God! Will He Ever Stop Writing About Star Trek?
Soon ... soon. My summer vacation is pretty much over as I have to start preparing for this coming year. Goodbye slacky TV viewing and contemplation time. It was fun while you lasted. Sigh ...
But first one more episode!! ("Noooo!!" they all scream!)
Episode 8, First Season "Miri" - Directed by Vincent McEveety (6 episodes of Star Trek including the very next episode, "The Dagger of the Mind" (Go, Vince with the double shot!!); 15 episodes of In the Heat of the Night; 30 episodes of Murder, She Wrote; 40 episodes of Simon & Simon; and 46 whoppin' episodes of Gunsmoke. Oh, and also two of the Herbie sequels.) and written by Adrien Spies (pronounced "spees") (Was a reporter and feature writer for The New York Daily Mirror, wrote steadily for television from '50 to '79).
And the new series stumbles with the first episode to indulge in a ridiculously shameless (or shamelessly ridiculous) allegory. This is the one where the Enterprise finds the planet of children. Once they reach puberty they physically deform, go mad, and die. Left for years to fend for themselves, with scary memories of "the before time" they have a distrust of the "grups" (i.e. "grownups"). Oh yeah, it's all that.
Well, Rodd and Spies had good intentions, etc., etc.
I can't help but wonder if they really needed to save some money for an episode. If so, that would explain a lot, because this seems like an episode planned to be shot on the cheap. That would explain why although they find this planet, which is presumably full of children, they only focus on a few square blocks of a town. (Keep it on this set! Keep it on this set!) It would explain why when the landing party gets infected, no one suggests beaming back to the ship to be treated in quarantine (even though transporter decontamination was introduced already in "The Naked Time"). (By the way, it's clear that they've yet to conceive of the Enterprise being able to do detailed scans for life forms from orbit.)
The big thing that gets explained is the planet is an exact duplicate of Earth, hundreds of thousands of light years away from Earth, populated by people who look like Terrans, who speak English, and whose biology is similar enough that the virus effecting them effects the Terrans in the Enterprise landing party.* How? Why? The impossibility is never explored or explained. Surely making it another Earth colony would've made more sense. I can see two reasons for the decision 1) It makes it very clear that we are examining 1966's youth culture problems. 2) It allows the production crew to shoot on a pre-existing set (from a Western it looks like) with costumes and props that can mostly be pulled from stock and altered. Now that I think about it, a guest cast of child actors has to cost lest than adults.
It's Kirk, McCoy, Spock, Rand, and a couple of red shirts on the planet. (Both red shirts live. Take that you cynical Gen X quippers!) No Scotty, Uhura, or Sulu. (Has poor George Takei been fired from the show? -- "Roddenberry, you got a nice little thing going here, but the boys above are still not happy. Get rid of the colored woman, and get rid of the gook, for God's sake! What is this a civil rights rally you got going here?")
Too their credit the actors involved fully commit to this dog of an episode. Even through the ridiculous premise, I actually started caring about the characters. Oh, and what happens when we see humans as children, humans stripped down to their emotional core? That's right, we see fear, aggression, and tribalism. That's what Roddenberry sees lurking under the surface of civilization.
An interesting note, IMDB lists Gene as a co-writer of this episode where the official Star Trek website does not.
*Another interesting note is that six episodes into the show and only two have introduced us to aliens -- not counting these kids and the dog-like creature in "The Enemy Within". The first was the mind-reading, shape changing, salt eating monster (the last of its kind) in "The Man Trap" and the Deus Ex Machina super powerful aliens in "Charlie X". Looking ahead shows me that its two shows until we see our next one, the child-like alien in "The Corbomite Maneuver". Remember Ellison's observation from a previous post?
But first one more episode!! ("Noooo!!" they all scream!)
Episode 8, First Season "Miri" - Directed by Vincent McEveety (6 episodes of Star Trek including the very next episode, "The Dagger of the Mind" (Go, Vince with the double shot!!); 15 episodes of In the Heat of the Night; 30 episodes of Murder, She Wrote; 40 episodes of Simon & Simon; and 46 whoppin' episodes of Gunsmoke. Oh, and also two of the Herbie sequels.) and written by Adrien Spies (pronounced "spees") (Was a reporter and feature writer for The New York Daily Mirror, wrote steadily for television from '50 to '79).
And the new series stumbles with the first episode to indulge in a ridiculously shameless (or shamelessly ridiculous) allegory. This is the one where the Enterprise finds the planet of children. Once they reach puberty they physically deform, go mad, and die. Left for years to fend for themselves, with scary memories of "the before time" they have a distrust of the "grups" (i.e. "grownups"). Oh yeah, it's all that.
Well, Rodd and Spies had good intentions, etc., etc.
I can't help but wonder if they really needed to save some money for an episode. If so, that would explain a lot, because this seems like an episode planned to be shot on the cheap. That would explain why although they find this planet, which is presumably full of children, they only focus on a few square blocks of a town. (Keep it on this set! Keep it on this set!) It would explain why when the landing party gets infected, no one suggests beaming back to the ship to be treated in quarantine (even though transporter decontamination was introduced already in "The Naked Time"). (By the way, it's clear that they've yet to conceive of the Enterprise being able to do detailed scans for life forms from orbit.)
The big thing that gets explained is the planet is an exact duplicate of Earth, hundreds of thousands of light years away from Earth, populated by people who look like Terrans, who speak English, and whose biology is similar enough that the virus effecting them effects the Terrans in the Enterprise landing party.* How? Why? The impossibility is never explored or explained. Surely making it another Earth colony would've made more sense. I can see two reasons for the decision 1) It makes it very clear that we are examining 1966's youth culture problems. 2) It allows the production crew to shoot on a pre-existing set (from a Western it looks like) with costumes and props that can mostly be pulled from stock and altered. Now that I think about it, a guest cast of child actors has to cost lest than adults.
It's Kirk, McCoy, Spock, Rand, and a couple of red shirts on the planet. (Both red shirts live. Take that you cynical Gen X quippers!) No Scotty, Uhura, or Sulu. (Has poor George Takei been fired from the show? -- "Roddenberry, you got a nice little thing going here, but the boys above are still not happy. Get rid of the colored woman, and get rid of the gook, for God's sake! What is this a civil rights rally you got going here?")
Too their credit the actors involved fully commit to this dog of an episode. Even through the ridiculous premise, I actually started caring about the characters. Oh, and what happens when we see humans as children, humans stripped down to their emotional core? That's right, we see fear, aggression, and tribalism. That's what Roddenberry sees lurking under the surface of civilization.
An interesting note, IMDB lists Gene as a co-writer of this episode where the official Star Trek website does not.
*Another interesting note is that six episodes into the show and only two have introduced us to aliens -- not counting these kids and the dog-like creature in "The Enemy Within". The first was the mind-reading, shape changing, salt eating monster (the last of its kind) in "The Man Trap" and the Deus Ex Machina super powerful aliens in "Charlie X". Looking ahead shows me that its two shows until we see our next one, the child-like alien in "The Corbomite Maneuver". Remember Ellison's observation from a previous post?
posted by - caj at 8:26 PM
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