Hundreds of light years from Earth, the Enterprise discovers an exact copy of the planet Earth. You needn't look any further for a better example of needless stupidity in the series than this. They never really need or use this fact for the core story or even mention it again, like it's same ol' same ol' stuff, so this practical impossibility goes unexplained here. Seems to me the author just wanted to "bring home" the message of the dangers of messing around with the natural order of things using bio-elements and the dangers of unleashing a plague on ourselves with germ warfare or genetic manipulation of people, etc., but he needn't have used an exact duplicate of Earth to do this at all, so it was stupid beyond belief (and numerous attempts at explaining it have cropped up, but none of them should have been necessary in the first place).
The re-mastered ship shots are nice (new and interesting angles in every episode, so I'll probably quit mentioning them for the most part, unless they're exceptional or important to the story, though you can almost be guaranteed, they're there). And Earth has more realistic cloud cover this time, though not as much as it should since I think they held back on this one to better show the familiar continents.
Side-By-Side Comparison
And it turns out there are only a few months' food remaining when the Enterprise shows up. After over 3 centuries of having enough food, guess this was another cosmic bit of luck, hitting that 3-month window just in the nick of time. Good preservation techniques, though, if canned food or whatever has been sitting on the shelves for 300 years. This is just another stupid mistake, and the natural food supply, whatever grows naturally, or whatever rats or other small animals the kids hunt and eat, should have already established some equilibrium for the local carrying capacity. Or maybe Spock's assessment was just wrong, and he erroneously dismissed many food sources that vegetarian Vulcan would never consider viable foodstuffs. Mmmmm, rat.
Wonderful performance by Miri (Kim Darby, who played Mattie Ross in
True Grit 1969).
I don't know if you seen the remake, but IMO it is better than the original, so you should.
Kirk mentions no other Earth ships have been out this far, so maybe they've only reached a few hundred light years out from Earth proper by this point in time, or maybe just 100 light years in this particular direction.
I wasn't impressed at how the town looked - that is, it didn't appear to have been neglected for 3 centuries, but rather 3 decades, maybe. Despite being dilapidated, there wasn't 3 centuries of weathering and encroachment there.
Just as another Trek connections, we have Jeff Corey who plays Plasus later interact with Darby.
He doesn't really get his just deserts in
The Cloud Minders, so instead, for your edification, Kim Darby (who played Miri) will show you what that might look like, plus you can see her in another role for comparison.
I'm sure a more modern remake of this episode would have a greater tendency toward a
Lord of the Flies scenario for the kids, and maybe more dangerous games than hide and seek between the kids and the landing party. Modern stuff tends more toward dystopian societies than the more utopian ideal that Roddenberry was suggesting with Trek.
Never a favorite episode of mine as a kid, and certain elements of stupidity still stand out, but other than that, the story grew on me, and I like it more now - particularly some of the scenes, like McCoy taking the medicine that could be a beaker full of death. Always nice to get some deeper insight in the McCoy character.
I gave this episode only a 3 out of 10 before since it was filled with non-sense and improbable things, but with new special effects, and looking harder at the characters and less at the science, I'll revise that to a 4 out of 10. I'm just never thrilled to see this episode again, despite some great humor in it as a source of parody.
