MIRI-cannibals??

[hifijohn]

Kirk and co. land on a planet where all the adults are dead and hand full of kids roam around,they find out that they tried to create a fountain of youth that backfired, all the adults died but the kids were spared because they hadnt gone through puberty yet,note this is the 60's and watch mr.
spock delicately try to bring the subject up.We'll ignore the fact that everyone has neat haircut and the cloths dont look too bad for being 300 years old or that Miri is 22 and pollard was 27 ,The problem viewers have with the show is only a small handful of kids remain and there is no way there was a 300 year supply of food somewhere and the kids dont seem like they have much interest in farming.The only explanation I can see isnt a pleasant one --the had to resort to cannibalism.

 

[feek61]

I don't think so. They specifically mention that the food was running out so obviously there WAS a 300 supply of food someplace. You already mentioned the haircuts, cloths, etc, so the food source is no different as far as believability; this is just a TV show after all. Jumping to the conclusion the kids were cannibals is a bit of a stretch.

 

[Miramanee]

I find it hard to believe that after 300 years the kids would still be so chiildlike and immature. Wouldn't they achieve some kind of wisdom and mental maturity?

 

[Spock's Barber]

I find it hard to believe that after 300 years the kids would still be so chiildlike and immature. Wouldn't they achieve some kind of wisdom and mental maturity?

Didn't the Life Prolongation project affect and delay their entrance into maturity, both physically and mentally?

 

[Miramanee]

Didn't the Life Prolongation project affect and delay their entrance into maturity, both physically and mentally?

Maybe. But nothing can explain why the planet looked exactly like Earth

 

[Spock's Barber]

Maybe. But nothing can explain why the planet looked exactly like Earth

I agree. I am not a fan of any of the parallel planet episodes. Once was okay, but twice, thrice......no, no, no.

 

[Maurice]

We are seeing one town (Mayberry) on the planet. There could be thousands of places with similar situations, a point the episode sidesteps. If these were the only kids on the planet would they leave them behind? Not enough of a population to repopulate post-puberty, for certain.

This is a problem in tons of Trek episodes, old and new. They beam down and decide what to do based on a teeny sample of what's going on where they happened to land (which always seems to be the center of the action). They could have easily waved this away by having the ship report that additional surveys and scans indicate the condition-of-the-week is prevalent all over the planet, e.g. sensor scans show small groups of life forms in many towns on Miri's planet that will also be needing to be saved and maybe relocated into more centralized communities.

As to 300-year old kids acting like 10-year olds, well, a lot of what we consider "mature" thinking comes from the way our brains grow, the neural pruning that happens in adolescence, and the development of the frontal lobes in the early 20s. These kids are frozen in a state of pre-pubescent brain development, so while a 300-year old child actually won't be able to think like an adult, they'd likely have developed in some ways pretty alien to us just based on lengthy life experience.

 

[Tenacity]

The have certainly been enough cases where children have been thrown into "adult" situations and began acting like adults

 

[Spock's Barber]

The have certainly been enough cases where children have been thrown into "adult" situations and began acting like adults

...and vice versa. There certaintly have been enough cases where adults have been thrown into "child" situations and began acting like children.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

We are seeing one town (Mayberry) on the planet.

Wouldn't it be awesome if Ronny Howard (then 12) had been cast as one of the kids? I mean, awesome. Because then Miri's planet could be the alternate Earth that The Andy Griffith Show takes place on.

Also, I wish Floyd himself could have been a passerby in this scene:
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x28hd/thecityontheedgeofforeverhd563.jpg

This is a problem in tons of Trek episodes, old and new. They beam down and decide what to do based on a teeny sample of what's going on where they happened to land (which always seems to be the center of the action).

Yes, the "small world" problem is definitely a gene in Star Trek's DNA. Another way it expresses itself is that most planets have a single government. Moreover, we can beam down, be greeted on the spot by a single aid, and then breeze right into the very office of the planet's chief executive, which apparently is but steps away in the very small city. And furthermore, the entire facility he operates out of would barely support a PTA meeting.

The same problem writ large is that we're treating the galaxy like an ocean, and solar systems like islands that are all within a short time's travel. The places and aliens of outer space have to be readily accessible to make Star Trek work in an episodic format where self-contained stories can be viewed in any order.

 

[Timo]

This is a problem in tons of Trek episodes, old and new. They beam down and decide what to do based on a teeny sample of what's going on where they happened to land (which always seems to be the center of the action).

This problem sort of solves itself, though. Why do our heroes beam down to the center of the action? Why, because they recognize the uniqueness of the location in advance.

Which is generally quite excusable. When they meet the Wild West Planet of the week, we don't have to assume there's the Old World on the other side of the continent, because the Wild West part is but an illusion and a charade. It could well be the only town on the entire planet, then, and apparently always is.

When in turn our heroes beam down on a planet with global locales, there tends to be a legitimate local attraction anyway. Either the planetary capital hails them, or is easily recognizable, or emits the signature of the Adventure of the Week. Or then the very act of beaming down makes the location remarkable: the Last Kohm Village would not have been the last unless Tracey had joined fates with it.

Okay, so.... In this specific case, why Miri's little town? Well, it's stated out rather plainly: it's the location that sends a signal.

Why a single location? Why, because that's where some highly resourceful individual survived when lesser folks across the globe perished. There's the lab of the survivor and all. Perhaps there were more like fifty originally, but the one outlasted the others, by an unknown margin. Or perhaps the Mad Scientists who did all this worked for a single country (apparently within the local North America) and didn't spread out their knowledge or their numbers much, so the group with the high survival odds would be highly localized.

Basically, only the Duplicate Earth thing is a mystery here. The rest holds together well enough.

Although the idea of cannibalism does not. You can't eat corpses for 300 years. They become inedible in a matter of days, after all! And if the kids ate each other, there should be a visible mechanism for it: cattle sheds of some sort for preventing those condemned to be eaten from turning the tables. In the 300 years of kid-eat-kid, this is what would have had to happen on a large scale - and what would be even more pronounced in a tiny group of final survivors, not less.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Or then the very act of beaming down makes the location remarkable: the Last Kohm Village would not have been the last unless Tracey had joined fates with it.

Hey, that's a good point.

 

[johnnybear]

I liked most of the parallel earth adventures myself! Both Omega and Bread And Circuses being two of the very best! In most of the episodes there is an earth Captain or missing teacher who has caused the similarity in the first place although Bread and Omega are the exceptions to that rule! Piece of The Action has the fact that an earth ship that disappeared more than a century earlier caused the planet to adapt itself to the pages of a book! Only Miri has had no direct contact with the earth or the Federation !
JB

 

[alchemist]

Adrian Spies didn't completely ignore the food issue. The below exchange took place in Act II in one of his early draft scripts (August 12, 1966), and it occurred right before Kirk realized that the communicators were missing.

MIRI
(frantic not to seem old to him)
We just had -- foolies...
(getting up, forcing a big grin)
If we were hungry, we just took
something... there are lots of mommies and cans.

KIRK
Mommies?

MIRI
Can opener things.
(a beat)
Can opener is a dumb word. We found kind of a fresh word, maybe...
(another beat, a little giggle, also sly)
Mommies... that's what we call the can openers, mommies...
(to all of them, a smile that is a very sad thing)
You get it?
(they all nod, they get it)
But mostly -- mostly it was fun, foolies...

 

[Pauln6]

Miri could have been a Star Trek / Walking Dead hybrid spread over two or three episodes!

 

[Spock's Barber]

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[Mr. Laser Beam]

Maybe. But nothing can explain why the planet looked exactly like Earth

It's already been done, at least in the novelverse:

Spoiler: novels

@Christopher, in his (excellent, IMHO) "Department of Temporal Investigations" novels, suggests that Miri's world isn't a copy of Earth - it actually IS Earth, of an alternate timeline. The planet just briefly drifted into the main timeline due to [technobabble] and subsequently returned from whence it came.

 

[Sgt_G]

I agree. I am not a fan of any of the parallel planet episodes. Once was okay, but twice, thrice......no, no, no.

One theory holds that if the Universe is infinite, there are an infinite number of planets, to include an infinite number of planets that are almost-but-not-quite identical to Earth.

 

[Forbin]

But you need an infinite number of chimpanzees to navigate to them.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

It's already been done, at least in the novelverse:

Spoiler: novels

@Christopher, in his (excellent, IMHO) "Department of Temporal Investigations" novels, suggests that Miri's world isn't a copy of Earth - it actually IS Earth, of an alternate timeline. The planet just briefly drifted into the main timeline due to [technobabble] and subsequently returned from whence it came.

If that's the case, then what becomes of the sequel novel The Cry Of The Onlies?