They were way ahead of their time. Sadly, this episode may run into more resistance today then back then. I suspect some, certainly not me, would scoff at it as "woke".
I know of two people for whom this episode, during its first run in prime time, was their first exposure to Star Trek. One was a white school teacher, the other was an African-American teen. We didn't discuss it until several decades later. Both were appalled by the story, and neither really came around to appreciate the optimism of Trek. Knowing who the teen became, I suspect she never had the patience to watch the episode to the end, to see the futility of the actions of the characters and the good crew's responses. Although the name of the home world of Bele and Lokai is "Cheron", there is an actual celestial body name "Charon". It is the largest moon of Pluto (or as some believe, half of the Pluto "double system"). This episode continued the crossover with the live Batman series. Frank Gorshin played "The Riddler". I'm always glad to see his work. He did a TV miniseries called "Goliath Awaits" with Mark Harmon and Christopher Lee, that I enjoyed. It's about first contact with a decades-old society grown from the passengers and crew who survived aboard a sunken cruise ship. It's an interesting premise and some pretty cool steampunk. And the real-life "most interesting man in the world" plays "Scotty".
@@rmccombs66 A crossover can be a character, story arc, actor, or other creative talent like a writer, designer, or composer. The word recognizes their creative or performative influence shared between two series. Please come up with a better noun to describe such a relationship, and I'll use it.
@paulsander5433 how is Batman a crossover from Star Trek? Just because an actor was on both? Mr Gorshin did not have black and white makeup on Batman. He didn't wear a costume with covered in question marks on this episode of Star Trek. Just because it happened to be on both shows doesn't make it a crossover.
This was Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's way of showing the foolishness of racial hatred in the world back in the 1960's without getting his show cancelled because this was still kind of a taboo subject to talk about on television back then. Gene was able to sneak it past the network by creating the aliens Bele and Lokai with both having half Black and white pigments on their faces but hating each other because the color pigments were on different sides of their faces in relation to each other which was meant to show how foolish their hatred was over something so minor, which was the point Roddenberry and the writers were trying to get across but still keeping under the networks radar. Great episode overall.
0:01 Mark! Alexxa, greetings! 🖖 This is another episode that I feel like I have a close connection to, and not just because of the series regulars! Frank Gorshin and I met so many times in person that he recognized me whenever I approached his booth or table! 😊 I miss seeing him and the regulars on an annual basis for three to four days in June. 😢
This episode, as sad as it is, always had a positive impact on me. So many even today have nothing but hate to drive them, but hate always leads to nothing but death and sadness. Thanks for a great reaction!
22:18 Mark! Funny! Thanks to various crossover connections, "The Riddler" from the old "ABC" "Batman" series is one of his doppelgangers who resemble him! The versions of "The Riddler" would be doppelgangers who aren't nearly identical. 😊
A lot of people didn’t like this episode because they felt it was too preachy, and it is but if you can get past that, there’s some very good and very contemporary lessons to be learned from it
The acting and the dialogue are what saves this episode. The premise was noble but the execution of such a grand idea needed a bigger budget and more airtime. This was too big an idea to cram into 50 minutes. The makeup comes across as being to metaphorical to be taken seriously. I dont know what the solution would be but then Im not a television producer.
I've never in my life understood the complaint of something or anything(for that matter)being "too preachy". It's like they're saying, "We're too good to be preached at."
@ it’s not a matter of being too good to be preached at, it’s simple human nature, nobody likes to be reminded of their moral failings. I’m a minister myself and even people that agree with you don’t like being preached at even if they agree with your message. There’s something about human beings that we simply resist being told how to act and in a television show, which is their primarily to entertain you, as soon as you come across too hard with the morality message, you take people out of the fantasy of the TV show and hit too close to reality which is the very thing they turned the television show on to escape from
or rather being lectured on something that you are fully cognizant of. It's one thing if the preachiness causes you to see things in a different way, but it is tiresome when you've already embraced what the story is trying to get you to do. It becomes patronizing.
I wonder if mirrors are present on Sheron or have been banned because one would always see the enemy in the mirror looking back. Food for thought? Maybe.
I still see Frank Gorshin as the Riddler - the first villain the 'Adam West' Batman had to deal with in the first 2 episodes. He was perfectly unhinged here as the antagonist.
Echoes of Les Misérables mixed with Sergio Leone style close ups of a galactic staring contest during the self-destruct showdown. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield takes a high hand to the extent its message was timely and urgent. Race relations in the United States in the 1960s were marked by hundreds of riots, in the big cities and the small, with major riots in Harlem, Watts, Detroit, and Newark. The 1967 Detroit Riots, for example, lasted five days, left over forty people dead, four hundred buildings destroyed, and thousands more injured or arrested. The scenes were Belle chases Lokai through the decks of the Enterprise and they both envision burning buildings amidst mass destruction reflected images one could have regularly seen on the evening news back then.
The juxtaposition of Lokai giving a fiery speech to lower ranking crew members while Beal, Kirk, and Spock have a "civilized" discussion, only to have Beal say the most obviously batsh!t things is the best part of this episode.
Yes, I noticed that the writers went out of their way to portray both sides of most social arguments. However, instead of making both characters equal in this, they chose to set up Lokai as the oppressed and Beal as the oppressor. Which I found interesting because they portrayed both equally in a negative light and unwilling to work for a peaceful solution. The writer is showing that neither side is right or wrong. The argument itself is wrong and not worth debating. If we could only learn that lesson today. Love thy neighbor, no matter who he voted for.
In one of the other series I saw a scene which included one of the races standing on the bridge of a starship. I don't remember which it was, but it might be hoped that they were able to settle their differences on a colony world.
30:38 Mark! I'm Viewer #609! 🎉 Thumb Up #101! 👍 Alexxa, you're welcome, and thanks! 😊 Notes: You saw the DR version because the planet is unique now and not a reused one. Ditto for the starbase shuttlecraft. They kept the "invisible" one that way! 😊 The burning cities before were obviously from older WW2 movies and the like. This time it wasn't so obvious. 😊 Acting or casting wise, they got away with what I saw below some called "too preachy" because it was two Caucasians in exaggerated black-and-white face and white-and-black face rather than with more natural flesh tones. Had Lokai been placed by a Black guy under such makeup, the points may have been lost on those in the Southern area saying, "Huh? But he is a Black guy!" Did you catch which part of the Milky Way Galaxy they are from? 🤔 Your reaction to it being a sad ending helped me get past my memories of the old production values getting in the way of the plot points! 😊 I'm not sure if I saw the DR version of this episode more than once. 🤔 Our local "NBC" network affiliate "KFOR" aired the Digitally Remastered episodes when they were new on Sunday Nights at 10:35 PM Central Time! Bye-bye for now and namaste! 🙏
Gene Roddenberry had to tackle racism in a very clever way for 1960s television. He couldn’t just do an episode which straight up said “racism is bad” because the show wouldn’t have been allowed to air in the South, and the ratings plunge would have led to it’s cancellation. Therefore he had to tell the same basic story through analogy, using aliens who were black and white, but with colors reversed, showing that they were really “the same” and that their superficial differences were just arbitrary and stupid.
Hatred & prejudices create chasms in any society. My hope is that the Gene Roddenberry future where the entire earth develops as a peaceful, productive world will prevail.
This was Star Trek’s episode that attempted to refute racial bigotry. Other than that, the outstanding aspect here is the introduction of the self-destruct program, which was used for real 15 years later in the movie Star Trek III.
what i don't get is how Beal shorted out the circuits the way he showed them , how did he do it earlier was the bridge totally empty?? nobody was piloting the enterprise? if there was nobody reported it??? lol
I was watching classic Trek one day with my wife, who hates all things science fiction, and she said, "I will say this, William Shatner is one fine looking man" I said, "Hell yeah baby! Captain kirk is a slayer! Where do you think I learned to kiss you like I do?"
Alexxa, it is better to wipe the eyes with tissue paper in direction to the nose, not away from it. Micro particles can get into the eyes' pockets, which make it difficult to rid them out.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
ST-TOS excels at social commentary. This is one of the best.
They were way ahead of their time. Sadly, this episode may run into more resistance today then back then. I suspect some, certainly not me, would scoff at it as "woke".
I know of two people for whom this episode, during its first run in prime time, was their first exposure to Star Trek. One was a white school teacher, the other was an African-American teen. We didn't discuss it until several decades later. Both were appalled by the story, and neither really came around to appreciate the optimism of Trek. Knowing who the teen became, I suspect she never had the patience to watch the episode to the end, to see the futility of the actions of the characters and the good crew's responses.
Although the name of the home world of Bele and Lokai is "Cheron", there is an actual celestial body name "Charon". It is the largest moon of Pluto (or as some believe, half of the Pluto "double system").
This episode continued the crossover with the live Batman series. Frank Gorshin played "The Riddler". I'm always glad to see his work. He did a TV miniseries called "Goliath Awaits" with Mark Harmon and Christopher Lee, that I enjoyed. It's about first contact with a decades-old society grown from the passengers and crew who survived aboard a sunken cruise ship. It's an interesting premise and some pretty cool steampunk. And the real-life "most interesting man in the world" plays "Scotty".
Just because Frank Gorshin was on this episode and he played The Riddler on Batman, doesn't make it crossover.
@@rmccombs66 A crossover can be a character, story arc, actor, or other creative talent like a writer, designer, or composer. The word recognizes their creative or performative influence shared between two series. Please come up with a better noun to describe such a relationship, and I'll use it.
@paulsander5433 how is Batman a crossover from Star Trek? Just because an actor was on both? Mr Gorshin did not have black and white makeup on Batman. He didn't wear a costume with covered in question marks on this episode of Star Trek. Just because it happened to be on both shows doesn't make it a crossover.
Awe, man! I was hoping you guys would keep up this petty argument. It was just getting good!
@@Lethgar_Smith No need. Sorry to disappoint! 😀
I love your reactions. This is an important episode in my opinion Thank you .
❤️💛
This was Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's way of showing the foolishness of racial hatred in the world back in the 1960's without getting his show cancelled because this was still kind of a taboo subject to talk about on television back then. Gene was able to sneak it past the network by creating the aliens Bele and Lokai with both having half Black and white pigments on their faces but hating each other because the color pigments were on different sides of their faces in relation to each other which was meant to show how foolish their hatred was over something so minor, which was the point Roddenberry and the writers were trying to get across but still keeping under the networks radar. Great episode overall.
0:01 Mark! Alexxa, greetings! 🖖 This is another episode that I feel like I have a close connection to, and not just because of the series regulars! Frank Gorshin and I met so many times in person that he recognized me whenever I approached his booth or table! 😊
I miss seeing him and the regulars on an annual basis for three to four days in June. 😢
This episode, as sad as it is, always had a positive impact on me. So many even today have nothing but hate to drive them, but hate always leads to nothing but death and sadness. Thanks for a great reaction!
I just read yesterday that it turns out that Bele actually had a son, who will figure in an upcoming Star Trek variant.
Great TOS moral story! I've heard many of the same arguments as Bele living in Alabama for many years. Truely sad.
22:18 Mark! Funny! Thanks to various crossover connections, "The Riddler" from the old "ABC" "Batman" series is one of his doppelgangers who resemble him! The versions of "The Riddler" would be doppelgangers who aren't nearly identical. 😊
A lot of people didn’t like this episode because they felt it was too preachy, and it is but if you can get past that, there’s some very good and very contemporary lessons to be learned from it
The acting and the dialogue are what saves this episode. The premise was noble but the execution of such a grand idea needed a bigger budget and more airtime. This was too big an idea to cram into 50 minutes. The makeup comes across as being to metaphorical to be taken seriously. I dont know what the solution would be but then Im not a television producer.
I've never in my life understood the complaint of something or anything(for that matter)being "too preachy". It's like they're saying, "We're too good to be preached at."
@ it’s not a matter of being too good to be preached at, it’s simple human nature, nobody likes to be reminded of their moral failings. I’m a minister myself and even people that agree with you don’t like being preached at even if they agree with your message. There’s something about human beings that we simply resist being told how to act and in a television show, which is their primarily to entertain you, as soon as you come across too hard with the morality message, you take people out of the fantasy of the TV show and hit too close to reality which is the very thing they turned the television show on to escape from
or rather being lectured on something that you are fully cognizant of. It's one thing if the preachiness causes you to see things in a different way, but it is tiresome when you've already embraced what the story is trying to get you to do. It becomes patronizing.
And the same fight still goes on today let's hope Earth doesn't end up like that planet
Even more powerful when you remember when this was made. Mid to late 60s weren't exactly logical times in the US .
I wonder if mirrors are present on Sheron or have been banned because one would always see the enemy in the mirror looking back. Food for thought? Maybe.
And then in the Mirror Universe, are their counterparts black & white on the opposite sides ?
Definitely a snack. Something I believe was missed during the execution of the idea since recognition of that fact destroys the reason.
I still see Frank Gorshin as the Riddler - the first villain the 'Adam West' Batman had to deal with in the first 2 episodes. He was perfectly unhinged here as the antagonist.
"Are they just exercising at this point?" LOL! It is pretty silly with all the running through the halls shots.
Watch it again. You can see how utterly weary both characters are, but neither sees any choice but to carry the chase to the bitter end.
Echoes of Les Misérables mixed with Sergio Leone style close ups of a galactic staring contest during the self-destruct showdown. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield takes a high hand to the extent its message was timely and urgent. Race relations in the United States in the 1960s were marked by hundreds of riots, in the big cities and the small, with major riots in Harlem, Watts, Detroit, and Newark. The 1967 Detroit Riots, for example, lasted five days, left over forty people dead, four hundred buildings destroyed, and thousands more injured or arrested. The scenes were Belle chases Lokai through the decks of the Enterprise and they both envision burning buildings amidst mass destruction reflected images one could have regularly seen on the evening news back then.
The juxtaposition of Lokai giving a fiery speech to lower ranking crew members while Beal, Kirk, and Spock have a "civilized" discussion, only to have Beal say the most obviously batsh!t things is the best part of this episode.
Yes, I noticed that the writers went out of their way to portray both sides of most social arguments. However, instead of making both characters equal in this, they chose to set up Lokai as the oppressed and Beal as the oppressor. Which I found interesting because they portrayed both equally in a negative light and unwilling to work for a peaceful solution.
The writer is showing that neither side is right or wrong. The argument itself is wrong and not worth debating.
If we could only learn that lesson today. Love thy neighbor, no matter who he voted for.
One point of this episode is that our supposed "racial" difference would seem just as silly to aliens.
It was a perfect example of basing dislike and other impressions on appearance alone. Humans aren't scorpions - no matter how much some may try.
In one of the other series I saw a scene which included one of the races standing on the bridge of a starship. I don't remember which it was, but it might be hoped that they were able to settle their differences on a colony world.
30:38 Mark! I'm Viewer #609! 🎉 Thumb Up #101! 👍 Alexxa, you're welcome, and thanks! 😊
Notes: You saw the DR version because the planet is unique now and not a reused one. Ditto for the starbase shuttlecraft. They kept the "invisible" one that way! 😊
The burning cities before were obviously from older WW2 movies and the like. This time it wasn't so obvious. 😊
Acting or casting wise, they got away with what I saw below some called "too preachy" because it was two Caucasians in exaggerated black-and-white face and white-and-black face rather than with more natural flesh tones.
Had Lokai been placed by a Black guy under such makeup, the points may have been lost on those in the Southern area saying, "Huh? But he is a Black guy!"
Did you catch which part of the Milky Way Galaxy they are from? 🤔
Your reaction to it being a sad ending helped me get past my memories of the old production values getting in the way of the plot points! 😊
I'm not sure if I saw the DR version of this episode more than once. 🤔 Our local "NBC" network affiliate "KFOR" aired the Digitally Remastered episodes when they were new on Sunday Nights at 10:35 PM Central Time!
Bye-bye for now and namaste! 🙏
Gene Roddenberry had to tackle racism in a very clever way for 1960s television. He couldn’t just do an episode which straight up said “racism is bad” because the show wouldn’t have been allowed to air in the South, and the ratings plunge would have led to it’s cancellation. Therefore he had to tell the same basic story through analogy, using aliens who were black and white, but with colors reversed, showing that they were really “the same” and that their superficial differences were just arbitrary and stupid.
Hatred & prejudices create chasms in any society. My hope is that the Gene Roddenberry future where the entire earth develops as a peaceful, productive world will prevail.
This was Star Trek’s episode that attempted to refute racial bigotry. Other than that, the outstanding aspect here is the introduction of the self-destruct program, which was used for real 15 years later in the movie Star Trek III.
We've got to be better than this. Hate is utter destruction.
1000%
The lesson was that this is the kind of bullshit we do instictively.
what i don't get is how Beal shorted out the circuits the way he showed them , how did he do it earlier was the bridge totally empty?? nobody was piloting the enterprise? if there was nobody reported it??? lol
I was watching classic Trek one day with my wife, who hates all things science fiction, and she said, "I will say this, William Shatner is one fine looking man"
I said, "Hell yeah baby! Captain kirk is a slayer! Where do you think I learned to kiss you like I do?"
And with that an ankle chain was snapped into place to keep you from engaging in other Kirk-like endeavors. :D
This was about the foolishness of racism. In it's day, the reveal really made that click with people.
alexxa this episode resembles the racism between black and white people at that time between the 50's and 60's.
Yes,it does. Which was rampant both in the 50s and the 60s.And it's even here in 2024.
Alexxa, it is better to wipe the eyes with tissue paper in direction to the nose, not away from it. Micro particles can get into the eyes' pockets, which make it difficult to rid them out.
Thanks!
1. Not one of my likes.
2. Tell me Kirk and Co don't have balls. I dare you.