Later Star Trek series are out of bounds as well. We’ll treat this as Star Trek Year Zero.
New Episodes Air Tuesday Nights at 8pm on NBC
If you have that Alberta station you may post 1 day early but you must use spoiler boxes.
You may treat this as it were the sixties on the grounds that the discussion sticks to the show. Each new episode is a new episode
Synopsis: The Enterprise responds to an SOS and finds a planet that looks exactly like Earth. Beaming down they find that all the adults are dead from a strange disease leaving only a planet of children. Soon they find they too are affected. Will they find a cure in time?
Well this involves exploring. The idea that the people died from a life prolongation experiment is a nice ironic touch. I do wonder however if they laid it on thick by adding that the food supply is almost gone for the children. Isn’t finding a cure for the disease a good enough deed?
I did like the race against the clock to cure the disease. Once again Mr Spock’s alieness saves him from the possibility of death. In Man Trap he was not killed by the salt sucker because he was Vulcainian and now he does not contract the disease here, I do like the nice touch that he is stranded though because he would be a carrier.
Odd bits of dialogue that stuck out for me:
“No more Blah blah blah”? That scene makes me laugh. Shatner took that silly line and pushed it enough over the top to make it funny.
“A beaker full of death” Spock’s statement just struck me as dumb. Just repeat that line with a booming voice.
“Look at my legs” Jeeze Rand I was looking at them but you don’t have to make it obvious. I wonder what the captain will think now that she admits that she tries to get the Captain to “notice [her] legs”
I thought some of the scenes with Kirk and the little girl were kind of creepy. The Captian seems to be a bit of a sex addict. I wouldn’t have let him out of my sight with her. I also think that Kirk should do something about the Doctors xenophobic attitude toward Spock. That kind of thing should not be tolerated on a starship.
Did I miss the part where they explained WHY there was a planet that looked just like earth? I could have missed it when I went to make coffee.
Throw me into the creepy corner, too. I really don’t think she was just now pubescent, she looked older, but the whole thing had an odd vibe to it.
As for the duplicate Earth… They really need to not fall into that trap. Another nit, the planet they showed “on screen” had no weather. !?
The premise was interesting, tho. What would a world be like if if was filled with 200 yr old children? Do they still count as kids? Would it be a planet wide Lord of the Flies?
I would bet that some of those kids were kids of the producers, writers, or stars.
Meh, it’s just more of that “youth revolution” rubbish you see on Huntley and Brinkley. The adults cause all the problems in the world, la, la, la. It’s bad enough that the damn kids are taking over the rest of TV, now they have to ruin science fiction, too. That Yeoman Rand, though, is one groovy chick who knows a woman’s place.
I hope they don’t overplay that “Oh well, Spock’s immune to everything from the Black Death down 'cos he’s a Vulcanian” thing. That could get old really fast.
I didn’t really get why they made the planet an exact duplicate of Earth. It wasn’t really like they went any where with that, and it’s a REALLY improbable idea. It would have been one thing if they were setting up some kind of parallel history–a world where the Roman Empire never fell, or the Nazis won and were in charge–but as it was, they just threw it out there. It would have made more sense to just have the planet be an old Earth colony, maybe a “lost colony” or something like that.
Maybe it wasn’t part of the original concept of the story, but just to save time and money, the producer decided to use existing stock graphic of Earth, and then felt that they needed to have a character mention that it looks just like earth.
Why, precisely, was Miri’s interaction with Kirk creepy? As he points at the end, Miri is older than he is. And Kim Darby, the actress, was 19 - a bit May/December to Shatner’s 35, but hardly scandalous.
It seems to me there’s a lot of interaction among the characters that just isn’t appropriate. Maybe it’s just me, but if my yeoman came on to me like that, I might just save myself a lot of potential trouble and have her transferred to another ship, or something.
And put me down on the side of thinking Miri and Kirk’s interaction wasn’t “creepy.” She’s an adolescent who has a crush on the first true adult figure she’s ever encountered; he’s trying to be nice to her, while getting information out of her, but not encouraging her. A tough balance, but I think Kirk managed it.
This one creeped me out, and not in a pedophile way. So all the children age slowly until they reach puberty, then bang you’re dead. That older girl with the nasty face…I screamed when I saw her.
So I guess Star Fleet will immunize all visitors who come and rescue the children? And although they’re supposed to be children, they’re actually hundreds of years old, so why treat them as children? Surely with no adults and a dead civilization these “kids” would have matured and learned to fend for themselves? I didn’t buy the running out of food thing. I would think after a couple of decades the kids would have figured out how to plant gardens and hunt.
Were the animals affected? They didn’t mention that.
My two standard complaints were both silenced for this episode. The crew were actually exploring something, and they weren’t idiots.
This is the second “alien disease” episode so far, and I think overall it was much better handled than the earlier one (Naked Time). The infection was isolated, so they concentrated on the group on the planet, and if they’d ever come back. For me, that actually made the episode more tense than the other story.
And everything with the kids was creepy. The worst bit was when all the kids starting beating on Kirk, and that one little blonde girl just stood there, watching and smiling. Nice touch. Kids are evil. I understand that now.
But the crew did nicely. Making the best of the limited resources they had, trying to find a cure. No blatant stupidity. Good on them.
And that’s a pretty good cure they came up with. Not only does it stop the disease, it makes the scars and swelling simply vanish, without a trace, right before your eyes! Nice work, doc.
I think the “just like earth” may have been a way to explain why the street sets look like earth rather than an alien planet. Also I guess that the writers believe that wisdom only comes from physical maturaty rather than experience.
I wasn’t creeped out by the Kirk Miri thing . I think the Kirk’s image through vasaline on the lens (Like they did on Mudd’s women") was just to illistrate her crush on him. Notice they didn’t use the reverse when he dealt with her.
He was being nice, perhaps even using the crush to get what he needed (like the communicators) rather than showing any love back. He didn’t come on to her he just smiled and asked her to do things for him.
Anybody find that onk bonk red head kid the creepiest thing on the episode? Well aside from the first diseased kid who dies crying over his broken trike and that close up of the little girl smiling as they pound on Kirk with hammers and such.
And such important things! “Clean up that desk, will you?” And of course, they need lots of sharpened pencils. That amazing future technology, the pencil.
I wasn’t creeped out, either. I mean, I think the girl was supposed to be way too young for any kind of romantic involvement, but I don’t hink Kirk ever had any nefarious intentions. And Rand was clearly trying to keep an eye on things, anyway.
Not quite yet. And Michael J Pollard hasn’t been in Bonnie and Clyde yet.
I think the Earth reference was to explain why the only planet they had was a globe with the place names erased. Desilu must have cut their special effects budget. Surely there are other planets with streets that are not identical to earth.
Aside from that, I liked this one. It was about people, and it was very good science fiction, in that it explored the ramifications of a single invention. The reason that the kids were the way they were was that the thing that kept them from aging kept them from maturing also. As soon as they developed maturity, (and hormones) they died. What would a world of 12 year olds be like? Much like this one, I think.
The acting and writing were real good also. Kim Darby showed confusion really well.
This one was as good, in its way, as any Twilight Zone episode. Keep it up Gene!
I don’t know about anyone else, but from now on, I will try to work “In the Beforetime, when the Grups were here” into any conversation referring to my childhood.
I think that, in the coming years, Star Trek fans will probably use a lot of quotes from the show when they talk. That way, we’ll be able to recongnize each other and enjoy getting strange stares from those that don’t love this show as much as we do.
Desilu must have cut their special effects budget. Surely there are other planets with streets that are not identical to earth.