Critical notes, as always, are after the Enneagram breakdown.
LEFTOVER NINE
On the bridge Kirk reacts intensely to an old Earth-style SOS that the Enterprise is receiving. None of the crew is a familiar face except for Spock at his science station and Yeoman Janice standing near the captain’s chair.
They approach an Earth-like planet, although no colonies or vessels are out this far. Bones comes onto the bridge, and the camera dollies in for a two shot of him and Kirk as Spock reads out the planet’s specifications, eerily familiar . Close-up of Janice, vaseline lens and all, as she reacts: “Earth!” Heh, the view screen of this planet shows the African continent and the Arabian peninsula. “Not THE Earth,” Kirk says. “Another Earth.” The globe on the screen rotates and we see Florida and the Eastern seaboard.
Roll credits.
ONE
After recapping events so far, Kirk prepares to transport down to this alternate Earth. We’ll land in the vicinity of the distress signal, he says.
Here they come, beaming into a rough cityscape. It’s Kirk, Bones, Spock, Janice, and two red shirts. Already their clothes look incongruous. (It’s just one of the studio back lots with a couple of derelict classic cars, burnt brick building facades, and some random debris in the street. Actually, it looks like an Old West set mixed up with a Prohibition set.) Spock estimates this is the equivalent of 1960’s era Earth. The red shirts have gone in separate directions to scout the area. Heh. Evidence suggests, says Spock, the distress signal is automated. No one is around.
TWO
Red Shirt 1, phaser out, strides past a building. The door mysteriously closes after he passes. The gang stop to ponder a child’s tricycle. As Bones gently sets it back on the rubbish pile, spinning its squeaky wheel, a wild man yells and comes from a building. He attacks Bones. Intense music. Everyone, including Red Shirt 1, run to his aid. Lol, Kirk punches it.
THREE
Downed, the wild man crawls to the trike and cries. He’s got blond hair and blotchy purple (?) skin, and kinda looks like a surf dude. He wants the trike fixed, and our team is gentle and sympathetic.
FOUR
Then he goes into some kind of seizure and the camera moves to close-up. Yikes. It’s a mask or make-up, heavy, with human features exaggerated. He gibbers, and then collapses. Yes! “He’s dead.” Bones, tricorder out, says the man’s metabolic rate was impossibly high, burning itself up. He “aged a century in just the past few minutes”. The sound of falling pebbles moves them on; he’s left dead on the rubbish heap.
There’s a lot of running through the streets, Janice’s basket-do bobbing like the whole wig will fall off. They enter a building, the room looking like a Fallout set. A noise behind a closet door, and they all approach, phaser’s ready. Kirk pulls the door open, and the camera dollies into a close-up on his surprised face. Cut to inside the closet: it’s Kim Darby, sweetly innocent with tear tracks on her cheeks. Janice soothes her.
Spock and the red shirts go outside to take readings. From inside a building we get someone’s POV as they rub dirt from the glass, showing Spock outside in the street. Interesting angle as Spock walks forward to peer through the clean spot.
Crosscut with Darby as she worries about what the “gr’ups” will do to her. Bones, Kirk, and Janice try to get her story. The gr’ups got sick and then they were gone. Bones suggests a plague might explain this place. Oh, she’s Miri, the title name. Kirk tells her she’s pretty and, although Shatner tries to deliver it as a wise elder would, it’s still freakin’ creepy.
Back to Spock. Hearing a noise, he calls the red shirts to his side. Debris falls on their heads from the fire escape, and then a taunting sing-song is heard. Nya-nya-ne-nya-nya. (I hate this episode, lol.) Spock reports back to Kirk about the scurrying children, like animals. Kirk asks Miri if she’ll take him to the doctor place (he’s looking for records of what happened). He’s so charming, holding her hand. Is he manipulating her, or is he actually attracted to a teenager, or is the whole interplay something from a time when people didn’t see how unsafe this looked?
SWITCH
Oh, ho. He reaches out to cup her chin, exposing a sore on the ball of his thumb. Miri freaks out — it’s the plague. (Darby, of course, is excellent.) Close-up on Kirk as he registers he’s infected. Cut to commercial.
Captain’s log. Miri has taken them to the records building — the place sending the automatic transmission. Everyone has the “blue splotch” except Spock. And Bones has found a laboratory and gathered tissue samples. Interesting exposition dump in voiceover.
FIVE
Now we see McCoy at the microscope. A splotch is on his knuckle. Calling up to the ship, he asks for better equipment to be sent down. And Kirk tells the ship to send down no more personnel. In the time it’s taken to run this scene, Bones’ splotch has grown down his finger joint. Miri, noticing, says it spreads fast when you’re old.
Reading the file, Kirk notices the lab was working on a life prolongation project.
The equipment has arrived and Bones continues to study the plague. Spock speculates that the disease is glandular: that when the children enter puberty they will contract the splotch. But this planet has been like this for 300 years. How can there be children? Janice asks why Miri, who was raised as a wild animal in the streets, would stay with them in the lab. A need for order and rules, Kirk says. Spock (that magnificent bastard) says, “There may be other emotions at work in this case.” Cut to the definitely pubescent Darby. (She was 19 when this filmed, three years before shooting True Grit.)
The ship calls down the numbers Spock had requested, and he enters them in his little computer. Beep boop. The life prolongation, which failed in the adults, ages the children one month for every one hundred years. These children are immensely old. Kirk wants to see the rest of them. He takes Miri’s hand and leads her outside.
And here are the children, hiding in a building that looks out on the street. Oh, Lord, it’s Michael Pollard! He’s almost 30 here, playing a child. He’s the leader, and he’s a rabble rouser. Kirk approaches. The children swarm him, one of the girls riding his back. It’s hard to tell, but I think she’s got the plague. Oh, yeah, definitely. Kirk stuns her with the phaser. No, she’s dead. Miri says, she was a little bit older than I am, and hugs him, afraid.
Back at the lab. Kirk has tasked Miri to sharpen pencils while the adults talk. Spock can calculate how much time they have before they go mad and destroy each other. He also makes clear that he’s a carrier, even though the plague doesn’t affect him. He can’t go back to the ship, either. They have seven days. Cut to commercial.
Captain’s log: they’ve found no solution yet, and five days remain.
As they talk over the science, the nya-nya call begins. Janice has taken Miri for a walk. The others run out of the building to check on them. When they leave, the children enter the lab through the duct work. Pollard pockets the communicators and sneaks back out. The team returns and notices. They need those communicators to access the ship computers. Close-up on Kirk’s face. Lol, they’ve made him angry, I think. You don’t mess with Kirk when he’s angry.
Three days left. Kirk sweats and paces. His splotch goes from his palm down his forearm. Spock quietly watches as Kirk snipes at Bones. Janice loses it, running from the room, and Kirk follows. Miri hangs back and eavesdrops. “I used to try to get you to look at my legs,” Janice says. “Look at my legs.” Kirk glances down, and we see the blue splotches on her thighs. Kirk comforts her, patting her back, and says, “We’re all frightened.” Miri slips away. And then Bones calls out, “I’ve found something!” He’s isolated the disease this planet’s people created. Now it’s about a vaccine. Miri watches them, then leaves.
Cut to Miri with the children as she lays out a plan. She’ll tell Janice that one of the little ones is hurt. They’ll be able to isolate the Yeoman. And “Mr. Lovey Dovey” will try to find her when she goes missing. Bonk bonk on the head, chant the Lord of the Flies children, wielding hammers. Cut to commercial.
Spock and Bones have a beaker of science-y liquid. What’s the dosage, Bones asks, a large blue splotch on his cheek. And Kirk has Miri by the arms, shaking her, as he asks after Janice. He battles the short temper that comes with the disease, then does that little Shatner pause-speak. “Where is she . . . (wait for it) — Something happened to her!” Love it.
He says he’ll look for Janice, and Spock reiterates they need the communicators. They can’t test the formula without the computers. Bones and Kirk are about to come to blows. Only a few hours left.
Miri won’t help, so Kirk tells her the truth. When you grow up, you get the disease. She denies it: It only happens some of the time.
SIX
It happens all the time he says, holding her cheeks. It’s happening to you right now!! Aargh! He holds up her arm with the blotch. Haha, he grabs the back of her head and forces her to look down at it. (Wow, he’s committed to the moment.) Darby breaks down and he holds her close.
SEVEN
Cut to the children. Move through the room of these devil spawn until we see Janice tied to a chair. Miri arrives, peeking through the door. When she pushes it open she reveals Kirk. One shot of Pollard, angry, and one shot of Janice thinking, My Hero.
EIGHT
Kirk tries to talk to the children rationally and they go off on their chanting. “No blah-blah-blah,” he screams at them. Okay, that was hilarious. He said it with utter intention. Masterful. The children attack. Pollard starts the nya-nya. Kirk keeps trying to argue while the children turn into nightmare fuel. Bonk bonk, while Pollard in close-up keeps that serial killer smile.
Kirk tries the “there’s no food left” argument, and the “look at my arms”. Nothing. Pollard still rallies the troops. Then he shows the blood on the children’s hands and says, you’re the gr’ups now, hurting others just like they did. Heh, that gets through.
Back to the beaker and Spock. He decides to go check on the Captain, leaving McCoy alone with the syringe. Bones, calmly, injects himself with the vaccine. Oh, yesss!! He winces, he screams, he falls. Yes! Beautiful.
Spock, hearing him, runs back in with a perfectly healthy red shirt in tow. (Wut? I guess he has green blood like Spock.) Is he dead, Mr. Spock, Red 1 asks. Not yet. And here comes Kirk with the children and the communicators. He and Spock kneel over Bones. “Look at his face!” (It’s a very good time lapse of McCoy’s cheek as the blotch fades.) Kirk smiles at Miri.
NINE
On the bridge, Kirk, Janice, and Bones watch the star-filled view screen as the Enterprise leaves orbit. They left the children on the planet with a medical team, while teachers and advisers are on the way.
Miri really loved you, Janice says. Yes, Kirk says, but I never get involved with older women. (Ack.)
And away they go.
CRITICAL NOTES
So the plot explains why Kirk is so creepy and why Shatner is trying to play it straight. The showrunners need Miri to misinterpret the Captain’s concern for an imagined romance. The scenes are way overwritten, though, which is why they have that skin-crawling vibe. A young woman only needs handsome and authoritative. They should’ve let Janice lead the conversation while Kirk observed, looking manly. Perfectly believable, much less pervy.
As for Miri’s jealousy driving a revenge plot, please. First of all, no one would ever feel anything but love for our dear Basket Head. Second of all, Darby plays the role as wholesome and innocent. Backstabbing and machinations just feel contrived.
What is the central arc to this episode? We have two possibilities: Cure the disease, or save the children. My first instinct is the disease; it has more action potential. The progression of the blue splotches, the tension of finding a vaccine, the relief when a cure works — these are great beats. The children are much harder to pin down. Is Miri the focal point, or is it the gang? The fact that they’re unwatchable brats is also difficult. I’m not sure even the showrunners knew which arc to emphasize. This Enneagram breakdown doesn’t announce itself as the great plotlines do.
Why is the fact that this planet is Earth-identical even necessary? The entire opening is devoted to looking at this faux Earth. It has no bearing on the story, except in a vague there-but-for-the-grace-of-God way. Perhaps the showrunners were uncomfortable showing human characters in space without this framework. A little green make-up, an ear prosthetic — voila! Alien. Otherwise, why do they look exactly like our heroes? Oh, Earth.
It was at this point in my musings and questions that I recognized the Enneagram structure. The Three and the Six are the points where the disease interacts with the children. At the Three our gang is first confronted with its existence. At the Six it impacts the child we know best. The Eight is a blend of both arcs: Kirk must save the children by convincing them of the danger, and the disease must be cured. Miri at the Seven unites these arcs, leading to a complete Eight. The Switch always had to be the moment when our gang catches the disease, even though it unbalances the Four and Five. The trick, of course, is recognizing that the entire opening is unrelated fluff. I’ve called it a Leftover Nine (which indicates a reference to an older story, completing at the beginning of this story). It’s more a nod to convention: we can’t show you an alien story about humans unless we explain how they exist. Fake Earth! I could call it padding, I could call it outdated writing, or I could call it the pre-credit hook. Whatever, it’s superfluous to the actual structure. It had me bamboozled for a minute.