Miri Screenshots and Video [UPDATED]

Still love this ep, despite any flaws. It works on an emotional, gut level. A dead planet populated by children and a landing party stranded by disease. (Yes I know they had easy options that weren’t used by the script writers, but hey… it still works.)

This was mentioned in an earlier thread… it was a family affair:

Kellie Flanagan (Blonde Girl), Steven McEveety (Redheaded Boy), John Megna (Little Boy), Irene Sale (Louise (uncredited)), Scott Whitney (Small Boy (uncredited)), Darlene Roddenberry (Dirty-Face Girl in Flowered Dress (uncredited)), Lisabeth Shatner (Little Girl in Red-Striped Dress (uncredited)), Dawn Roddenberry (Little Blonde Girl (uncredited)), Phil Morris (Boy in Army Helmet (uncredited)), Scott Dweck (Boy Who Stole Phasers #2 (uncredited)), Jon Dweck (Boy Who Stole Phasers #1 (uncredited))

ps- Paramount called, trekmaster and said the only thing that would keep them from fixing the early CGI model would be if someone was rude enough to claim “FIRST!!” when he was actually SECOND!!!

Upon watching this episode again, I too noticed how much has changed and improved regarding the work CBS Digital has produced. If you look at the CGI vs. original FX screenshots above, it was obvious that early on in the game CBS-D was slavishly attempting to reproduce exact replicas of the original FX shots. The earth is tilted the same way and the viwescreen images show the same land masses.

It’s nice to see that they’ve moved away from that mandate somewhat and given us some new compositions for the FX. They certainly have come a long way in a short amount of time.

As for the episode, while the story sideswipes some technological issues for dramatic impact, it still works so well on an emotional level. The fact that the landing party never forgot that they weren’t just trying to save themselves, but the children of this unfortunate world as well, says a lot about how the characters were to develop as the series went on. Also, it’s as close as TOS ever came to a “zombie” episode, and I love zombie stories!

By the way, is Miri’s planet really an example of “Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Development?” It isn’t an Earth-like planet (like in “Bread and Circuses”); it’s another Earth, possibly created from some weird time-space anomaly that Earth passed through during it’s history. I thought Hodgkin’s Law only applied to Earth-like worlds, not actual copies of Earth. I know I’m nitpicking a bit, but this has always confused me.

Isn’t it strange that the labs and “life prolongation” experiments took place in Miri’s little town and then wiped out almost a whole planet? One thing about TOS that has always been a little irritating to me is that most episodes took place in a area the size of a sound stage or a back lot. Oh well, I still love TOS!

By the way, regarding the other “Earth” seen here – no extension of any Hodgkins law could explain a parallel Earth that had the same continental shapes. Of the theories that I’ve heard, I liked the one that the entire Solar System at some stage passed through a giant version of the “quantum schism” later encountered on a smaller scale by Voyager in “Deadlock”. The system was duplicated, but one of them remained stationary whilst the other floated on in the galaxy until a large gap between them was achieved. This could have happened millennia ago.

Load of nonsense of course, but it’s convincing Voyager technobabble, which is my favourite kind of nonsense.

As for duplicate Earths, well… all Petri dishes look the same, too. So what makes you think our planet is unique? No sane scientist would conduct an experiment with just a single specimen – in this case, a single planet. :-)

Maybe God accidentally hit the enter key twice.

That’s Africa and the Arabian Peninsula in the “Zoom In” shot, not the Midwest.

Anthony-
If they didn’t get the opportunity to fix those early episodes, that’s gonna be a sad shame. I don’t care what SOME people say on here, they’ve gotten their space-legs now and really are doing a fine job overall. It pains me to see their early work intermixed with their later and vastly superior work. Well, in season one it’ll be about a third to a fourth of the episodes with the “old model”, season 2…only 2 episodes or so…and season 3 none. I guess it’s just like when the show first came out. The effects got better and better even if the stories didn’t.

17: In terms of the CGI work, I really don’t see the “vast” differences between the earlier and later shots. Then again, I haven’t really seen a side-by-side comparison. Any chance someone can pick a couple of representative screenshots to compare the different models?

Not bad..Wish their was more to do in this one. unfortunately their really isn’t.

You know, if they dont get a chance to re-do the earlier episodes with the new CGI model, there will probably be yet ANOTHER DVD set where its eventually done. I’m tired of buying TOS so many damned times. I’ve got the episodes on VHS, the original single volume DVDs, and then the season box sets. Now I plan on buying the TOS remastered sets….how many times do I have to buy the damned things?

#27…I guess I’m one of the lucky ones that never purchased TOS when it was marketed as two episode VHS tapes, or two episode DVDs. Back then I knew I couldn’t afford to buy all three seasons one disk at a time, so I just never bothered.

But once Star Trek TOS was available as season box sets, I jumped at the chance to finally own all three seasons! Unfortunately, I was one of those fools that had to purchase them when they were first released, and I paid almost $100 per season!

I do plan on buying the remastered DVDs but only if they are released in standard DVD format. Of course I will be keeping my original TOS seasons box sets too. But this time I am going to be smart and in no hurry to purchase them. I will probably wait a year or two when the price will probably drop almost 50%, just like they did with the original TOS season sets.

So for me, the remastered TOS episodes will be the last versions I buy. I could really care less if CBS decides to “re-remaster” them all over again some time in the future. Two versions of TOS is enough for me…

Mike :o

I always imagined that Miri’s planet was a parallel universe Earth that somehow fell into our timeline… and somehow ended up light-years away from where it should be, just to make things that little more bizzare.

Maybe all ice ages carve up a North America-like planet into Great Lakes? We have only one example so far, there may be more.

The Hodgkin thing reminds me of an Earth Hodgkin – Thomas Hodgkin was the first to discover that certain lymph system abnomolies may be cancers. These parallel cancers ultimately did prove a bit different and are now called Hodgkin’s Diseas and Non-Hodgkin lymphomas.

#23

Wow thre’s not really a huge amount of difference is there. Neither have managed to touch Dochtermans Enterprise.

#10 Anthony

I have a feeling your feeling is correct… unfortunately.

Well in Miri the altitude of the Earth orbit is much higher – presumably the “standard orbit”. In “Tomorrow is Yesterday” the altitude is, as was earlier stated, based on an ISS actual photo, but since the ISS orbits at only about 350 km, that is the height of the Enterprise’s orbit; which is probably quite low in comparison. (e.g. Geostationary orbit is 36,000 km and Kirk once told Sulu to set his orbit at 20,000 perigee) .

So I assume in “TisY” the Enterprise remained in an unusally low orbit during its stay – perhaps to better scan of what was going on down below, or to give petrified redshirts a nicer view of home out the port windows.

BTW, one thing I think CBS-D has still to perfect is the navigational red & green lights on the top of the saucer. In TOS FX these were big and very visible, but in these new shots the actual light seems extremely dim in comparison. This bugs me as these should, technically, be one of the birghtest sources of light on the ship, otherwise what is the point of them being “navigational” lights?

Now that I’ve seen the FX video for the episode, the new CGI effects look a lot better than I thought. The Earth looks more realistic when you see the entire segment instead of just a screenshot. Even the Enterprise looked pretty good, though not as good as in the newest remastered episodes.

I guess for now on I should hold back on my criticisms of the newly remastered effects until I can see the FX videos, and not just individual screenshots.

Mike ;o

The effects video is missing the ship and planet shots from the episode opening scene..

#39 Oceanhopper

One of the things that now stands out for me too, is how DIM the red and green navigational lights on top of the saucer are on the CGI model compared to the original miniature. I miss their colourful brightness.

#43:

Yeah, I was wondering why those were missing too. For the video and the screenshots.

CBS digital is GOD!!!! I can’t wait to see them do The Cloud-Minders, these planet shots look fantastic, 1000 % better than the originals!