He points out that their food supplies are running out the children will starve within six months. An injured and bleeding Kirk then angrily begs the children to think of the youngest amongst them, who will be helpless when the older ones are dead. At Jahn's urging, the children swarm and gang up on Kirk. Upon realizing that she herself is infected, Miri brings Kirk to where Rand is being held. Kirk tells Miri that they will all contract the disease if they don't help him find a cure. McCoy discovers a possible vaccine for the disease, but without the ability to check the dosage with the ship's computers, the vaccine may kill the patient. When Yeoman Rand panics at their impending fate and Kirk comforts her, a jealous Miri runs away and schemes with her friends to kidnap Rand. Jahn, an older boy and the leader of the children, steals the landing party's communicators, rendering McCoy's search for a cure impossible without the Enterprise 's computers. However, mistrustful of the "grups", they disperse when Kirk and Miri approach their hideout.
Kirk uses his charm on Miri to persuade her to show him to the other children. Although Spock is apparently immune, he considers himself a carrier who could infect the Enterprise if he returns.
When the disease begins, its victims have seven days to live. The "children" are actually over 300 years old, aging one month every century, but show the mental and emotional maturity of their biological age, rather than their actual age. The party find a medical research laboratory and look through documents for clues to the disease, discovering that it is a side effect of a life-extension experiment, affecting those who have reached puberty death follows a brief period of violent madness. The landing party, except for Spock, notice purple lesions on their bodies Miri tells them that these are the first signs of the disease that has infected the planet and they will soon become like the other adults. The distress call is traced to an automated signal. She and her friends are "onlies", the only ones left. They discover a teenage girl called Miri, who ran away from them because "grups" ("grownups") killed and maimed the children on the planet before dying out. Noises draw the landing party to an abandoned building. They are attacked by a disfigured man, who has a seizure and dies after Kirk hits, while trying to fend him off. McCoy, Yeoman Janice Rand and two security personnel find it resembles an abandoned, 1960s-style Earth. It has a circumference of 24,874 miles.Ī landing party of Captain Kirk, First Officer Spock, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Using the ships instruments Spock measures the planet and determines its dimensions. The USS Enterprise answers a distress call. In the episode, the Enterprise discovers an exact duplicate of Earth, where the only survivors of a deadly man-made plague are some of the planet's children. Written by Adrian Spies and directed by Vincent McEveety, it first aired on October 27, 1966. " Miri" is the eighth episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series, Star Trek.
Star Trek: The Original Series (season 1)