Time to hop in the Wayback Machine, and go back to 2013. That was the year Game of Thrones’ Red Wedding shocked everyone, and we were all invested in the latest Hunger Games. And, the year Miley Cyrus shed her last bit of Hannah Montana innocence at the MTV VMAS. Wearing a revealing outfit, she performed with Robin Thicke to his big, sexually suggestive hit that year, “Blurred Lines.” The world collectively clutched its pearls. All kidding aside, people really freaked out, and the internet responded in kind. One video response from the YouTube channel AriesHeadFilms had Captain Kirk’s Star Trek crew receive a transmission from Earth of the infamous performance, and the result is hilarious.
To be fair, Miley’s Chuck E. Cheese-inspired outfit and hairdo kind of do indeed look like something an alien would wear on Gene Roddenberry’s iconic series. So it somehow all fits. The scenes in this video are mostly edited together from random bridge shots of the starship Enterprise from old Star Trek episodes. Chekov losing his mind is from the episode “The Tholian Web.” The crew covering their ears in pain is from “The Immunity Syndrome.” But the best part comes at the end, when the Miley of it all destroys the Enterprise in a gigantic explosion. That part actually comes from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and not the TV series, but why nitpick?
Back in 2013, pundits were saying that this performance would end Miley Cyrus’ career as a pop superstar. They said she’d finally “gone too far.” But what do pundits know? Usually nothing. Miley has only released even more hits since then, including her 2023 megahit, “Flowers.” But this video edit is a fun time capsule back to a time when it felt like the sky wasn’t falling every single day, and Miley Cyrus just twerking suggestively seemed like the end of the world.