Here, take this fascinating object.

Miri (TOS episode)

I’ve been thinking a lot about this episode, possibly because I’m in the middle of The Golden Princess, book 11ish in the Emberverse, a post apocalyptic book set after a massive end of the industrial/electronic age in 1998. I’m gonna be rambling what’s been rattling around in my head.

So to recap, The Enterprise finds another Earth in uncharted space (further than any other starship before), one that did a life prolongation project in the 1960s that killed everyone over the age of puberty and those who were under that age lived a prolonged life as children until they eventually reached puberty and died a sudden and violent death. The Enterprise finds a band of survivors and are infected by the still virulent disease until McCoy finds a cure and the children are left with a medical team as the Enterprise leaves.  End credits.

A looooot of questions remained unanswered canonically. There’s been a couple of bits from the novelverse have tried to explain it (and I haven’t read Cry of the Onlies).

The first one is how long has that Earth been there? DTI suggested it had crossed over from a parallel universe fairly recently and was unstable (and eventually returned to its home universe) and one of the Shatnerverse novels suggested it was created by the Preservers.

There are so many possibilities, has it always been there and this Earth had a different constellation to guide itself with? Having different stars in the sky could have changed the course of human history and affected development? Created the different historical outcome? Or did the planet suddenly shift, potentially causing panic and terror in the streets (see Robert Charles Wilson’s Axis for something about that btw) and if so, when? My theory has the Aegis didn’t visit this earth, that the two agents sent before Gary Seven didn’t make it to this planet to stop this experiment. But was this Earth visited by other alien races? Races then-unknown to the Federation. The possibilities are endless.

Then there’s the children themselves. The Enterprise visited one town or city on one continent on a planet that had potentially 3 billion inhabitants in 1960. You’re telling this one small band is all that’s left of the native population? I don’t believe it, not for one moment. I want to see different cities different countries how the children initially survived (gonna dovetail into Jeremiah). I mean some would have created a community or civilization after the adults died, there’s potentially thousands, maybe millions or survivors scattered all over the planet. There could be civilizations of hunter-gatherers, or learners, of latter day free-for all. Were there armed conflicts between the children using the adult’s toys? Maybe deep in the Former Soviet Union there’s a civilization of children that have found a cure and now ageing at a normal rate, are adults now and rearing their own. Then the matter becomes sticky  

What would be Starfleet’s obligation to them, does the Prime Directive apply to an alternate Earth that nearly annihilated itself? Would there be a massive relief effort to take these children off the planet? Would you spread the cure planetwide and leave them to their own devices? It could be a fascinating allegory on colonization. Would Starfleet and the Federation not want to set up a scientific outpost, archaeological digs? Knowledge and treasures lost in WWIII could still be there and a study in parallel development? I know I’d love to set up an outpost there. Is it set in a strategic area, con? What does it look like in the TMP or TNG era? Do you have human born Starfleet officers from that planet that are technically 400+ years old?