50th Anniversary TOS Episode Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

October 27th, 1966, "Miri"

The Fiver (by Kristina)
Memory Alpha Page
Transcript

The Episode:

* With all of these early warp colonies sending out SOS's, I'm wondering: Are SOS's still going to be a thing in the era of subspace? Wouldn't the Vulcans have an equivalent signal that would be more efficient? Is it possible to tap out dots and dashes in a subspace signal that would "hold itself together" further and through more interference because of it's simplicity?
* Ah yes, our first "it looks exactly like Earth to save money" planet. One of the Shatnerverse novels tells us that the Preservers made all of these copies. Yeah, still don't buy it. Even if the same proto-Pangea (insert Magrathea joke here) was set in motion on each planet, there are enough variables to scramble the final continental arrangement, weather system, evolved humanoid form, etc. Just wait until we have exact historical duplication, folks!
* I'm glad that for once we're not relying solely on the available tricorders. It's nice that they remembered that "we have an incurable disease" means "we can still beam stuff IN without contamination."
* Still doesn't mean that the ship couldn't beam new communicators in when the old ones were stolen.
* "Space Central"? Must be a branch of UESPA.

The fiver:

Kirk: Miri has the hots for me? Heavy.

Odd place for a Back to the Future joke, but okay.

Uhura: (over the comm) Data acknowledged. The answer is 42.
McCoy: Good. Now if we could only figure out the question... 47 minus 5?

Makes one wonder how long it would take Deep Thought to find the cure.

Redshirt: Is there something wrong with this episode? I have this gut feeling I shouldn't be alive.

A classic fiver gag.

Memory Alpha:

* They point out that the duplicate Earth thing is never resolved. Of course this is merely to save money on the special effects. I wonder why the remastered version didn't change the planet and cut these lines to avoid this problem. I sure would have.
* Apparently Rand only appeared in eight episodes, and this is the only one where she left the ship. It sure seems like she was in more than that, doesn't it?
* There's a Department of Temporal Investigations novel that says that this planet looks like Earth because it's the Earth of a parallel universe that was accidentally brought here by a subspace phenomenon. Yeah, um, I'd almost rather go with the Preserver idea.