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Miri

A preteen falling in love with a senior officer could have been too awkward

No, as I understand it, the BBC rejected "Miri" for the insanity and disfigurement of the disease, because they had pegged Star Trek as a children's show, and the episode violated their rules for such.
 
No, as I understand it, the BBC rejected "Miri" for the insanity and disfigurement of the disease, because they had pegged Star Trek as a children's show, and the episode violated their rules for such.
Plus Rand's legs were a bit too sexy for British teens. We were used to Blue Peter.
 
Miri is not one of my favourites but there is a lot of potential. In a modern show, they could have spent five episodes or so, moving out of the town to track down the research they needed, encountering feral adults like in 28 days later, and using the characters on the ship to follow up the duplicate Earth angle. The kids could have been a lot more sinister too.

Poor Rand though; she doesn't get to think for herself at all. We don't see how she was captured and she just sits like a sack of spuds waiting for Kirk to do all the hard work.
Its a shame they didn't use Rand more in this episode.
What was Spock doing handling security? For goodness sake he should have been working full time on finding a cure.
Once Kirk realised that Spock was needed to help McCoy he should have made Rand in charge on the redshirts. she could have been captured while out on patrol if it was at all necessary to have her captured at all.
I never really believed that Kirk had any romantic interest in Rand despite his claims in 'Naked Time'. More she was just a symbol of what he couldn't have. Even though duty didn't seemed to block that many romances in the series eventually. To me Rands capture for Kirk seemed to be the capture of a crewperson. Nothing more heartbreaking for Kirk. He was way more upset with McCoys near death.

Anyway once you get past the parallel Eath angle and the implauability of the kids surviving 300 years and the sudden cure - I found Miri was a great episode. With great acting from the guest cast, great spooky atmosphere. Lots of good character moments. I didn't even mind the Rand legs scene - not that much.
 
Star Trek as a children's show? Wow!

And "
Its a shame they didn't use Rand more in this episode.
What was Spock doing handling security? For goodness sake he should have been working full time on finding a cure.
Once Kirk realised that Spock was needed to help McCoy he should have made Rand in charge on the redshirts....
Anyway once you get past the parallel Eath angle and the implauability of the kids surviving 300 years and the sudden cure - I found Miri was a great episode.
So, aside from about a dozen odd things, it's a great episode. :) You know what, I agree. Miri was an episode that had a lot going for it, but the creators made a lot of weird choices.
 
"Well, with a degree in maths and another in astrophysics, it was either that or the dole queue again on Monday morning."
Yeoman Trillian.

I found the duplicate Earth no more improbable than "Archons" with the stock wardrobe, stock sets, vintage Earth decorations and architecture and a fucking 12 hour clock (they could have at least changed that), so it might as well have been a duplicate Earth because everything else was. It was a case of everyone phoning in art direction and costume design (until they go into Landru's chambers).
 
It sure felt like they were just phoning it in, but it was really a case of them trying not to run out of money. Star Trek was an unusually expensive show, because the creators had to make most of the costumes, props, and settings themselves. So the writers used wrote scripts with every excuse they can think of to use costumes and props that the studio already had on hand.
 
...They were pretty explicit about it in "Return of the Archons", too. The planet really wasn't supposed to be alien - it was supposed to be a replica Frontier United States, and not only Late 19th Century FUS but Late 16th as well, the transition from one to the other apparently happening in an eyeblink and thus confusing Sulu's landing party into dressing three centuries out of fashion!

It comes all the more as a shock, then, for the heroes to discover first a flat-panel display/lighting fixture wholly out of the context they thought they had down pat - and then to find out that the illusion of normalcy is being maintained by underground alien machinery. Using an alien clock at the Town Hall would have utterly ruined that.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Germany also treated it as a kids show, and changed the whole story of Amok Time to remove the mating ritual. It was all a fever dream instead XD

I heard somewhere the German TV in the '70s butchered TOS with editing and dubbing to make it into a silly, almost nonsensical show.

I've also heard that Japanese television dubbed in their own stories, and Sulu was the boss. Only they changed his name to Kato.
 
Wow. I didn't know any of that. Can you find sources? A Germany told me that the German dub had bad voice actors for The Next Generation, which ruined the show.
 
I heard somewhere the German TV in the '70s butchered TOS with editing and dubbing to make it into a silly, almost nonsensical show.
Only some lines were changed into something silly, most of it was still ok.

Wow. I didn't know any of that. Can you find sources? A Germany told me that the German dub had bad voice actors for The Next Generation, which ruined the show.
TNG was fine, at least in reruns. Maybe the first dubbing was bad, but the one they ended up with was actually pretty good!
 
The parallel Earth device is to explain the look of things, but it always seemed that it was a ... BIG device to waste on that purpose. As opposed to a parallel Roman Empire. Later I decided that made the device more interesting, because it wasn't necessary. That made it more a thing that just happened to have been true, rather than an obvious gimmick.
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Miri is good. The parallel Earth idea is an astonishingly good SF device to justify budget cutting. TOS was great at that. Miri had a solid, dry, grave, "real" feel like the whole of season 1. The weakness is that the kids are hard to watch, but it's not a mistake. It works.
 
The parallel Earth device is to explain the look of things, but it always seemed that it was a ... BIG device to waste on that purpose. As opposed to a parallel Roman Empire. Later I decided that made the device more interesting, because it wasn't necessary. That made it more a thing that just happened to have been true, rather than an obvious gimmick.
=====
Miri is good. The parallel Earth idea is an astonishingly good SF device to justify budget cutting. TOS was great at that. Miri had a solid, dry, grave, "real" feel like the whole of season 1. The weakness is that the kids are hard to watch, but it's not a mistake. It works.
Yeah. I don't think they had a budget to build a set full of broken down space cars, and space buildings with broken windows.
 
Why was it banned in the UK, again?
In 1971 there was a government enquiry into sex and violence on tv (satirised by the Doomwatch episode Sex and Violence, which was then pulled from tx). As a result, the BBC reassessed Star Trek, banning three third season episodes that hadn't been shown, and repeats of Miri (and many more, but they were quietly reinstated for repeats in the late 70s).
 
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Star Trek as a children's show? Wow!

And "

So, aside from about a dozen odd things, it's a great episode. :) You know what, I agree. Miri was an episode that had a lot going for it, but the creators made a lot of weird choices.
The original BBC1 run in 69 took over the Doctor Who slot at 5.15 Saturday. In the late 70s Trek was often repeated in the early morning kids slot as Holiday Star Trek.
 
Bonk bonk on the head!

First episode I watched and I still like it a lot. The tension with McCoy working hard as the disease slowly takes him is gripping to watch.
 
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