UNCUT REACTION - Star Trek TOS - Let That Be Your Last Battlefield S3E15
Added 2023-03-26 13:48:23 +0000 UTCHere is our full uncut reaction to Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
We have already had comments from some that this is one of their favorites, and for some it is one of their least favorites haha so we are interested to see more thoughts on this one
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Comments
I never really understood why this episode can be so polarizing. I think it's generally agreed to be one of the better S3 episodes, but some people seem to really dislike it. Not a lot of middle ground, ironically given the subject matter. I get that some people think it's too overt in the message, but at the same time it's far less overt than recent trek has tended to be. On the flip side, you'll have times where the message of an episode is so subtle it can be missed entirely to someone just getting caught up in a weekly adventure. Last Battlefield offers a good balance in my opinion. You know what it's saying, but it doesn't take away from the power of the story. Kirk's last line about hate now being all they have left resonates even today. As others have said, the whole white/black on the left/right side effectively points out how ridiculous racial bigotry can be. Imagine if aliens landed on Earth and saw systemic racial discrimination and conflict. To them they just see 2 groups of the same species fighting, and when the "differences" were pointed out, it would seem just as ridiculous as we find the difference between Bele and Lokai. Both of their actors did a great job in this episode. Lokai of course seems like the more sympathetic one as he's the revolutionary on the run, but he also stole a shuttle and is accused of mass murder. Bele represents a govt that clearly practices extreme racial discrimination, but before taking over the ship, he hadn't committed any crime against the federation, and showed more initial respect and cooperation, so in a way it's easier to side with him. By the end though, you realize both are just 2 sides of the same coin, and their ruined and lifeless planet is the inevitable result of their hatred writ large.
Timothy Nikiforovs
2024-05-02 00:45:35 +0000 UTCIt was also unusual in Assignment: Earth that they only opened a little bit for the cat
Timothy Nikiforovs
2024-05-01 09:18:07 +0000 UTCI loved when Alex got the subtle difference 👏👏 I often feel Roddenberry was an amazing visionary. The scenario is relevant to current day political differences which become increasingly polarized. Loved both of your analyses 💯
Charles Regazzi Jr
2023-04-03 00:47:28 +0000 UTCI last saw Frank Gorshin in Terry Gilliam's "12 Monkeys".
PFCoffey
2023-04-01 03:29:01 +0000 UTCAnd another Enterprise crewman gets knocked to the deck by a visitor. But, up and back to work. Though, it would be funny to see one of them get up and angrily give chase.
Trevacious
2023-03-31 23:45:39 +0000 UTC“I AGREE!!!” Ha, i love the self-destruct sequence face-off. Kirk with the steeliest of resolve. I also dig the sound effect behind Beal’s telekinesis. Great performances all around. I can see the oddness of their final run thru the corridors, but production-wise there’s only one corridor on the soundstage to represent all of them. Not too bad a workaround, plus adding the burning cities footage. In the remastered edition, you can see the fires from orbit.
Trevacious
2023-03-31 23:43:21 +0000 UTCSo glad you both enjoyed the episode. For me in my early teens coming home from school to watch the syndicated episodes on TV in the late 1970's it really spoke to me because I was picked on a lot in school for not looking like most other kids. I was very tall and skinny with bright red hair. I related to it from my perspective because I never felt it was fair to be treated that way for just looking different than others and this episode shows the absurdity of it all. The show did a very good job of showing that hate leads to nothing but destruction and will consume you. A very poignant episode whose topics apply just as much today as when it was made and deserve discussion, People need to be more accepting of others regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation and less "tribal" in their actions.
Mike S. aka Peaky Blinder
2023-03-30 19:20:06 +0000 UTCAlso, thank you for these uncut reactions. I am enjoying your journey.
T’Pynyn of Vulcan
2023-03-30 02:30:57 +0000 UTCI don’t know if anyone one has already said something about the shuttlecraft but ALL shuttle footage is from “The Galileo Seven”. Anytime they needed a shuttle shot, it was recycled from that episode. When they remastered the VFX, they fixed the obvious problems that you noticed.
T’Pynyn of Vulcan
2023-03-30 02:28:54 +0000 UTCWhat elevates it is they got their message across without making it a real life lecture, whereas in today's shows they just come out and do shows like Velma where the white guy has to suck because the writer thinks white guys suck or whatever, or on Obi Wan the woman of color must always know more than her male superiors. This is genius writing compared to anything that Disney+ has released these last few years.
Ken R
2023-03-28 05:22:56 +0000 UTCWrestleMania VI is what you were thinking of. Roddy Piper vs Bad news Brown
Retro Tom
2023-03-28 03:05:17 +0000 UTCFrank Gorshin was also doing an act as an impressionist at one time before doing TV, doing actors like Burt Lancaster, and Kirk Douglas and Marlon Brando
Deborah Osika
2023-03-27 22:45:32 +0000 UTCI love how on the nose and obvious the makeup and everything is, because it exposed just like in real life how absurd bigotry is.
Josh (Target Audience)
2023-03-27 12:45:24 +0000 UTCDidn’t recognize him while watching but now it’s so obvious that’s where I’ve seen him!
Josh (Target Audience)
2023-03-27 12:39:46 +0000 UTCAn enjoyable one and Frank Gorshin was somebody nobody could accuse of not committing to a character. He should have won that emmy he was nominated for for The Riddler. I love the scene where he is `explaining how different they are. This episode was perhaps a little too to the point, but it was well done and meant well, and far better written than say something like Falcon&Winter Soldier's "white men were evil to this nice black guy, do better" sermon/garbage. It's a fine line trying to illuminate while entertaining, rather than the MCU style lecturing that just makes me see "woke garbage" and stop watching (I'm looking at you She Hulk).
Ken R
2023-03-27 08:11:32 +0000 UTCFrank Gorshin (Commissioner Bele) is also another character, the Riddler, from DC Comics (Adam West) Batman series c.1966. Trivia: TOS was running in the same years as Batman series so many characters had parts in both series. Other series where actors were shared are: Man from U.N.C.L.E., I dream of Jeannie, Twilight Zone (where Bill Shatner appears) and Big Valley. Pretty much any series from the 1960s often is populated with or "guest starred" TV actors of the time.
TeenyStudio Flicks
2023-03-27 08:06:56 +0000 UTCGreat reaction. I really love how much you appreciate when the episodes are well directed, it's so easy to overlook that!
Gary Leyh
2023-03-27 05:36:43 +0000 UTCOne of the things Gene Roddenberry set out to accomplish with TOS and Trek in general was to expose current day issues but with a sci-fi twist. The 1960s were an extremely violent decade with the Civil Rights Movement in full swing where people of colour specifically African American were standing up to no longer use colored bathrooms, the back of the bus only, segregated libraries, restaurants etc. In addition to having a multicultural bridge crew it was the first show to not only having a black woman with a rank of lieutenant on the bridge but chief communications officer as well as a Japanese American as the Helmsman (both Chekov and Scotty were not actually Russian or Scottish but they represented them). So far they have dealt with the Vietnam War, Nazis, the Roman Empire, Artificial Intelligence causing havoc, and now race hatred and Armageddon. My point being Trek was supposed to expose and enlighten its audience and the messages conveyed back then still are in many occurrences an ongoing or rehashed issue today. Incidentally the self-destruct sequence here with the exact same codes will come back but I don't want to spoil when it will occur, just make a note to watch for that in the future but not in TOS.
Brad Barter
2023-03-27 04:17:41 +0000 UTCThe Cloud Miners is definitely one of the better ones left with All Our Yesterdays. The Savage Curtain is okay. Maybe one of the better ones left but not one of my favorites . I agree they should have switched the Turnabout intruder and All our Yesterdays. That would have been better.
Carl Peterson
2023-03-27 03:35:03 +0000 UTCI love that sequence. Especially the codes used. My brother and my friends used to parody that sequence as we played. This one and the one with the robot that is destroying all imperfect life forms. Both has some great but very funny lines. I still laugh when I hear code 000Destruct0 or whatever the exact code was. It is so on the nose it is hilarious. Especially with Shatner delivering the line.
Carl Peterson
2023-03-27 03:26:56 +0000 UTCOn a rewatch this episode was much better than I remembered. I still think the one side white and the other side black is a little cooky. But if one can get past that then it is a strong episode. I like that both of them hated. It was not just an allegory to evils of white people. It was more nuanced and complex than that. It makes a lot of sense in today's world. I did not remember some of the better camera work and how each of the main crew had some real time. I love TOS and I love the characters on TOS. But TOS did not give enough screen time for the B level crew. Tons for the big 3 (Kirk, Spock, and McCoy) but never enough for Scotty, Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura. I like how Scotty was comanding the Enterpris during the decontamination. I would have liked something more to come about from Spock over hearing the meeting. But that is a nit pick. Love teh ending. Their hate blinded them. They had nothing but hate left. Perfect.
Carl Peterson
2023-03-27 03:18:26 +0000 UTCYes this is a favorite of mine. Going thru these episodes again has reminded me of more how much I have missed by not watching the third season as much as the other two seasons. I appreciate you pointing these out to me again. I remember wanting TOS from when I was 5 or 6. It would be on reruns on one of the three major broadcast channels. Then CBS would drop it only to be picked up by NBS or ABC. It seemed to be running on one of them. Later in high school my friends and I would try and guess the episode the quickest from the beginning intro.
Robert Elliott
2023-03-27 02:11:35 +0000 UTCYup, this is one I've always liked, even as a kid. Not top 5, but the themes hit home and it's aged well.
Firekrys FWO
2023-03-27 01:26:12 +0000 UTCI am okay with it, and agree with you about showing the Enterprise crew doing their jobs without complications, but they could have done just 1 pass and then have Kirk say, "Good. Do a second pass to make sure." and moved on from there without showing it.
Collin Freeman
2023-03-27 01:16:51 +0000 UTCThis is a high water mark. From what I remember 5 of the remaining ones are in the bad category including the next one but maybe you guys will give me reasons to like them more. I haven’t watched most season 3 episodes for at least 15 years
Jonathan
2023-03-27 00:46:26 +0000 UTCThat's true. When Star Trek first aired most people still had black & white screens and the resolution was lower. Also, unless you were standing next to the TV holding on to the rabbit-ears antenna, the picture was probably somewhat fuzzy. When I was a kid watching "The Wizard of Oz" on TV, I didn't realize everything changed from sepia tones to color when Dorothy stepped out of the house into Munchkin Land due to the old B&W TV we had. And the Horse of a Different Color in the Emerald City was completely lost on me.
David Felgate
2023-03-27 00:07:49 +0000 UTCYes
Jonathan
2023-03-26 23:51:41 +0000 UTCYou mean THE WAY TO EDEN? Josh said we haven't been warning him about specific bad episodes.
deconstructionist66
2023-03-26 23:50:50 +0000 UTCI actually thought the makeup was brilliant. Yes it's very on-the-nose but when I grew up in Germany, were racial tensions weren't really something that existed, I didn't get what they were going for, and the over the top face paint achieved what it wanted: I only noticed that they were mirrored when Bele mentioned it. And I was just like the crew: ftw is he talking about? I think the face paint is SO obvious that it's easy to miss the mirroring, and I think that was the point. They look so obviously the same that it feels completely silly that the guy is obsessed with the side-switch.
Andreas Schmitt
2023-03-26 22:45:42 +0000 UTCTo be fair, that kind of minute detail was impossible to see back then.
Andreas Schmitt
2023-03-26 22:41:42 +0000 UTCThere will be quite a few more episodes in TNG and DS9 that hit VERY close to home, especially now. Some of these messages and the issues they addressed have recently resurfaced.. you'll know it when you see them. There's plenty of them. As for this episode, as I said above, it's one of my favorites and the only one I remembered being in this season, so I've been waiting the entire time for you to get to it :) And I'm glad you loved it this much. And you're right... some people nowadays should watch this one again.
Andreas Schmitt
2023-03-26 22:37:42 +0000 UTCThis is one of my favorites of the entire show. I often don't remember what was in what season and I have a hard time remembering individual episodes of TOS until I see them again... but this one I always remember.
Andreas Schmitt
2023-03-26 22:29:32 +0000 UTCAccording to the audiobook about the production of season 1 I'm listening to right now, the budget for an episode usually expected the actual filming to last about 7-8 days. Of course then there's a ton of post-production after that for all the visual effects and apparently that could take weeks or months depending on how complicated the effects were. But the filming was supposed to last a week.
Andreas Schmitt
2023-03-26 21:46:50 +0000 UTCThis is one of my favorite episodes. Every time they talk about Star Trek using Sci-fi to comment on current events I think of this. This was Gene Coon’s last contribution to Star Trek. He died while the animated series was in production. The Chekhov missing cuts were because they didn’t pay him anymore for every day of shooting. In exchange they give him a bigger focus in an upcoming episode that everyone wishes they could forget.
Jonathan
2023-03-26 21:27:45 +0000 UTCLol
Josh (Target Audience)
2023-03-26 21:21:59 +0000 UTCMaybe it was padding, but that's the most extended and immersive look we ever got at real-time starship operations. Jud Taylor knocked it out of the park with the cinematic shots and sequences. Silly makeup, but the ending's effective.
deconstructionist66
2023-03-26 21:04:43 +0000 UTCI’m a fan of the decontamination sequence because (a) it looks pretty cool, and (b) we get to see what it’s like for the Enterprise to show up and just complete a mission without complications.
James H
2023-03-26 20:42:51 +0000 UTCGood episode one of the better ones of this season and always good to see Science Fiction shining a lit on issues that are current then and sadly still now.
AzoriusMage
2023-03-26 19:32:23 +0000 UTCI see your point. I think the episode's message being too obvious and preachy was what got it delayed from being made until the 3rd season since it was originally a 1st season script proposal.
Collin Freeman
2023-03-26 19:21:42 +0000 UTCThe self-destruct sequence was parodied, and the TOS episode name mentioned, in an episode of The Big Bang Theory. This episode is "famous", but too "third-season" preachy for me -- emphasizing the message, but losing the characters.
Zefram Cochrane
2023-03-26 19:18:32 +0000 UTCWow the Paramount+ description of this ruins the twist at the end! "Two survivors of a devastated planet remain committed to destroying one another."
Joe Concepts
2023-03-26 19:14:07 +0000 UTCI love their perfect way to show the absurdity of skin color prejudice. Kirk and Spock don't yell or argue about it. They just seem to be thinking, "What hell is this guy talking about?" They can barely even understand that prejudice. And it's such a bigger message in 1969.
Joe Concepts
2023-03-26 18:55:58 +0000 UTCGood episode. A little too obvious for me, but I am with Alex: this is probably in my top 5 of the season 3 episodes. The main downsides to me are trivial: Bele's rather easy "ability" to take control of the ship and release it, and the screen time that was used to show the Enterprise decontaminate Ariannus. As far as shooting schedule, I think they typically averaged about 7 days, give or take a day. That is why Gene Roddenberry wanted to use The Cage as a 2-parter in season 1 - to get the show back on schedule because they had been going over with shooting some of the episodes. Nice to see Frank (The Riddler) Gorshin. He even got to run around in a costume similar in design to what he wore on the Batman '66 series. Agreed about his and Lou Antonio's performances. I love it when he is talking to Kirk and Spock, takes a pause, then draws out the word "apes". The self-destruct sequence is probably my favorite part of this episode. Very well thought out, written, and shot. This was Gene (Lee Cronin) Coon's last script for Star Trek.
Collin Freeman
2023-03-26 18:54:28 +0000 UTCEpisodes would usually be shot over seven filming days with the weekends off. Sometimes there might be an eighth day of filming and often either the first or last day of filming (sometimes both) would be a half-day with the other half being either the previous or next episode. So as an example for this episode the filming dates (courtesy Memory Alpha) were: Day 1 – 4 October 1968, Friday Day 2 – 7 October 1968, Monday Day 3 – 8 October 1968, Tuesday Day 4 – 9 October 1968, Wednesday Day 5 – 10 October 1968, Thursday Day 6 – 11 October 1968, Friday Day 7 – 14 October 1968, Monday (Half Day) - with Whom Gods Destroy commencing filming on the second half of the Monday shoot (The episodes ended up switching places in airing order).
Dion James Pitman
2023-03-26 18:20:51 +0000 UTCI guess the writers were concerned that the racial allegory was too subtle, so they had Spock mention that Cheron was located in the "southern-most" part of the galaxy. Regarding the makeup, it was very good with nice sharp lines between the white and black, but it wasn't perfect. When Lokai was on the bed in sickbay, his sleeve pulled a couple of inches away from his glove, and there was no makeup on his arm. Also, in a later scene on the bridge, in a closeup shot of Bele, the bottom edge of the black and white makeup could be seen just above the collar of his tunic.. I haven't seen this episode in many years and wasn't especially looking forward to it, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to. Of course, re-watching something is always more fun when you are doing so with others who haven't seen it before.
David Felgate
2023-03-26 18:17:11 +0000 UTCThere is truth tot he idea that the shorter openers usually indicate a stronger episode, because the whole point of those cold opens, is that they are a teaser. Just enough to get you in the door. If they take up seven minutes of the start of the episode to finally get to the hook, it shows either the writer doesn't know how to pace out the script, or something else has gone wrong creativity. Not always. There are a couple episode sthat have long starts, but it's a good barometer. This is the second episode to feature a Batman actor. First it was Marta last episode, and this episode Biel's actor plays The Riddler on Adam West's Batman... and to me he is the highlight of the episode in terms of the two guest roles. His anger towards lokai feels so raw and real. He's not being hammy, he's getting *furious*. One thing the episode does really well, and those scenes could be regarded as padding in other episodes, is showing the crew working TOGETHER and solving the situations presented to them. It acts as the perfect juxtaposition to two halves of this species tearing each other apart over nothing. This is definitely one of the stronger episodes in the series, though, strangely enough you guys mentioned it as being subtler with the racist social commentary compared to a lot of today's works... For a long time it was regarded as being too over the top and on the nose with the face paint. Leonard Nimoy was interviewed about Star Trek one time and was asked about this episode and he kinda winced one eye and chuckled "Yeahhhh... That... didn't quite work did it?" So that's an interesting thing. Though it's important to remember Nimoy's memory of Season 3 is tainted by depression and alcoholism. He was so upset that the show was dying, it was his first long term job, and he really did love Spock. He put so much into Spock. There are a couple good ones left, yet. I'm a fan of The Savage Curtain and All Our Yesterdays (which I still hold makes a better ending for the show than what we got...) But a number of the remaining episodes I honestly don't remember. I had a friend who was a big fan of The Cloud MInders.
Steven Johnson
2023-03-26 18:05:48 +0000 UTCI love this one too. It really was a thoughtful one when you think this aired right in the middle of the civil rights movement. I REALLY liked the shadow little show you pointed out. So we half a person that has half black/white face and talking about discrimination and oppression but what a great choice to not see Loki but instead a shadow, not black/white. Making it really be a colorless person talking about that subject. What a great way to get an issue past the censors at the time.
Prof Moff
2023-03-26 17:12:20 +0000 UTCThe curious thing about the shot of Spock listening at the door is that it's partially cracked open. That may be the only time we see the automatic doors on the ship standing in any other position than completely open or completely closed.
James H
2023-03-26 15:56:01 +0000 UTCI didn't like this one as much as I liked the next 2 episodes but I still think its a good episode. The next one is one of my favorites.
Ayomide Bennett
2023-03-26 15:36:51 +0000 UTC
