Star Trek 3x15 "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"

rating: **

Memory Alpha summary

Okay, let me rephrase the third season again.  I think I'll get it right this time.  I think it was a last ditch effort to make the series iconic in the minds of viewers.  Not just good or challenging or memorable, but so they couldn't ignore what it tried to do during its run.  And that's what "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" is all about.  This is the episode that has these guys:

via WC Tech.  E-e-ebony and i-i-ivory!

It's that moment where subtlety goes out the window.  "Hey!  We're all human!  To quote Michael Jackson, 'It doesn't matter if you're black or white!'  Because we happen to be BOTH!" But of course these two knuckleheads don't get that.  An Enterprise episode, "Chosen Realm," borrowed the whole concept of its ending: if you don't learn to get along with each other, you wipe each other out.  

It's probably the most famous episode of the third season, the epitome of the go-for-broke attitude that happened to also add important bits of material to the canon, like Tholians, Surak, Kahless the Unforgettable, Memory Alpha.  And aliens whose skin pigmentation has this slight variation outsiders would never even notice, but to them is of vital, deadly importance.  Sound like any struggles you might have heard about in our own times?

Take it for what you will.  Commendable, courageous, but...Great historic significance, maybe not the greatest of episodes.

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

Frank Gorshin

Majel Roddenberry