episode review: Star Trek TOS - "Miri"
Nov. 11th, 2009 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eliyesI have a lot of trouble with watching this episode, so let me start by saying VACCINES DON'T WORK LIKE THAT. If you already have a disease, taking the vaccine won't cure you! Vaccines immunize you against getting the disease in the first place by causing your body to produce antibodies that effectively fight the disease in question ahead of time, typically by infecting you with a weaker strain. ARGH! And the bits of the research we get babbled at us clearly are involving a vaccine, which, hey, would totally save the kids but the landing party should have all died. Except possibly Spock. He just would have been quarantined on the planet forever.
THAT SAID, this particular episode has bugged me since I was a kid and too young to understand stuff like the above (although even then, I recall that I really felt the purple marks should have scabbed off instead of magically disappearing) -- this episode still really bothered me. And I don't mean just because OH NOES OUR HEROES MAY ALL DIE AND WILL GO KERAYZEE FIRST, oh no. It's not even the killer kids, aspect.
It was because of Jahn. I find him REALLY CREEPY. I have, in fact, had nightmares about him. *shudder*
And then there's his little friend. What an ugly kid! The big flappy ears, the enormous nostrils, the terrible, protuberant teeth --! And every close-up shot of him, his head is tipped back so his teeth are, like, in the center of the screen, and you can see up his nose to the backs of his eyeballs, no word of a lie --
Watching this as an adult gave me a little bit of a different perspective on the episode, though, I do admit. I was actually able to feel some sympathy for Miri herself (when I was a child, I hated her). I don't think I actually caught on to the time limit thing before, either, and I certainly missed the nuances of "we are slowly going crazy".
However, I remember quite well that I could see that Rand was jealous. I've seen people criticize the delivery of the line, "Captain, look at my legs," because they felt that the slight (and it is only slight) emphasis on "my" makes it sound weird. I disagree; just prior to that, she was freaking out with jealousy over Kirk being nice to Miri. Hell, she actually brought it up to Spock days before.
Of course, this was the last episode with Rand. At the post-filming cast party, Grace Lee Whitney -- the actress who played her -- was sexually assaulted by one of the studio executives, and then she was fired. A bunch of the subsequent scripts had to be re-written to exclude her character. Knowing that, it's difficult for me to disassociate it from the episode, which just makes it that much more uncomfortable to watch.
It's not actually a bad episode, though. Just really, personally creepy to me.
THAT SAID, this particular episode has bugged me since I was a kid and too young to understand stuff like the above (although even then, I recall that I really felt the purple marks should have scabbed off instead of magically disappearing) -- this episode still really bothered me. And I don't mean just because OH NOES OUR HEROES MAY ALL DIE AND WILL GO KERAYZEE FIRST, oh no. It's not even the killer kids, aspect.
It was because of Jahn. I find him REALLY CREEPY. I have, in fact, had nightmares about him. *shudder*
And then there's his little friend. What an ugly kid! The big flappy ears, the enormous nostrils, the terrible, protuberant teeth --! And every close-up shot of him, his head is tipped back so his teeth are, like, in the center of the screen, and you can see up his nose to the backs of his eyeballs, no word of a lie --
Watching this as an adult gave me a little bit of a different perspective on the episode, though, I do admit. I was actually able to feel some sympathy for Miri herself (when I was a child, I hated her). I don't think I actually caught on to the time limit thing before, either, and I certainly missed the nuances of "we are slowly going crazy".
However, I remember quite well that I could see that Rand was jealous. I've seen people criticize the delivery of the line, "Captain, look at my legs," because they felt that the slight (and it is only slight) emphasis on "my" makes it sound weird. I disagree; just prior to that, she was freaking out with jealousy over Kirk being nice to Miri. Hell, she actually brought it up to Spock days before.
Of course, this was the last episode with Rand. At the post-filming cast party, Grace Lee Whitney -- the actress who played her -- was sexually assaulted by one of the studio executives, and then she was fired. A bunch of the subsequent scripts had to be re-written to exclude her character. Knowing that, it's difficult for me to disassociate it from the episode, which just makes it that much more uncomfortable to watch.
It's not actually a bad episode, though. Just really, personally creepy to me.