Who Mourns For "Miri"?
- Thread starter Esteban
- Start date
I...think he's makin' it up....
Ok, I have to tell a story which rarely comes up because only the right people will understand why it's so weird and creepy.
It was the summer of 1988 and I was working in a summer stock theater in Clinton, Iowa.
Now, the theater was owned by the Parks and Rec department of the city. Since part of the compensation for a lot of small summer stock theaters is free housing, the City of Clinton put us up in government housing.
Think Cabrini Green Light.
When I was unpacking my stuff and hauling it up to the apartment I'd be living in with three other guys for the summer, a resident came running out the building door, slamming it hard. Then a woman stuck her head out a 2nd story window and screamed:
"Don't you be talking' to me about God! I be close to God!! Mother-frakker!!"
So I got all my stuff up to the apartment, met my roommates, and then went to a party being thrown by the Artisitic Director. The whole company was there, and we had a night of drunken revelry.
Waking up the next morning, in that sort of twilight phase before you're fully awake, I heard the following sound emenate from the plaza below my bedroom window:
"Nyah-nyah nyah nyah nyah-nyah."
I kid you not. And it wasn't done rapidly. No, it was exactly the way it was in "Miri": starting out slow and quiet, and getting louder and more rapid ...
I looked over at my roommate, who, as it turned out, was also awake. We just stared at each other as this chanting got louder and faster until finally it broke. There was absolute silence after that.
My roommate and I were thoroughly creeped out.
We didn't imagine it, either: we asked about it at work that morning, and some of the others had heard it, too.
It was a weird beginning to what turned into a very weird summer.
It was the summer of 1988 and I was working in a summer stock theater in Clinton, Iowa.
Now, the theater was owned by the Parks and Rec department of the city. Since part of the compensation for a lot of small summer stock theaters is free housing, the City of Clinton put us up in government housing.
Think Cabrini Green Light.
When I was unpacking my stuff and hauling it up to the apartment I'd be living in with three other guys for the summer, a resident came running out the building door, slamming it hard. Then a woman stuck her head out a 2nd story window and screamed:
"Don't you be talking' to me about God! I be close to God!! Mother-frakker!!"
So I got all my stuff up to the apartment, met my roommates, and then went to a party being thrown by the Artisitic Director. The whole company was there, and we had a night of drunken revelry.
Waking up the next morning, in that sort of twilight phase before you're fully awake, I heard the following sound emenate from the plaza below my bedroom window:
"Nyah-nyah nyah nyah nyah-nyah."
I kid you not. And it wasn't done rapidly. No, it was exactly the way it was in "Miri": starting out slow and quiet, and getting louder and more rapid ...
I looked over at my roommate, who, as it turned out, was also awake. We just stared at each other as this chanting got louder and faster until finally it broke. There was absolute silence after that.
My roommate and I were thoroughly creeped out.
We didn't imagine it, either: we asked about it at work that morning, and some of the others had heard it, too.
It was a weird beginning to what turned into a very weird summer.
I can't stop laughing, Dakota--what a hilarious coincidence and you told it well. 
I'll bet you anything that the person who said it was inspired by that Star Trek episode... was probably up to some mischief on someone else, and you happened to overhear it.
As for the episode, I appreciated it for some of the merits stated, but was really turned off by the too close parallel to Earth. And nearly exact set from Return of the Archons and City on the Edge of Forever didn't help either. The other thing... the dysfunctional kid management thing. There was much more potential to this part of it... and instead it was handled rather two dimensionally. It could have been a much better episode.
I'll bet you anything that the person who said it was inspired by that Star Trek episode... was probably up to some mischief on someone else, and you happened to overhear it.As for the episode, I appreciated it for some of the merits stated, but was really turned off by the too close parallel to Earth. And nearly exact set from Return of the Archons and City on the Edge of Forever didn't help either. The other thing... the dysfunctional kid management thing. There was much more potential to this part of it... and instead it was handled rather two dimensionally. It could have been a much better episode.
^Oh, oh, yeah...okay....
I think there is always a kind of unconscious uncomfortableness whenever there is a Trek episode where they beam down to a planet, find a bunch of people who look, act and dress just like humans and that one patch of land is a stand in for the whole planet. Maybe it just seems kind of chintzy.
One problem I always had is the kids antipathy towards adults. They speak about "grups" as if that is some kind of alien race. Didn't these kids have parents who were grups and treated them nicely before all the shit went down?
Other than that it is a good episode.
"No blah, blah, blah" is worth the price of admission alone.
I always thought this episode raised an interesting philosophical/scientific question. If you could actually have kids who live hundreds of years and have all that experience, but don't develop physically, will they actually remain completely kid-like?
One problem I always had is the kids antipathy towards adults. They speak about "grups" as if that is some kind of alien race. Didn't these kids have parents who were grups and treated them nicely before all the shit went down?
Other than that it is a good episode.
"No blah, blah, blah" is worth the price of admission alone.
I always thought this episode raised an interesting philosophical/scientific question. If you could actually have kids who live hundreds of years and have all that experience, but don't develop physically, will they actually remain completely kid-like?
So do I. It's one of my favorites.
A "flaw" after forty years of reflection and too many too serious attempts to make Trek make sense, IMAO. Parallel worlds are one of sf's cool things; when my friends and I saw that opening sequence on NBC our reaction to "another Earth" was just WOW.
Sense of wonder, dude. If there's one thing I still adore every time about watching TOS it's being reminded of how naively kids could admire entertainment in that era.
Also fun to see a couple of actors who would become movie stars of the era within a couple of years of the episode - kind of like catching Gene Hackman on The Invaders.
That was the "Forty Acres" backlot.
How can you hold it against Miri that the location was used in later episodes?
As someone else said, the discovery of a parallel Earth is a cool Scifi concept... it's something that would be right at home in an episode of The Twilight Zone or Dimension X.
Miri is actually one of my favorite TOS episodes. I don't find the flaws too big to just ignore so I can get on with enjoying the episode. One of the first I got on tape.