.
So we got the, we got the sci fi. We got the tech fi. We got Star Trek. Matt, how are you doing today?
I'm doing great. Watching, uh, Olympics. Watching some Star Trek. Couldn't be, couldn't be better.
So before we get into our conversation about this week's episode, which is Miri, we always like to go back and see what you've had to say about our previous episode. So Matt, what did you find in the mailbag for us today?
Bunch of, there's a lot of comments on this one. Um, so I can't cover everybody, but I'm cherry picking a few.
One from HappyFlappyFarm said, I guess Star Trek writers, this is from Dagger of the Mind, so I guess Star Trek writers love mythological references. The planet is Tantalus V. Tantalus is a Greek mythological figure who is punished by the gods by being unable to soothe his hunger or thirst as water and fruit stay just out of his reach.
Lethe? Lethe? I always forget how to pronounce that. Lethe. Yeah. Lethe is the female, uh, inmate turned doctor success story. In Greek mythology, it is a river in the underworld that if consumed would cause a person to forget everything. Yeah. Star Trek always has fun with mythology like this, Shakespeare. It's really funny.
They're like Lots of literary
Easter eggs. Yeah. Lots of literary Easter eggs in Star Trek.
One from Kindredsgirl who wrote, What I hated was that the stated moral of the story was that a person could die of loneliness. What? No! I yelled at the screen at the ending, It was bad enough that the evil doctor died at the end instead of having to experience the consequences of his vile actions.
At least there could have been a good message for us viewers. Maybe the point could have been that people should never take away other people's humanity. Other acceptable takeaways, question authority, trust your instincts, don't let hero worship blind you to what's really going on. Silence and compliance are not contentment.
Also don't test unknown equipment on yourself. Do better the original series.
I like that comment. I don't, I don't disagree with any of that. And I think that those are Those are storylines that Star Trek, especially Next Generation and Beyond, do wrestle with exactly those, using this setup almost as a starting point, but they go in those more complex directions.
So I think it's a very, very insightful comment.
Uh, Dan Sims wrote, couldn't agree with more with Matt on how the psychiatrist should have been the one pointing out how messed up the situation was. I don't think she is a very good doctor, but hey, yeah, cool action scenes with her at least. What a backward episode.
Yeah. And then also, Sean, we got to do the time warp again here because old Trekkie wrote, I'm sorry, as you were describing what a hammer film is, all I could hear was Rocky Horror Picture Show. Oh, there you go. Yep. Time for the time warp. As far as wrong guesses only, what's the next episode Miri about? We had a bunch of people that wrote in, so I wish I could have done all of them, but there's just too many.
But AJ Chan wrote, Miri, a giant cloud approaches a Federation deep space outpost causing problems. The Enterprise arrives and Spock does a spacewalk mind meld, which reveals that the cloud is actually the former Soviet space station Mir, which evolved for two centuries and now calling itself Miri.
That sounds eerily familiar.
Yeah. I'm not sure why. V'ger. V'ger. Thank you everybody. And then
this one, which is like very on the nose, PaleGhost69 wrote, Miri, the USS Enterprise stumbles upon a planet that looks exactly like earth, but its government is run by 300 year old people who act like children. There you go. Very,
very funny. That's it. Yeah. Thank you everybody for your comments. We love reading them and sharing them. That noise you hear in the background, of course, is the read alert, which means it's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. And Matt, good luck with this one because I wrote half of it while pretty exhausted.
No, this is going to be good.
After discovering what appears to be a duplicate of the planet Earth, Captain Kirk and his away team find a planet ravaged by a strange disease, which only children appear to have survived. Upon discovering that the away team is infected, McCoy and Spock must race against time to isolate the virus and find a cure before they all succumb to the disease.
Holding them back are the children of the planet, who see them as grups, untrustworthy and dangerous. Only after convincing the eldest among the children, Miri, That the disease will bring an end to everyone, Kirk and his crew are allowed to finish their work and return to the ship. That was pretty good, Sean.
Oh, thanks. That was nice. Yeah.
I was sleepy when I wrote it, so forgive me if it goes too fast. This episode, directed by Vincent Mechavidi. Written by Adrian Spies, originally aired on October 27th, 1966. We have our main cast, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly. We do not see much of the rest of the bridge crew.
In fact, when we do see the bridge, we're seeing a lot of backup support, which means the principal actors were off doing something else and they filled in the background with, we see, uh, Lieutenant Ferrell again, no relation. And. He's now at the communications, he's, it could be, for all we know, uh, he's at the communications, uh, station.
So he's relaying information from the ship computers down to Mr. Spock through much of the episode. We also see some backup people at the comm. And it's a variety of faces that all look fairly terrified to be on the air. I got a kind of a kick out of some of the background actors who look a little terrified.
We also see Janice Rand in this episode played by Grace Lee Whitney. And if my notes and some of the comments that I noticed on our most recent episode are accurate, this is in fact the last time we will see her until she reappears. when they start making the movies. Guest actors include Kim Darby as Miri, Jim Goodwin as Farrell, Michael J.
Pollard as Jahn, Irene Sale, David Ross, Steven McEveety, and here's where it gets interesting now, let's see if you notice a pattern here. Steven McEveety, John Megna, Keith Taylor, Ed McCready, Kelly Flanagan, Iona Morris, Phil Morris, Darlene Anita Roddenberry, Dawn Roddenberry, Elizabeth Shatner, Melanie Shatner, Leslie Carol Shatner, and Scott Whitney.
Did you notice any patterns here? I'm not seeing any pattern there, Sean. Yeah. The, the eagle eyed or the eagle eared, eagle eared, eagle eared amongst our viewers and listeners may have noticed that yes, the children, the children were populated mainly by family members of the people who were making the show.
It is very obvious to everybody Darlene Anita Roddenberry and Dawn Roddenberry, clearly Jean Roddenberry's children. Elizabeth Shatner, Melanie Shatner, and Leslie Carroll Shatner, clearly William Shatner's children. There is Scott Whitney, who is Grace Lee Whitney's son. And. Also amongst them are a couple of standouts that I thought were interesting.
You have Iona Morris and Phil Morris. Phil Morris is the name that struck me and I was like, why do I know that name? Phil Morris would go on to grow up to be Remember in Seinfeld, the lawyer that Oh yeah. It was, yeah. And he's been in Doom Patrol, and he's been in a bunch of Star Trek as an adult. Well, Phil Morris would go on to be that actor who played all those roles, and it turns out he and his sister are the children of
an actor who was on Mission Impossible. So that would have been filming down the hall and apparently the call went out. We need a bunch of kids. So he brought his kids to work and they appeared in Star Trek. So it was the beginning of Phil Morris's career. Also amongst this group, Kim Darby as Miri, she had a successful career in which she played, her career spanned decades, and she started around the age of 14, and she was in the original True Grit, which was a John Wayne
film. She was also in the Strawberry Statement, Norwood, The One and Only, Better Off Dead, which with John Cusack in 1985 and Halloween, The Curse of Michael Myers in 1995 and Michael J. Pollard as John, he's a, that guy who is best known for his smirk and I always thought his inability to look serious. He always looks like he's about to pull a fast one.
He also carries it with a kind of charm. He's a little bit like Clint Howard in that way. Always plays the same sort of character, but you're always happy when you see him. My favorite role that he played is, of course, from the movie Scrooged, in which he plays a homeless man that befriends Bill Murray's character.
And, but he, Started off his career. This is one of the final TV shows that he would have done at this point in the sixties before having a role in the film Bonnie and Clyde one year later, which he was nominated for an Oscar for. And so this was kind of the early stages of what would turn into a good, long career.
Also amongst the children, the one who always stood out to me was John Megna, who I will always think of as John Bonk Bonk Megna. He is the most vocal of the younger children. He is clearly a ringleader and a antagonizer. He stands out in this episode. The actor, John Megna, had been in the film To Kill a Mockingbird several years earlier when he was a little bit younger, he would go on to continue to be an actor into his forties.
But sadly in the nineties, he passed away as a result of AIDS. So here he was as a young man. And his life would be cut short by that terrible disease. Very sad to read that when I was doing my research. So what was the world like October 27th, 1966, the day this aired? Well, I'll just let Matt start us off by singing a few bars of a song I think we'll all recognize.
That's right. That was Reach Out, I'll Be There by the Four Tops. And at the movies, once again, Dr Zhivago. We of course are watching these in chronological stardate order, not in broadcast order. If we're doing broadcast order, we would have had six solid weeks of saying Dr Zhivago is still the number one film, but we're kind of hopscotching through time.
As a result, Dr Zhivago is back on this list, but it's not like it kept returning. It's just like, we're in the midst of that stretch of six weeks. And on television, we're comparing Star Trek to the various programs on the Nielsen ratings where Star Trek averaged in its first season at 12 Nielsen. And we know that the number one show of the year, Bonanza, earned an almost 30.
So that gives you a sense of the scale. We've worked our way through a lot of shows with recognizable names. Everything from Green Acres and the Beverly Hillbillies to Andy Griffith and Gomer Pyle. And this week Also coming in with a 22, which puts it on the same standing as the Beverly Hillbillies and Gomer Pyle, is The Virginian.
The Virginian was later renamed The Men from Shiloh in its final years, and it's an American Western television series starring James Drury in the title role along with Doug McClure and Lee J. Cobb. It originally aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Jury played the same role in 1958 in an unsuccessful pilot that became an episode of the NBC summer series Decision.
It was filmed in color and the Virginian became television's first 90 minute Western series, 75 minutes long, excluding commercial, excluding commercial breaks. So it puts it in a kind of mold similar to Columbo where the episodes are longer than a standard show. I found myself thinking for a weekly series to be doing 75 minute long episodes every week.
It must have been exhausting. And. In my research, my favorite thing to come out of my research about this show was in fact, the image you're seeing on your screen right now. I love that this is the image with the title right over the face of the actor.
He's a cowboy hat.
All you see is a cowboy hat wearing the word The.
And in the news from the New York times. It's interesting the timing of this episode, Miri, and Dagger of the Mind, they are basically swapped in broadcast order. So last week we were talking about the newspaper headlines that would have followed this one by one week. Last week, you'll remember Johnson returned from his trip to Asia in which he Said, Asia is a vibrant place with lots of opportunity and we're doing great in Vietnam.
Well, these headlines this week are about his trip. It was a surprise trip that he went to Vietnam. He met soldiers. He talked with them. He tried to instill a sense of purpose and morale. And of course, in 1966, the war was on an upswing. It would be years before the U. S. would withdraw without any victory in sight.
On now to our discussion about Miri. I want to get something out of the way and then never, ever talk about it ever again. The teaser for this episode is absolutely useless. I found myself thinking, what were they trying to do? Did they think that audiences. And I think this is the only explanation I can come up with.
They thought that audiences wouldn't connect with the emotionality of a story unless it was portrayed as, this could happen here. And I found myself thinking like, boy, like, trust the, trust the conceit of your story. You're talking about, we found an alien planet and it's got these children on it and they're by themselves.
I'm like, what is the whole setup with they fly toward a planet. They start, Spock starts reading things that make Kirk's ears perk up and then they show the planet and it is clearly, you see, right dead center. There's Africa, there's Europe, Florida, Florida. It's another Earth. Another Earth. And that never makes a difference.
It doesn't have to be another earth at all. And I found myself in the first 30 seconds watching that and thinking, wow, it's remarkable that my memory of this episode completely expunged that. Even though I've seen this episode at least a dozen times going back to my childhood. So it is such a non issue for the story.
I just think it's, it stands out in a really funny way as kind of like hitting your thumb with a hammer and then you continue to go ahead and build the furniture and you're okay at the end of it. But like that first stroke is just like bonk. What? Why is this even here? Uh, did that stand out to you as kind of a head scratcher as you get down to the planet and you're like, oh, it doesn't really matter that it's
another earth.
So I know I've seen this episode, not as much as you. I know I've seen it several times. And the episode started and they find the second earth. And I was like, what? I don't remember this at all. And I was like, is this an episode I've never seen? And it was going on and it was going on. I was like, I don't.
And the kids came out and I was still kind of like, okay, now it's starting to feel a little more, uh, maybe I know this episode. It was like halfway in before I was like, Oh, Oh, this episode, the fact they made it a second earth. Is bananas, crazy, stupid beyond stupid, who thought that was a good idea, on top of which it's like, we gonna talk about that at all?
We gonna, we gonna talk about the fact that this is a second earth? No? No? This, oh, this happens just to be 1960s architecture? Nobody has any thoughts or concerns about that at all? Yeah. It's, we're not gonna talk about this at all? It's like, as a fan of Star Trek, you watch 50 years of this stuff, We could easily explain it now.
Oh, it was a Q. There's a Q having fun and did some bloop bloop. There he is. There's his second earth. It's like we could explain it away. But of course, that stuff didn't exist at the time they made this. So what the hell were they thinking, Sean? Yeah. It makes zero sense. All they would have to do is say, We've got this radio thing, they come over to this planet and they go down and they're like, wait, this is like, you know, American architecture from like the 1960s.
That's weird. And then they could have, that's bad enough, but they could have left it at that. You know what I mean? It's like, the fact that it's an exact replica of Earth, not just the architecture, Earth. Florida. Like, and the first I'm watching was the, uh, was the, the CG updated one. And it's like this beautiful rendition of the earth and it's like Florida center of the screen.
I was like, why? What are you doing guys? What are you doing? With
beautifully, with beautifully remastered cloud cover. Yeah. Oh yeah. So you see like shadows on the ocean beneath the clouds and it looks like a weather map and it's just like, Oh, there's a tropical storm brewing over, over the keys. That's not.
Yep. Uh, yeah. I found a like. It is laughably distracting in the first four or five minutes, and you just kind of have to like hold on to the plot moments as opposed to the setup. Because once you get to, they find the tricycle and the gentleman runs out from the building and attacks them. And once that gets going, none of the setup mattered and that is fine.
I found myself, like, I understand the principles behind making a TV series. It's one of the things that I had a friend that when he would watch Star Trek with me, he would say, but how come the aliens all look human? Like, how come they all look human? And I would say, because it's a bunch of humans making a TV show, like what do you want?
Like that's not the point. The point of the show is not to make something look like you've never seen it before. That's not the goal of the show. I think it would have been fine for them to find a planet and say like, Oh, we're getting the signal, but we aren't getting any other signal. Let's beam down and see what's going on.
And they get down there and nobody remarks about the architecture. It would have been absolutely fine for them to land in that little town, walk around and be like, There's nobody here. What's going on? It's even okay for them to find a tricycle and say like,
Hmm,
a child's toy, but it's broken and it looks really old.
Oh my God, who's this guy attacking us? All of that would have been fine. Hand wave it. No big deal. It doesn't, it does not matter. Interestingly, the set was the Andy Griffith town set. So it is a well used and recognizable set for, for filmmaking at the time. And once you get past all of the, like, why did they make this, this, and you get into that first creature, what did you think about?
We've talked about this so much now. Once again, this has the kind of horror vibe, almost Andromeda strain like, which I thought was kind of, kind of marvelous, like very science horror as opposed to, you know, creepy horror. Um, there is a creep factor from the children, the children's songs in the background when they're doing their taunting music, there is the
drip drip of detail of Miri saying, I remember the old, I remember the early days. I remember when this started and the Grups all went crazy and they were dangerous and untrustworthy. I remember all of that. And it takes the characters a little while to suddenly be like, Wait a minute, she's saying she remembers these details, but we also know that this civilization stopped 300 years ago.
How do we How do we bridge those two details? It takes a little while for that to be connected by the characters. I found myself watching it happily picking up those details and thinking, oh, they've done a really good job of informing the audience in a really smart way, in a very subtle way where things don't seem right to us before
they don't seem right to Spock and Kirk and I liked that. And the creepy background of the children and all of that is very nice. But the tension around the disease felt very Andromeda strain. It felt very sci fi. And I thought it was a really neat balance between a bunch of different styles of storytelling that they found a really great center point between them to say they can lean into the creep factor of the children.
They can lean into the science research factor of we need equipment. And we're trying to do this with Bunsen burners and 300 year old microscopes. And also leaning into like, but they have supercomputers on the ship. And I thought that was a great time of like making the ship matter, making the communicators matter, making all of these different pieces in this moment critical.
So that one thread being cut becomes a problem. I thought it was a well balanced tension in the episode. How did you feel about all these disparate parts? Did they mesh together like I do? Or did you think something stood out as like, I don't know, that's not, that's not great.
It's going to sound like I'm being really harsh on it, but it didn't mesh for me.
This was like, um, aspects of this episode were, I thought, brilliant. And then other aspects of the episode I thought were just as brilliantly bad. You know what I mean? Like there was no middle ground for me. It was either Like, the Earth, there's Florida, here's 1960s architecture, we're gonna point this out and make it even more obvious.
We'll just gloss over it, who cares, you're gonna gloss over it anyway, don't even make that comment. But there was, like, when the guy comes out, like, the horror aspect of it, the first guy you see, my wife was in the room, she even went, oh, like, when he showed up, like, the makeup was gruesome, he was totally, like, disgusting looking and attacking Dr, uh, Dr McCoy.
Yeah. I thought the horror aspects of the show and what you just described of like, they have to use Bunsen burners and microscopes and how they made the ship matter, all that stuff. Yes. That's the stuff that's brilliant. Like the horror aspect, the, um, outbreak aspect, um, Andromeda strain aspect of this episode is brilliant.
I love that. But I kept getting ripped out of that by the children. Like when there's the creepy children laughing on the rooftops, That stuff was scary. That was creepy. A child laugh is creepy, and that was done well. But as soon as the children show up on screen, I just wanted to, like, skip, like, through most parts of the episode because it reminded me of Maro Maro Land, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, stuff where it was kind of like, you know, the Grups, that stuff I thought was a little ham fisted, um, The children, once you see them, and their motivations don't make sense.
Like, they explain it clearly in the episode while they took the communicators, but it was dumb. Like, the reason they took them. It would have made more sense for a kid to go, oh, that's neat, like a toy, and just taking it because it's cool, and just skittering away. That would have made way more sense to me than the guy that we talked about.
What's his name? Jahn. Michael Pollard. The characters. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Pollard. Who is clearly in his mid 20s. And I looked him up. He was born in 1939. He was probably 25, 26 years old when they made this. He is so clearly not going through puberty. He has gone through puberty, is shaving and dating grown up women.
It's like the guy is a full man. And the fact that they had him as the ringleader of the children was just a, what the hell is happening? And then I don't know how you felt about this, Sean. The pedophile performance of Kirk with the girl was disturbing. He was hitting on her. Hitting on her. Like he's The, the soft focus and like those closeups of him, like, you're very pretty.
And it was like, what, wait, what's happening? She's clearly like a 13 year old girl. Yes, she's 300 years old, but she's got the maturity of a 13 year old girl. She's got the body of a 13 year old girl. And you're talking to her, like she's a grown woman. It was like, it was creepy. And then when she's responding to it and they're flirting and it was like, I felt bad touch all over that, and that was distracting.
So for me, the episode worked when it was dealing with McCoy and Spock and the tension between, you know, we need the computers in the ship to find the cure for this disease. All that stuff was really cool. And all the stuff with the kids was just like a train wreck for me. And was just, I did not like it.
Bad touch. Bad touch. Did not like.
Yeah, I think that the episode in that regard would have benefited from leaning into the actual ages of the performers and make it less of a I do think the directorial choices and the performance choices around Miri did skew her younger. The actress was 19. I think it would have benefited from leaning toward a post puberty entering full maturity, you end up getting the disease because then you could have had these actors playing characters that were 20.
You could have had them be in their 20s. So, correct. But that's not what they said.
No, I'm not saying that's what they said. You get to puberty and you get the disease. And so it's like, that means these are supposed to be 13, 14 year olds and younger. And so it's like the way they established it made it creepy as all hell.
And so that to me was just the, the bad touch aspect. Well, that's
why I said it would have benefited from a re envisioning because if they had skewed it older, the disease being like exiting puberty, becoming fully mature is the breaking point. And I also think it would have added to a better framing of Why are they behaving the way they are?
Because if over a 300 year period they went from being maybe 15 year olds physically, and now they're in their early 20s, but mentally there's been no adult to help them mature, they could be physically more mature and mentally less sophisticated and still be doing things that were aggressive and inconsistent and I also Don't disagree with the like stealing communicators for the reason of like, Oh, these are cool would have been one thing.
I didn't have a problem though with Jahn as the ringleader. I understand everything you were saying about like age wise he clearly isn't a child and it's like distracting in that regard. But I did think that the logic behind what they were doing made sense from the perspective of immature people only knowing they want to Throw the grups off their game.
Like that's, that's their motivation. And for me, it wasn't a problem. And I saw it as kind of consistent with their understanding of what was going to happen to these grups. They knew like, these guys are going to die. Like, this is what's going to happen. All we need to do is throw them off their game.
They will die. And then we'll be back to the way we were. And I, I didn't see that as a problem because for me, Jahn is, Intentionally cast with an older actor to really highlight the fact that it's almost like from a writing perspective and a directing perspective, they came at it with a kind of Lord of the Flies style moment to have somebody who was just like, arguably this guy should be in charge and smart and Miri should be in charge and smart and they're not.
And I think that that was a way of shining a light on it by making them physically older. But I agree with you, it creates a certain distraction, because while I think these different parts mesh nicely I do think there's a certain unsophistication in the storytelling, not the story itself, but in the storytelling that gets lost in some of these, these choices.
Um, having said all of that, I do think that there is value in the scenes with the children when Kirk interacts with them and shows up in his desperate attempt to like, we need our communicators, this is going to end in our death, it's going to kill you all. I thought that that scene with Kirk was actually very strong.
And I thought the menace of the children in that scene was actually very, very well done. The children becoming a threat. In 1966, that would have been a jarring image to have children attacking and beating up the hero of the show, having him come out bloody and having him at that moment, like, look at the blood on your hands.
That's my blood. You are now as bad as the grups and leaning into that. I thought that was a nice menacing moment.
Oh yeah, I agree. Even though I didn't like the children part of the storytelling, I thought the acting from some of them was really good, like the woman playing Miri, I thought she was fantastic, and Jahn, even though he was Ten years too old, he did a good job too.
And, uh, the kid that, uh, Kirk kept throwing around that you mentioned was, uh, John Megna. Yeah. Was, he gets hurled off the table. He kept tossing that kid around like he was a rag doll. Yeah. He throws him down at one point and I
think he didn't mean to throw him to the floor, but he ends up throwing him to the floor and the scene kept going.
And I thought, that's a bit of professionalism from Megna. Because Megna lands on the floor and nobody breaks the moment and everybody's perfectly fine. And I couldn't help but think, like, did William Shatner have to have a conversation with his daughters when he got home? He's like, daddy's not actually throwing children around.
You know that, right? Like, they were standing right there and they watched their dad grab another child and throw him to the floor. And it must've been a little unnerving. How did you, how did you feel about, there's, there's two different, uh, other paths that I wanted to talk about. There's, if this is the goodbye to Rand, and
like, her send off in this moment, how did you feel about that storyline? And the other side is, we're getting a lot of very nice groundwork in this one regarding McCoy and Spock's relationship. So, let's talk about those two elements. Let's start with Rand first. How did you feel about her in this episode, her depiction within this context, but also the opportunities they gave her to kind of, It was a little bit more of Rand and a little bit more of Rand in a way that kind of was gripping and emotional, especially if this was the goodbye.
How do you feel about that?
Uh, yeah. I liked her, her performance, what she was doing, the, how she was kind of like the counterpoint to Kirk in some of those scenes. I thought it was really, really good. Uh, but I kept questioning, why is the yeoman here? What's kept going through my head of like, wait, why, why would you bring the yeoman down?
Like, why would you bring the yeoman down? It's all I kept thinking. And it's, again, to me, it's bad storytelling. It was like, they didn't really give a good rationale for why she would even be there in the first place, but the fact she was there. wasn't a problem. She did a good job and the stuff that she was doing was interesting.
Uh, but the fact she was there in the first place was kind of like raising the eyebrow. I mean, how did you feel about
it? Same thing. It's yeah, the yeoman would not be there. There's no logical reason given as to why she would, she would be on the scene. But I think that she did a pretty terrific job of balancing, here
we have yet again, her interest and attraction to Kirk and for arguably the first time, the last time it came up in a bold way was literally when the mirror version of Kirk, the Transporter accident duplicate effectively, physically attacks her and tries to rape her. And that was the last time that it was so boldly stated like, Oh, she's interested in him.
And there's always this, will they get together kind of lurking in the background, which is why the character eventually does leave because, well, they want her going out and having romantic entanglements on every planet. So Rand can't be in the picture. But here, that attraction is used as a real humanizing moment between both of them.
I always found it a very powerful scene when she says to him, I always wanted you to look at my legs, look at my legs. And she is trying to hide the breakout that she is suffering from the disease. And it's a real moment of, She's terrified and she's looking for a last opportunity to kind of like boldly say, like, look, I've always been attracted to you.
I like you and his response. is not romantic. And I like that his response is not romantic, that he goes in to console her as a person and is patting her back and is holding her from a, I'm terrified too. The looks on his face and her depiction of that moment, I think were very, very strong and really kind of gives her a nice moment, I think.
But I agree with you, but that scene, I mean, that kind of explains why the yeoman's there. The only reason she's there is for, is to create that, that moment so that Miri can see it and get jealous. Yes. That's the only reason that the, a female had to be on the planet was so that Kirk could have an interaction with her and they had been established when the yeoman was attracted to Kirk.
So that's the only reason she was there. It could have been Uhura. Of course, this is 1960s television, black woman, romantic scene between the two of them. I mean, it does happen later, but it's like, yeah. Um, I can understand why they didn't use Uhura, but Uhura was also like, why is she missing? I only want to bring that up.
Why is Uhura missing? Why is Ferrell at her position on the ship? Why wasn't she the one that was beaming down with the crew? It's like, I don't understand why Nichelle Nichols was missing in the first place. But um, I do agree with you. That scene itself is well acted, well written, it's, it's got a, uh, kind of an emotional punch to it, which was, uh, Excellent.
This is one of those aspects of the show I was saying. It's like, there's aspects of this episode that are brilliant. They're wonderfully written. Yeah. Wonderfully done. Good tension. Great drama. But then it kept getting undercut by bonk, bonk,
uh,
stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. Bonk, bonk, indeed. Um, so last thing I wanted to talk about was the McCoy, Spock moments.
This one for me is Arguably some of my favorite moments in this episode is just the way that they deal with one another and Spock criticizing the equipment in a, what seems very Vulcan intentional dig of McCoy in that moment. So that McCoy will pull back and like, I'm just happy it works. Like Spock, would you just back off?
Leave me alone. Let me do my thing. And the two of them researching everything leading to the discovery of the cure. The anxiety around whether they will get to the computers in time to be able to test it. And then McCoy just boldly saying like, I'm going to have to inject myself. There's no other option.
And Spock's depiction in this, he gives a couple of sly smiles at various times, which depicts, once again, we've talked about this before, the balancing act of Spock between is he a Vulcan with human tendencies, is a human of Vulcan tendencies, and when does the pendulum swing, and why, and here we have a Spock who is seemingly fairly comfortable with some human aspects, such as teasing the captain when he says, Well, we would be able to go back to the ship, and I do want to go back to the ship, which I think is a great line.
Uh, and between him and McCoy, and when McCoy ends up being found on the floor, Spock's concern is obvious. He comes back and is disturbed by the fact that he finds him in this shape and checks his pulse, checks his heart. And when he is asked, is he dead? Simply says, not yet. In a kind of heavy foreboding moment of like, Oh, does that mean he's going to?
Uh, but I love this episode, for the amount of screen time it gives this relationship, I feel like the writers up to this point had brief moments of the two of them together, and we're beginning to understand maybe two or three episodes ago, Oh, there's a nice dynamic between these two. And this one, they really kind of leaned into it a little bit more of, yeah, of course the two of them are going to work together on this search for a cure.
And. Yeah. McCoy is going to be a little abrasive and Spock is going to be teasing him in a Vulcan way. How did you feel about the representation of the relationship here?
I thought overall it was great, but there was one moment where it was kind of like the casual racism coming off of Bones was a little like, uh, what?
He's like, it's your green blood. And like talking about like why he doesn't seem to be affected. And it's, very racist thing he says to Spock. And it's not said in a way that came across as chiding like yeah not scientific or even a friend needling another friend it just came across as just casual straight up casual racism and again my wife was in the room and she went wow that was racist yeah he said it because the delivery of it and everything like that was a little off knowing the their relationship of the course in the entire series it is there is a bias in Bones but he's also just needling Spock it's just him as a friend needling Spock.
So, but it didn't come across that way in this specific episode to me. So that was a little jarring, but I loved seeing how the two of them interacted over the course of the episode. Spock had some of the best lines. You already said some of them. Like, I loved it when he was like, I'm definitely a carrier, but I still want to go to the ship.
Like, just trying to reassure everybody. Like, I'm not going to sit here and watch you all die and be like, I'm fine. I just, I thought that was a really great line. And his delivery was so perfect. So this is one of those episodes where in watching Nimoy, it's just like, Oh, he's just a chef's kiss in this entire show.
And I love him so much. And he doesn't have a ton of lines in this one, but every thing he says, it's just like, Oh, that's so, that's so Spock. Every time he was saying it, it just made me feel good. He's like a warm blanket for me watching this, this episode. And then Bones's reaction to him, especially when they're like starting to have the, uh, the reaction to the, the, Contagion is starting to affect their tempers.
Yeah. And Bones is working and Spock makes a comment and Bones like just yells at him. And like the two of them are like, ah, like it's like an odd couple moment. I loved it. It was great. I think I want more of that in more of the future episodes. I know there's going to be more, but like, to me, I thought that was one of the strengths of this episode was being able to see some of the core crew, um, react with each other and spend more time together and get a little more screen time.
It was, it was nice to see that.
Yeah. And also to see the range of performances as their tensions boil over and even Kirk is getting cantankerous and they're all giving each other second looks, which are like, I'm really sorry about that. But yeah, like it's that moment of like going at one another, McCoy in particular, who always already is at an eight when it comes to cantankerous.
So like, it's just a couple of notches and he's suddenly throwing down his papers at Kirk and go like, you'll give it a try. And then walks away and everybody's just kind of like, yeah, that's okay. Like we're all sick. And having Rand scream at Kirk, I think it's when you get the opportunity as actors and you're playing what is effectively a workplace environment, and everybody is presented as very collegial and professional, and when they run into people who are not collegial and professional, it's the antagonist, but here, it's not the antagonist, the antagonist, the children are teasing
and conniving, but they're not the ones going off the handle until the very last scene where they're beating up Kirk. It's the allies and they're going at each other. And that creates a very special tension and an opportunity for the actors to really portray a different side. I'm sure it was very fun for all of them to be able to play deeper than they typically do with those harsher emotions toward one another.
So it was probably an environment where on that set it was freeing them in certain ways. I did find it a little distracting that they decided that they were going to show the tension of they're given basically a week. Like we are going to be here for a week before we die. And they show the tension of the week manifesting in, they stopped zippering their uniforms.
Did you notice that? It was like, it was distracting the first time that I noticed. And I'm like, why is DeForest Kelly showing his shoulder? That's weird. And then a little while later, Kirk is doing the same thing and like, that's somebody saying like, we gotta show that things are getting tense. Like, it couldn't have been enough just to make them dirty.
Well, like. Well, it's kind of myself thinking like.
Think about Wrath of Khan. It's like their uniforms had that flap that could come down. Yeah. And so like, that was good costume design because it was like, it was easy for them to kind of rip that down and show, oh, it's like unbuttoning your shirt. Yeah.
This, there are suits in this. We're not designed for that. So all they did was when they unzipped it partially, it just looked like their costume was broken. It didn't look, if, if part of the flap came down, it's like, that would have been better, but it's like, yeah, it was weird.
It was when they first did it, it was on McCoy and it was distracting the point for 30 seconds.
I was like, did they not notice it until after they filmed the scene? Did nobody know? And then they ran into the hallway and I thought, I bet when they run into the hallway, it'll be zipped. And then it wasn't. And I was like, Oh, it's intentional. And I was so distracted by it that,
uh, I had to laugh. I mean, it's a TV show we're seeing here.
So it's like, I understand why they didn't do this. It's a week. You have grown men. By day seven, there's gonna be beards coming in. And it was like, everybody was clean shaven. It's like, I was waiting for the scene where they went into a hallway and, and then Kirk was using his phaser on the lowest setting and like taking off his stubble.
I would have loved that. That would have been great. So a couple of little fun facts to follow up on our discussion of this one. Uh, I already mentioned that this was filmed on the Andy Griffith show set. Uh, this is also one of a handful of episodes of Star Trek that were banned on the BBC until the 1990s.
It was aired once. And then the BBC reported that they received letters and calls complaining about the episode. Apparently British audiences were disturbed by the depiction of Disease, or children in a ravaged world, or post apocalyptic setting, keep in mind, and I found myself thinking, 1966, this would have been an audience that would remember the bombings, the blitz, maybe there's something about a, what looks like maybe a war torn environment that was triggering for some people, but ultimately, the BBC did not report either numbers or specifics of complaints.
But there were a handful of episodes of Star Trek that they simply refused to air, and so when they would have their airings of Star Trek, they would just skip over these three or four episodes. We'll talk about the other episodes when we get to them. This one would eventually be re entered into rotation in the 1990s.
Apparently when the BBC figured it out, everybody could handle watching a bunch of children in the background go na ni na ni na na. I also thought it was interesting that the setting of this planet, which in, for lack of a better term, within the mythology of Star Trek, Uh, is referred to as Miri's World, and there was a novel that came out in 1989 called The Cry of the Onlies, written by Judy Klass.
It takes place after the events of this episode, and in that novel, All references to Miri's world being a duplicate of Earth were removed. So, within the Star Trek universe, another Earth is No, that's not the Mother Earth. Don't worry about that. Yeah. So, Matt, was there anything else about this episode that you wanted to touch on, or did we hit everything that caught your eye?
We hit everything. The only thing I would say is, uh, what was it? The, uh, I thought about the TV show, Big Mouth of all things watching this, because talk about a hormone monster. It was, that's basically what they turned into. Um, yeah, that was it.
That's very funny. That's a very funny connection to make and a little distracting
I could imagine. Yes. So next time we're going to be watching the episode Conscience of the King, I invite everybody to jump into the comments and let us know what is that episode about? Of course, wrong answers only. And please also, when you're jumping to the comments, let us know what you thought about this episode, what you thought about Mirri, what you thought about the setup of an alternate earth.
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