Rewatching Miri

Maybe Rand's white mice escaped? With a degree in maths and another in astrophysics it was take a job as Kirk's yeoman or the dole queue again on Monday morning.

 

From various accounts of the episode's production, the earth was not a cheap, store-bought, table-top globe, nor did it appear to be one.

 

Clearly it wasn't, but I wonder if they got it from somewhere else. In any event, they did reuse it. It seems hard to believe they'd build the globe *just* for a pointless teaser.

 

Did they buy it for "Tomorrow is Yesterday"?

 

Well it was also used for every orbit shot too. Since this was the first "parallel earth civilization" story they did in the series, they probably felt they needed to justify using Mayberry by having it be a duplicate earth. They also probably felt that they could amortize the cost of the construction of this model by going to earth later on.

 

In IMDB, someone says in the goofs:

"In the opening scene, where the ENTERPRISE orbits Miri's planet, you can see the hole at the top of the globe used for the original version of the scene where it would have been attached to its stand. This has been replaced in the remastered version with a digital shot of that same planet."

That doesn't sound plausible, but it's something I'll check, I guess.

 

I looked at some screencaps of the original effects and I don't see it.

Kor

 

Yeah, I just went through every original "Miri" fx shot on Trekcore, and there is no such flaw. It was just said on imdb as a deliberate insult.

Edit: my other guess is that some idiot thought the Aral Sea was a "hole at the top of the globe."
https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x08/miri119.jpg

 

Ironically, the Aral Sea no longer exists...

 

Ugh. That just sounds clunky as shit.

 

It's not necessarily so bad. If there's some kind of multiversal sieve that causes a thousand/million Earths to be scattered throughout the galaxy, that would make a decent mechanism for what we see on the show.

Fun twist: the Klingon homeworld, Vulcan, Romulus and Remus--all Earth.

(but obviously, duplicate Earths aren't that common since it was a surprise to Kirk after several centuries of space travel).

 

Like the snarky, oft-repeated comment that the Doomsday Machine miniature was "a windsock dipped in cement."

 

Miri could be another piece of the timeline puzzle as to when does Star Trek take place. Spock says both "approximately 1960" and "about three hundred years" for the age of some furniture. If we assume that the Miri Earth is from a parallel universe, then we may be seeing this Earth at the same point in time as in the Star Trek timeline. Just another idea using a lot of ifs...

 

I guess that Kirk noticed that the buildings were similar to those bult in the alter 1800s and early 1900s, but there were remains of cars instead of carriages. And Spock judegd that the cars looked like theyhad been manufactured in the mid 20th century.

Spock says that the palce had been abandoned and deteriorating for at least several centuries. Probably more than 200 years but les than 1,000 years. Spock says that the visible archaelogical remains indicate an alien society on another world that was about as technologically advanced as Earth in the mid 1900s. Spock doesn't indicate how long ago Earth's mide 1900s were, he says how long ago this place which seems to have been as advanced as mid 20th century Earth had been abandoned. He says nothing about how long ago Earth's mid 20th century was.

In an old building, Kirk looks at a piano.

Maybe Spock looked at the piano and saw that it looked like the type that had been made on Earth about three hundred years earlier. And if a piano expert could said when pianos tht loooked like that were made on Earth, and if we could agree on how close to three hundred years a time span would have to be for Spock to think that about three hundred years was precised. enough, we would have good information about the time which has passed since the piano was made and when Miri's planet was as advanced as Earth was when that type of Piano was being built on Earth.

Maybe Spock scanned the piano and saw that its wood came from trees which had been cut down about 300 years earlier. Which mean thepiano had existed for alonger or shorter period of time before the disaster struck. And it would do nothing to date the era of tos.

Maybe Spock scanned how fast dust was ettling from tehe atmopshere and decided that the dust cover on the piano was about 300 years worthof dust. That would date the disaster to about 300 years ago, but would do nothing to date how long ago Earth had been at a mid 20th century level of technology..

Later dialog indicates that the disaster happened 300 years earlier and doesn't mention how long ago Earth had mid 20th century technology.

 

Spock just knows everything, various composers entire works, their styles so that he can tell original works from fakes, their handwriting, so forensically dating anything should be simple.
I think GR said that he didn't want to explain technology too closely in TOS so that it couldn't be refuted a couple of years later like phasers instead of lasers.

 

I seem to remember another story suggesting that it was a copy made by The Preservers.

 

Which dialog is this?

 

Eh, I just took it as a weird duplicate of Earth, something that they would have investigated if they all didn't get the virus. Then, after it was over, they left it for the UESPA to check out as they were late for their next port of call.

Multiverse's are so fricking overdone now. I really hate the "changes in history create a new universe" thing. I found it more suspenseful to have changes in history alter the future. The arguments that "you can't save JFK in Star Trek II because we all know he died" hold no water at all. It's a fictional universe. You can have JFK survive into his 90's if you want. Gabriel Bell suddenly looks like Ben Sisko without creating an alternate timeline. The whole "oh the reality I came from still exists somewhere" that ST09 went with seems like there is less at stake. All it takes is a flick of a keyboard to have someone find a way back to that alternate timeline and poof, who cares?

Also seems odd that going back in time and preventing someone from doing something would physically create an entire universe. Every planet, every star, every single life form in the entire universe. Even the Bible said it took a few days of ol' God to fire ours up. Time travel itself is fantasy, this pushes it too far for my taste. Your mileage may vary.

 

It doesn't 'create' a universe per se. Every variable already exists in the multiverse. When you go back, you are just going back to the version where you went back. You've always been there.

So because the picture of Bell changed for the characters who went back, DS9 from that point forward is set in a different universe to the one where those characters started. If Dax had whipped out the photo and it was Sisko all along, they would be in the same universe where they started.