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Star Trek - Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
episode 3.15
Raumschiff Enterprise - Bele jagt Lokai
USA 1969
produced by Fred Freiberger, Gene Roddenberry (executive) for Norway Corporation, Paramount/NBC
directed by Jud Taylor
starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Frank Gorshin, Lou Antonio, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Majel Barrett
story by Lee Cronin (= Gene L. Coon), screenplay by Oliver Crawford, created by Gene Roddenberry, music by Fred Steiner
TV series Star Trek, Classic Star Trek, Star Trek (original crew)
review by Mike Haberfelner
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On her way to bring much-needed aid to a disease-plagued planet, the
Enterprise intercepts a stolen Federation shuttle, and on it finds a
humanoid alien, Lokai (Lou Antonio) who's white on one side, black on the
other - an unknown species to both crew and computer. Soon enough, another
alien, Bele (Frank Gorshin), gains access to the Enterprise, who just like
Lokai is half-white and half-black - only the other way round, where
Lokai's white he's black and vice versa. Apparently on their home planet,
that's enough for them to belong to totally different races, Bele to what
he considers the master race, Lokai to the supressed race in revolt. Now
Bele has been after Lokai for 50,000 years to bring him, obviously a rebel
leader, to justice, and now demands from Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to
hand over Lokai and take them to their home, a planet in an as of yet
hardly charted star system. Since Kirk's on a mission and the Federation
has no extradition treaty with the planet in question, and on top of that
Lokai is actually charged by the Federation with the theft of a shuttle,
Kirk refuses - so Bele takes over the ship using mind control on its
computer to fly it back to his home planet, and as a result, Kirk launches
the self destruct sequence, forcing Bele to return the ship to Kirk's
control. The Enterprise finishes its humanitarian mission, upon which Bele
takes over the ship again - but this time he has fried the ship's data
base containing the self destruct sequence, rendering Kirk and crew mere
passengers on their own ship. Arriving at Lokai and Bele's home planet,
they find it has been destroyed by a terrible war that killed all of its
populace, and with Lokai and Bele its only two survivors, they could learn
from their mistakes and build their civilisation anew based on race
equality - but no, the two continue their chase and beam down to the
planet to ultimately destroy each other, just like everyone on their
planet did ... Now in its finest moments, this episode is a
fine parable on racism and indeed war and its utter futility - but
unfortunately, what it has to say about the subject in a metaphorical way
doesn't fill the whole runtime, so the whole thing feels a bit padded out
and repetitive where it should have been concise. And William Shatner's
monologue at the end to try to convince the alien visitors to make piece
is a bit too much of a sledgehammer to drive the message home, even if
Shatner's boundless overacting is always fun to watch. Not at all a
terrible episode mind you, and Frank Gorshin gives a great performance for
sure, but as a whole the thing seems to miss its mark.
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