Title: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
Airdate: 1/10/1969
Plot Summary
In Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, The Enterprise beams aboard a thief who stole a Federation shuttle and find Lokai, a political refugee who’s being pursued by Bele. Both are from a world where people have white on one side of their face and black on the other. They are extremely long-lived and have some powers that allow them to take over the ship. Both have the colors on opposite sides from each other, leading to hatred and racism. Bele is determined to take Lokai back to face justice, but after millennia of chain,g they come back to find their planet is destroyed by war and hatred.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk is mystified by their hatred of each other over their most mundane differences. He has no patience for their nonsense and will destroy the ship to make sure they are able to finish their mission to save the people of Ariannus from the atmospheric pollution. Kirk does not bluff, the Corbomite Maneuver notwithstanding.
Logical
Spock is even more disdainful of these two and their stupid race hatred. Given his dual heritage, I can see where this would be more insulting to him.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy is pretty insulted when, while trying to treat Lokai, Spock mentions he is pumping his “noxious potions” into him. In this rare case, Spock is being a bit of a butthole. McCoy clearly knows what he’s doing and can at least do the basics on their anatomy, even if there are obvious variations.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu listens to Lokai’s speech along with Chekov, but doesn’t really buy it. He wonders at the end if hate is all the two ever had.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov is the first to notify Kirk that they are off course as soon as it happens. Given how quickly Bele left the sickbay when he was notified by Kirk, I give kudos for being so on top of things.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura sadly comments that it doesn’t make any sense.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty calls both of them disgusting and will not back off of that opinion.
Canon Maker
The self-destruct code (more on that later) uses the codes “Code 1, 1a”, “Code 11a2b”, “Code 1B2B3”, and finally “000 destruct 0.” This exact same code would be re-used in Star Trek III with only Chekov taking the Spock sequence for obvious reasons.
Canon Breaker
Kirk mentioned that Cheron is in the “southern part of the galaxy” which makes zero sense.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
No deaths. Except for the entire planet of Cheron.
Technobabble
Interestingly, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield is the first time that we have the self-destruct sequence done. While it was mentioned in By Any Other Name, it came across as some kind of jury rigging. This shows that it’s a function and has a specific set of rules and passcodes to enact it.
I Know That Guy:
Lou Antonio plays Lokai in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. He was in a ton of shows during the 60s and 70s before switching to directing, again mostly in TV. He’s still around at the ripe old age of 91.
And the late, great Frank Gorshin plays Bele. He, of course, was the Riddler in the old Adam West Batman. He’s been in a ton of movies. Anything from Disney’s That Darn Cat or The Meteor Man to 12 Monkeys. He was all over TV, though I remember him from a Buck Rogers episode best. He passed away in 2005.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
Wow. So I think everyone knows about Let That Be Your Last Battlefield and assumes it’s just a ham-fisted allegory that racism is bad. And yeah, that certainly is part of the message, but it isn’t the entire message.
In the current year, I found it to resonate a lot more than it did in, say, 80s or the 90s. What Let That Be Your Last Battlefield does masterfully is that it doesn’t take sides between Lokai and Bele. Bele may be the majority race or at least the race in more power, and is an obvious “bad guy.” But look closer, and it’s not so simple. Are they really just simply racists towards Lokai’s race?
Well, Lokai does himself no favors. The constant whining about oppression and using that as an excuse to create trouble, to steal… well, maybe Bele’s race is fed up with their nonsense. And maybe Lokai’s race feels like every time anyone makes a mistake, Bele’s race uses it against them.
In our era, when racism is portrayed, it’s always the white people who are mean to the black people. And sure, in 1935 it was mostly true. Black people did take it in the shorts for decades, no doubt about it. But as things have changed, in the current year it ain’t that cut and dried anymore. I’m not going to get into every situation, but certainly there is blame these days on both sides of the argument that you really couldn’t make back 70-150 years ago.
The point is that Let That Be Your Last Battlefield also shows that. It’s not clear what the history of Cheron is, but certainly it’s reached a point where both sides just can’t let go of any past sins. There is no talking to them. There is no fixing this. So it wasn’t fixed. They destroyed themselves. Both sides finally got pure equality, they’re all equally extinct.
Lokai is not shown to be blameless at all in this, and that’s a very different stance than typical Hollywood political films today, which only take one point of view and only one. There’s no other view, and that’s not always correct.
In fact it may be leading us down the same path as Cheron. Because the longer one side’s real and true issues aren’t addressed, then that will foment hatred back the other way. Soon, both sides will just not listen to each other anymore, will not move forward, and war and violence will be all we have left.
It’s not like there isn’t precedent for this all around the world. The message of this episode really wasn’t “racism bad.” It certainly used that as the catalyst for their ongoing fighting, but the real message was to STOP THE FIGHTING. You can’t get any peace if you simply will not let go of past mistakes. We can either fix current mistakes made by people living today or we can talk about crap that happened 50, 100, 300. or 1000 years ago, as if that will change anything.
Bele and Lokai couldn’t stop in their own fight, living 50,000 years and never stopping chasing each other. Their planet is dead, and they are alone in a wastelan,d doomed to hunt each other on this planet full of corpses for another 50,000.
Talk about terrifying. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield needs another deeper look. It’s not about the racism, it’s about the eventual endgame if we don’t figure shit out no matter what the arguments are about.
