Miri is the 11th episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It was written by Adrian Spies and first aired on the date 1966 October 27. In the episode the USS Enterprise investigates an Earth-like signal that has originated light years from Earth and discover a planet identical to Earth yet populated by seemingly impossibly old children as adults are afflicted with a horrible degenerative disease, one that soon afflicts the away team planetside.
Plot[]
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Responding to a Earth-like recording transmitting from over a hundred light years away from Earth, the USS Enterprise discovers a planet that is an exact copy of Earth. It has the same mass, circumference, density, and atmosphere. Even the topography is identical.
Act 1[]
Beaming down, the landing party of Captain Kirk, Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Janice Rand, along with security officers Galloway and Fields, discover architecture like that of Earth, circa 1960. But there is debris in the streets and evidence that decay has been ongoing for at least several centuries. Spock surmises that the distress signal is automated.
Then, while McCoy is examining an old tricycle, he is attacked by a horribly disfigured and insanely violent young man. He complains about his broken tricycle, and accuses the landing party of lying when they tell him they can try to fix it. After yelling "fibber" several times, he suffers a seizure and dies.
Noises draw the landing party to one of the abandoned buildings, where they discover a terrified young girl hiding in a closet named Miri.
Meanwhile, Spock, Galloway, and Fields search the ruins outside. They hear children, and are pelted with debris and rocks, but they never actually see anyone; the feral children, who call themselves Onlies, know the area too well, and are too canny.
After talking to Miri, who only gradually realizes that she is in no danger, Kirk learns that the adults, whom Miri calls grups, became ill and insane, and the Onlies had to hide from them until all the grups died. McCoy realizes that a plague struck this world. On Kirk's hand, Miri finds a blueish blemish. It turns out that Kirk contracted the same disease that killed the grups.
Act 2[]
Miri leads the landing party to an abandoned laboratory where McCoy takes tissue samples from the group in an attempt to isolate the organism responsible for the disease. Everyone in the landing party contracts the disease except Spock, thanks to his Vulcan green copper-based blood. However, Spock becomes a carrier and the whole crew would contract the disease if he were to beam back to the Enterprise.
McCoy begins to work, asking Lieutenant John Farrell to have a biocomputer and an electronic microscope beamed down from the ship. Spock discovers research dating back three hundred years: there was a project with the goal of prolonging life. It worked, after a fashion, but a miscalculation annihilated the adults, leaving only the children to survive on their own for the last three centuries. Once they reach puberty, they succumb to the disease.
Kirk, wanting to find the elusive children to get some answers, asks Miri to show him where they are hiding. In an old, rundown building, Jahn, the oldest and apparent leader of the Onlies, and a number of Only children, discuss the sudden reappearance of the "grups". The children are afraid of things returning to the way it was in the "before time". Jahn hatches a plan to steal the landing party's "little boxes" they use to talk to other "grups" so they will be all alone on the planet. When Kirk enters the building, the children scream and run away, and an infected adolescent named Louise attacks him and he stuns her with his phaser, but she dies. Miri, shocked and saddened by the death, saying that she was a little bit older than herself, and embraces Kirk.
Spock calculates that Miri will have only one month or less to live. Lastly within a week, all of the Human members of the landing party will succumb; even sooner than that, they will go mad.
Act 3[]
In the laboratory, Kirk orders Spock and McCoy to recreate the thinking of the planet's scientists. If they can isolate the virus creating the disease, McCoy will be able to create a vaccine. Just then, Kirk hears the Onlies saying "nyah, nyah, nyah…" outside and runs with Spock and McCoy to investigate. In the empty lab, Jahn emerges from an open vent and takes all of the landing party's communicators. Returning to the lab and discovering the communicators missing, McCoy underscores the need for them; if they do not have the devices, they will not be able to verify their findings through the Enterprise's computers and they won't have a chance. Likewise the food stocks of the planet are getting dangerously low and the children will starve in six months.
By the third day The disease is starting to affect the landing party; their nerves are frayed and their tempers are short. Kirk passes by Rand and bumps into her while walking by, causing her to drop a beaker. This causes her to snap, cry hysterically, and run out into the laboratory's corridor. Kirk, alone in the corridor with a crying and upset Rand, takes her into in his arms to comfort her. Miri witnesses this and becomes jealous of Kirk's attention to her and Rand's romantic looks at the Captain. Miri returns to the Onlies and helps Jahn and then develop a plan to capture Rand, thereby luring Kirk to them.
Final Act[]
Meanwhile, McCoy has discovered the organism responsible, and succeeds in isolating a substance that might be the vaccine. But without the ship's computer (still unavailable because the landing party was still without communicators), it is impossible to be certain of the correct dosage.
Later, Rand goes missing and a lovesick Kirk becomes worried and lost in thought with Rand's whereabouts. Kirk persuades Miri to help him, by revealing the secret the landing party had kept: that she and all the children, would get the disease when they reach puberty, and that the youngest children would starve long before that. Miri then starts to develop the disease on one of her arms and cries while Kirk holds her. Miri then takes Kirk to where Rand is being held and tied up by Jahn and the other Onlies. The children don't trust Kirk and pummel the captain. Beaten and bloodied, Kirk finally makes the children realize they're doing what the grups did: hurting others. Meanwhile, a desperate Dr. McCoy injects himself with a hypospray filled with the serum, knowing that without confirmation from the ship's computers he could be injecting himself with, as Spock described it, "a beaker full of death."
Returning with Rand and the communicators, and carrying one of the smaller children, Kirk finds Spock and a security man at McCoy's side. The doctor is unconscious, perhaps dying... and then the blemishes begin to fade. The vaccine is a success.
The Enterprise departs, leaving a medical team in charge of the children, who will soon receive the care they need as Kirk has sent in a request for the Federation to send teachers and others to assist the Onlies.