June 29, 2014
47 years ago this week, on Thursday, June 29, 1967,
NBC aired “Miri” for the second time.
NBC promoted this episode with the accompanying pictures and this description, sent out to newspapers across America and Canada:
The USS Enterprise discovers another “Earth” whose childlike inhabitants are victims of an abortive experiment to retard normal aging processes, in “Miri” on NBC Television Network’s colorcast of Star Trek.... Captain James Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) head a landing party to an uncharted planet, with the physical characteristics bearing an incredible resemblance to the Earth. They befriend Miri (Kim Darby), a disheveled and frightened young girl whose story of the failure of a mass youth experiment is questioned until their own lives are imperiled when they lose communication with the hovering spacecraft.
McCoy and Tricycle (NBC press photo)
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Ed McCready with Nimoy and Shatner, NBC publicity photo (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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Kim Darby with Shatner, NBC publicity photo (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
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In the teleplay by Adrian Spies, with a great deal of rewriting from Gene Roddenberry and John D.F. Black, Yeoman Janice Rand says, “Eternal childhood, filled with play, no responsibility. It’s almost like a dream.” Kirk tells her, “I wouldn’t examine that dream too closely, Yeoman. It might not turn out to be very pretty.”
After reading Adrian Spies first version of the story for this episode, Star Trek Associate Producer Robert Justman wrote to Gene Roddenberry:
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I like it very, very much.... I feel certain that we can find the sort of exterior sets we need for this show on the back lot at [Desilu] Culver. They certainly are in poor shape and would fit the story we have here. Also, I would suggest that wardrobe be contemporary to our century as we have it right now…. Certainly, there will be some difficulties with regard to casting children in the parts called for. Hopefully, we will be shooting this show some time during the summer school vacation so that we can get the advantage of having six hours work with the kids instead of four.
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Justman made sure that “Miri” was shot in the summer, between August 20 and 30, 1966, allowing more hours a day with the young performers. In other memos to his colleagues, he predicted the filming would go slow and be difficult because of the child and teen actors. He was right, but it was only one who proved to be problematic.
Which one? And how bad did it get? What did the critics think of this episode when it first aired? What did Gene Roddenberry think, and what did he tell his staff in a memo written shortly after post production was completed.
And how did “Miri” do in the Nielsen ratings when it was broadcast on NBC?
Find the answers to these questions and much more in the chapter devoted to “Miri,” in the Saturn Award winning book, These Are the Voyages – TOS: Season One. Read all about it and then watch "Miri" again, like you've never seen it before.
Which one? And how bad did it get? What did the critics think of this episode when it first aired? What did Gene Roddenberry think, and what did he tell his staff in a memo written shortly after post production was completed.
And how did “Miri” do in the Nielsen ratings when it was broadcast on NBC?
Find the answers to these questions and much more in the chapter devoted to “Miri,” in the Saturn Award winning book, These Are the Voyages – TOS: Season One. Read all about it and then watch "Miri" again, like you've never seen it before.
