So, the set-up is the Enterprise hears a Morse Code distress signal out in space (somehow) and follows it back to a planet that is identical to Earth.\u00a0 The landing party includes Kirk, Spock, Bones and, for no explicable reason, Yeoman Janice Rand.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got to stop here for a moment, and comment on the fact that even though we\u2019re only a quarter of the way through season one it should be noted that finding themselves on a planet that inexplicably resembles Earth and responding to a distress signal, which implies danger, the Chief Medical Officer, the First Officer and the Captain are being sent down into an unknown and possibly lethal emergency.\u00a0 But at least they brought the pretty girl with them for back up.\u00a0 Okay, end of rant.<\/p>\n
The upshot is that a virus that was meant to bestow practically endless longevity to the whole population instead killed everyone but the prepubescent children.\u00a0 Three hundred years later the Enterprise crew finds the \u201cchildren\u201d still young but terrified of grownups that they call grups.\u00a0 Apparently, the dying adults went crazy and attacked everything in their path as they were dying.\u00a0 The children call themselves \u201conlies\u201d but as each of the older children eventually reaches puberty the disease covers him in hideous sores, rapidly ages him, drives him mad and kills him.\u00a0 The Enterprise landing party is infected immediately and has a week to find the cure before they will die on the planet quarantined from the Enterprise.\u00a0 Only Spock is immune because of his green blood.<\/p>\n
They find a teenage girl named Miri, played by True Grit actress Kim Darby, who has a crush on Kirk and in typical Kirk fashion he creepily smirks as she moons over him.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty bad.\u00a0 The other onlies are a weird collection of random children and stunted former child actors, one of whom, Michael J. Pollard, was closing in on thirty years of age.\u00a0 The actor who played Dill in \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird,\u201d John Megna, is in the cast as a supposedly little kid but he was fifteen years old and although he was still extremely short his head had grown disproportionately so his appearance was truly disconcerting.\u00a0 Anyway, the sympathy we\u2019re supposed to feel for the onlies doesn\u2019t happen because they are creepy and vicious and weird looking.<\/p>\n
The kids steal the communicators from the landing party and this hampers the search for a cure.\u00a0 Kirk, Bones and Janice begin to show signs of the disease and they become extremely short tempered with each other.\u00a0 One particularly embarrassing scene has Janice Rand pulling back the collar of her blouse to show a sore on her chest and then admitting to Kirk that she has always wanted him to notice her legs but now they were disfigured with sores.\u00a0 Careful Janice, those kinds of things can\u2019t be unsaid and Kirk doesn\u2019t forget.<\/p>\n
Finally, Kirk gets Miri to bring him to the onlies.\u00a0 She adds her voice to his story that they are all in danger.\u00a0 At first the onlies attack him and beat him with large crescent wrenches and odd-looking clubs.\u00a0 Kirk makes some of his patented looks of pain.\u00a0 But eventually he convinces them to return the communicators and trust the Enterprise crew to help them.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Bones throws caution to the wind and injects himself with the vaccine.\u00a0 He immediately keels over and we have to wait as his unconscious body slowly fights off the virus and the sores on his face mercifully disappear.<\/p>\n
As an epilogue Janice tells Kirk that Miri really was in love with him and he agrees but gives a creepy leering smile which probably should have been reported to the FBI\u2019s Pervert Investigation Unit for evaluation.<\/p>\n
Okay, so the scene where the onlies beat up Kirk is kind of funny and Janice\u2019s comment about her legs is wonderfully embarrassing but other than that, meh.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s rate it 5\/\/5.\u00a0 Right in the middle on both axes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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