Let That Be Your Last Battlefield by: Oliver Crawford from a story by: Lee Cronin and directed by: Jud Taylor

 

“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is written by: Oliver Crawford, from a story by: Lee Cronin, a pseudonym for Gene L. Coon, and is directed by: Jud Taylor.  It was filmed under production code 70, was the 15^th episode of Star Trek Season 3, the 70^th episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on January 10, 1969.

 

Star Trek has always been touted as an incredibly progressive show pushing for equality and breaking ground in terms of casting and messaging.  This is the 70^th review for the show that has honestly shown that the record of this was largely hit or miss: the casting was largely diverse but the roles for the female characters especially are limited, same with racial minorities while LGBT representation is entirely down to coding (though this is largely down to it being a show from the 1960s).  Much of this is down to the scope of the writers working on Star Trek through this era, much like television at the time the perspective is a white and male one, though Star Trek did advocate for female scriptwriters such as D.C. Fontana and several gay and bisexual writers were also featured (including ones breaking into scriptwriting) including Theodore Sturgeon and David Gerrold.  “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is Star Trek’s most explicit episode thus far to be a treatise on the topic of racism in the United States through the lens of racism among two members of an alien species.  It is important when looking at this episode to remain aware of the fact that it the script is coming from Oliver Crawford from an outline by Gene L. Coon, both white men living in the 1960s while this review is coming from the perspective of a white man living in 2024.  This inherently leads to an incredibly limited scope in terms of what the nature of racism and white supremacy.  “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is not interested in examining the systemic nature of bigotry in America.  While it has been a politically active show and this is a very politically charged episode, its racial analysis is limited to the surface level of explicit, public facing bigoted opinions and people who could be seen starting fires in bedsheets.  While not to discount the fact that this sort of bigotry and acts of bigoted violence still exists especially in the public zeitgeist, at the time of this episode’s production it had only been four years since the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, three since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  It genuinely seemed like progress was being made.

 

There is dialogue in “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” that reflects that, specifically calling out the slow march of progress.  The aliens feature bisected pigmentation, the discrimination coming from which side is the ink black side and which is chalk white.  Lokai, played by Lou Antonio, has been on the run for 50,000 years for inciting essentially a slave revolt while being hunted by Commissioner Bele, played by Frank Gorshin.  Crawford’s script is explicit in lampooning the basis of racism: it is bigotry based on arbitrary appearance that makes no meaningful difference in terms of what a person is.  It however slightly drops the ball by placing the Enterprise crew in a situation where they are not interfering in the conflict of this pair.  Now the motivation for Kirk and company is initially noble, they are already on a mission to help decontaminate a planet and Bele taking over the ship to bring Lokai to some sense of “justice” for starting a revolt thus endangering the population of a planet.  This portion of the episode plays out like a thriller and is perhaps the best of what the episode has to offer, Jud Taylor’s direction is especially effective when Kirk puts the Enterprise into a self-destruct sequence.  It’s incredibly tense and largely allows the Federation to be dreamt up as post-racial, keeping the absurdity of bigotry at the center of the episode quite well, though being heavy handed.  The second half of the episode falters slightly in the conclusion: the Enterprise is forced to Cheron to find it destroyed and Bele and Lokai are set on the planet to fight with our heroes unable to stop them.

 

Now the problem with this is largely because Crawford, most likely from Coon’s original outline, in highlighting the ridiculous nature of bigotry is also subtly placing some of the blame for society’s lack of change on the oppressed.  It’s not an explicit aspect of the text, largely coming across as two well-meaning white writers not quite understanding the complexities of systemic racism and what actually is needed to dismantle those systems, but Lokai as a character is placed on the same moral level in the conclusion as Bele.  Lokai’s violence against Bele is largely defensive, attempts to get humans on his side and outright attacking and being on edge because he has been pursued by someone who does not even acknowledge his rights as a person.  Lou Antonio’s performance is perhaps too overshadowed as Lokai by the immense presence of Frank Gorshin (who don’t get me wrong is utterly fantastic in the episode), but Antonio largely makes the character utterly sympathetic and acting out of terror while Gorshin’s Bele is acting out of hate.  Outside of this the episode is brilliant, and the striking imagery of the burning planet at the climax is particularly effective, but that accidental message is ever so slightly holding back the episode.

 

Overall, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is an episode with an incredibly evocative title and is perhaps the most bold attempt at political commentary in Star Trek.  It is hampered by the white lens of the episode, but the ideas of showing the absurdity of bigotry in a dramatic setting is something quite bold.  It’s a ray of light in what has been such a rocky season, even if as an episode in its premise there already are these problematic aspects that were problematic in 1969 and are problematic now.  8/10.