My bad: The Magic Mirror and War of the Robots were shot simultaneously. Penny IS in The Challenge.
No worries, I got the episode filming wrong.
During LIS's second season going by Penny's costume. It was white-ish for the B&W episodes. Between that, Harris' hair and Shatner's face, probably 1967.
Is this a thing? I don't understand; Kim Darby was great in "Miri."
The apparently common dislike of "Miri" is the most inexplicable thing I've encountered on this site. Miri was the 3rd of 4th episode of ST I ever saw and it was so poignant and different from the others I was forever hooked. I don't think there is an I am not Herbert commenting in 2026 without "Miri."
Moreso today.
TOS episode runtime was about 56 minutes. So, 4 minutes for commercials
Modern broadcast TV runtime is 42 minutes. 18 minutes for commercials.
I never knew this until a few years ago due to how I consumed Star Trek in the 70s.
Each station was responsible for their own syndication cuts. So the same episode on one network would have different edits than it did on another network. Through the 70's I watched Star Trek across 4 or 5 networks (WTTV, WTHR, WRTV, WKYC, WHAS). I got pretty good at swinging that antenna around. For many years I'd watch 3 episodes of Trek over 4 hours on Sundays.
So when I finally saw a list of the most commonly edited scenes from each episode of TOS I was confused because I knew I had seen those scenes. None were surprisingly new information. That's because I had actually seen all those edited scenes depending on which network I watched the episode on.
who's the photobomber?
Not unless it was run really slowly. 50 minutes without previews. 51 with. So 9 minutes with commercials.
Yeah we had a rotor, so we got two Connecticut stations that carried Trek. They ran them uncut.
WTNH would show the next episode previews. WTXX wouldn't but I do remember a slight cut at the start of Mirror, Mirror.
WPIX in NY, my home station, cut it badly.
That bit about recasting Miri was from me, solely to imagine the leads as more story-accurate kids:
Would Miri Have Been Better If...
Every time I turn around, somebody is saying Kirk was inappropriate with Miri. I'm in the camp (I think it's most of us) that says he was trying to win her over and get some cooperation. Flattering a kid of either gender is a pretty standard tactic. But to me, that's never been the main...
www.trekbbs.com
I like "Miri" a lot. I like the stylized and particular ways the children have, with their slang and chants. I know some people hate that, but it reminds me of West Side Story or Bugsy Malone (1976): an imaginary youth culture that's always on the verge of breaking into song. And Kim Darby is good.
"Miri" has early-episode weirdness, with rough edges and naturalism. It's adjacent to The Twilight Zone in its warm sentiment for the kids juxtaposed with light horror, not to mention outdoor location shooting. It's big yet intimate, dark yet colorful, and it takes us into a whole subculture created by long-time children whose pecking order and shibboleths dare us to say they're wrong under the circumstances.
"Miri" is what the best one-hour dramas of early television aspired to be: complicated, textured, edgy, even dark. They were still inventing Star Trek. You really can't say that about "The Apple", "The Changeling", or "Catspaw." To say nothing of "Spock's Brain." Miri predates Star Trek's smoothly operating, settled production line. It's not complacent, it sweats the details. The actors work it like a theatrical film. It's great.
Regarding the photo of Shatner with Cartwright and Harris, does anybody know what they were doing together? It must have been some kind of industry-wide promotional event that cut across studios and broadcast networks. Probably an event held for the press, the only glue between all those entities. What event would that be?
It's an idea began by another recent poster. I like MIRI the episode and Darby as Miri or Matty Ross. We're contemplating an imaginary casting event which could,have lifted Cartwright beyond certain roles.....such as her blink-or-you'll miss it single line in ADAM 12. Not that there's anything SPOCK'S BRAIN with that.
Cartwright apparently crashed the sci-fi ham dominators' convention. But there are worse things than being dominated by Penny Robinson or Cartwright. Shatner might be slightly irked he's not in the center of the frame this time (as he was in TRISKELION while Nichelle and Walter were gagging in the background during Act One's collar incident.)
I think "Miri" is... um... not a good episode. It doesn't commit the sin of failing to entertain, and that saves it from the bottom of the barrel. "No blah blah blah!" is an example of when it entertains, perhaps the preeminent example, which is worth the price of admission to hear.
Similar remarks apply to "The Omega Glory," which has a similar premise even and which is overall better (perhaps even shockingly).
There's a good episode that might have been, inside both of these episodes.
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Regarding "Spock's Brain", the good episode that might have been is much further away. Even if you buy the use of Spock's brain as the critical element in the mechanism that keeps the female enclave alive, the idea that they would have to go out on a deep space mission to locate their next controller is approaching the height of absurdity. Using the remote control to bring along Spock's brainless body really cannot be saved either, as something to take seriously. Here, the needs of the costar cannot overcome the... other factors.
Was the comedy unintentional? Did the show runners understand that it was only going to work as a comedy? I don't know. What it was they that they thought they were doing by putting such an episode together at all is the sort of question that maybe @Maurice and Fact Trek could answer.
For me "Spock's Brain" just misses the cut of the very bottom of the barrel where "Children," "Plato," and "Zetar" will forever spend their days. It's saved from the lowest tier, by a hair, again because it manages to be entertaining in places. Example, "Brain and brain! What is brain?" Ridiculous, but (intentionally or unintentionally) funny, nonetheless.
Similar remarks apply to "The Omega Glory," which has a similar premise even and which is overall better (perhaps even shockingly).
There's a good episode that might have been, inside both of these episodes.
---
Regarding "Spock's Brain", the good episode that might have been is much further away. Even if you buy the use of Spock's brain as the critical element in the mechanism that keeps the female enclave alive, the idea that they would have to go out on a deep space mission to locate their next controller is approaching the height of absurdity. Using the remote control to bring along Spock's brainless body really cannot be saved either, as something to take seriously. Here, the needs of the costar cannot overcome the... other factors.
Was the comedy unintentional? Did the show runners understand that it was only going to work as a comedy? I don't know. What it was they that they thought they were doing by putting such an episode together at all is the sort of question that maybe @Maurice and Fact Trek could answer.
For me "Spock's Brain" just misses the cut of the very bottom of the barrel where "Children," "Plato," and "Zetar" will forever spend their days. It's saved from the lowest tier, by a hair, again because it manages to be entertaining in places. Example, "Brain and brain! What is brain?" Ridiculous, but (intentionally or unintentionally) funny, nonetheless.
I wonder if it is the same one where Harris appears with Leonard Nimoy and his children. Perhaps not, as the one with Shatner and Cartright looks more formal.
The comedy was unintentional. They were playing it deadly serious.
The original story outline is different in that the Spock's brain is being used to control the environment of an entire technologically advanced planet, and there's no separation of the sexes as per the finished episode (though the only women there are depicted are in stereotypical subordinate roles).
The first de Forest Research report on this is perhaps the most in-depth I've seen yet because Cronin/Coon had no idea what he was talking about in terms of medical science.
Speaking of his work, reading the memos, both Roddenberry and Justman read as disappointed in his work on both this script and the then-titled "The Last Gunfight", with Justman even griping that one rewrite of "Brain" shouldn't even be called such because so little changed. My impression is Coon was really functionally unable to meet his commitments to Star Trek because he was only moonlighting on it while working full-time at Universal.
IMHO, the inspiration for doing the story was probably the first successful heart transplant in Dec. 1967 coupled with Coon possibly channeling Donovan's Brain.
P.S. These production memos are sometimes tough reads because of all the casual sexism, comments on the attractiveness of little people (the first outline suggested the population of the planet being small), and a propensity for using the f slur for what were judged non-manly men.
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All the time. These were men of their era, and some of the language they use was considered acceptable enough in the time but in hindsight is tough to read. Fortunately, they seemed informed enough by the civil rights movement to not traffic in stereotypes there.in a production memo?
Not quite that long.
A breakdown of surviving elements from a "Space Seed" airing from 1967 contains 6 minutes of commercials, 38 seconds of "brought to you by" bumpers, and 10 seconds of NBC Idents and Star Trek Bumpers. The episode runtime, with credits, appears to have typically been closer to 53 minutes. I remember Justman balking at the cost of making the next episode bumpers, but I forget if those always appeared or were used in summer reruns.
Upvoted for your bottom of the barrel list. SB entertains, those 3 do not.
I think they did that in Canada as well, at least sometimes.
No, it cannot. It is borderline on offensive and not entertaining in the slightest. It seems to trade on a similar notion as Plato's Stepchildren that forcing the characters to act out of character is somehow fun and not eye rolling at best and makes me turn off the episode at worst.
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