From time to time I revisit Moonbase Alpha because it is still one of my favorites of all time and I associate a lot of memories with it. It was something we watched as a family and something I played as a kid.
There were some really good scripts in this first season and, yes, some bad ones too. Oftentimes though the good ideas were pulled down by cringe-worthy dialogue. It comes with the time and place this show was produced. It wasn't as sophisticated as Star Trek had been but I loved it nonetheless (I actually watched Trek much, much later). The 70s design fit really well and the modells they built looked great (if you know Anderson TV shows you know what I mean). Most people who are watching it today for the first time will put it among the silly 70s scifi show category. But those of us who knew it from back then will always appreciate it.
I have now watched it on BluRay for the first time and can absolutely recommend them. It's amazing how well they remastered this. The details are amazing and I have discovered things I have never noticed before. If you are a fan and haven't watched it in HD do so. You won't be dissapointed.
[5.7/10] Sometimes the cultural disconnect from being half a century away from something is just too much. Sitting here in 2017 (where, admittedly, we still have plenty of issues of prejudice and civil unrest), “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” feels unbearably preachy and heavy-handed in its “hate is pointless and will lead you nowhere” message. One of the best features of science fiction is the way it allows creators to examine current social or political issues at a remove in ways that can help the viewer to look at the real world in a different way. But when you make the metaphor so thin an obvious as to what you’re getting at, the power of that technique grows muted, and the whole thing can feel kind of annoying.
But the other side of the coin is that a pair of aliens angry over race relations plays very differently to someone right now than it likely would for someone watching it less than a year after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It’s easy to sit here in a time where racism is far from gone in the United States, but where great strides have been made, and look on an episode like “Battlefield” with eye-rolls and sighs over how bluntly it makes its point. But maybe in 1969, that message needed to be made loud and clear to cut through a din at a time when there were marches and protests and great hopes and greater fears about whether the social fabric of this country were unraveling.
Still, it’s hard to watch “Battlefield” and not think to oneself, “You know, Alan Crawford, you might have been better served by just writing an essay on the problems with prejudice.” Crawford (who also wrote “The Galileo Seven”) pens a script that wears its heart and its message on its sleeve, with seemingly obvious parallels to the real life political and social snarls taking place around that time.
Lokai, whose face is half pitch black and half bright white, arrives on the Enterprise in a stolen shuttlecraft, claiming that he is fleeing from injustice on his home planet Cheron. Commissioner Bele, another Cheronian who seemingly shares Lokai’s pigmentation, also arrives, and claims that Lokai is a dangerous murderer and a fugitive from justice. The two fall into a familiar “He is an oppressor, and I am fighting for justice and change!”/”He is a renegade and outlaw who is plotting the downfall of society!” dynamic. It would be hard to miss the kind of disputes that the argument between Lokai and Bele are a stand-in for.
But one thing I like about the episode from a story perspective is that Kirk tries to stay neutral and level-headed here. Lost in the hamfisted metaphor of the plot is the fact that (a.) Kirk has a mission and (b.) has no way of knowing who’s telling the truth. Rather than, as is typical of Kirk, acting rashly and taking sides, he is determined to follow the procedures, treat each man with dignity, and take them to the proper authorities to sort things out. It’s some uncharacteristic sticking with procedure from Kirk, and it makes him seem measured in command.
His commitment to his mission (saving billions of lives on the loosely-exposition’d planet Ariannus by decontaminating it) leads to the peak of “Battlefield” -- a standoff between Kirk and Bele over control of the ship. When Bele uses his advanced technology to take over the ship and turn it toward Cheron, Kirk threatens to initiate the Enterprise’s self-destruct rather than go along with this plan. (Incidentally, why is it that most of the alien species the crew encounters are either vastly more powerful or incredibly primitive? Beyond Klingons and Romulans, it’s rare the Enterprise encounters a species that’s roughly in line with its capabilities.)
The ensuing sequence is memorable, and one of the show’s best. While there’s something that could be a little bit tedious about each member of the command trio having to give their codes to start the self-destruct sequence (and there’s something pretty cheesy about the cut to commercial in the middle of it), “Battlefield” holds the tension of that moment well. Kirk and Bele are testing one another, seeing who’s bluffing, and at the same time it’s palpable how the rest of the crew is worried about whether this is something the captain would really go through with. It helps that this sequence basically exists apart from the big metaphor of the episode, and works well as a simple but very effective piece of television.
It’s also helped by the unique cinematography and directorial choices in the episode. Director Jud Taylor gives us close-ups of the crew’s faces as they hear these code-words being rattled off, on the commanders’ lips as they say those words, and on the eyes of Kirk and Bele as they test one another’s mettle in this moment. While Taylor’s choice to zoom in and out on the alarms during red alerts is kind of weird, he brings a different flair to how “Battlefield” is shot that makes it visually notable even as the episode’s script is a bit too much. Even the last sequence, where Spock acts as though he’s announcing the world’s dullest relay race, has an interesting visual element as Lokai and Bele run through the corridors while visions of their devastated planet are superimposed.
The final sequence doesn’t really work for me, in so small part because it seems to lay things on a little too thick, but that’s just the spirit of “Battlefield” being realized via the show’s visual toolbox, so it’s hard to blame Taylor for that. Indeed, the last stretch of “Battlefield” is the worst part, where even the destruction of their planet won’t stop Lokai and Bele from setting aside their differences and dropping this now surely pointless pursuit, while Kirk gives his fiftieth overblown speech that delivers the moral of the episode. Oh why can’t we just learn not to hate? If only the world were as simple as episode-closing remarks from hammy T.V. starship captains.
Now full disclosure -- this is one of the few episodes of Star Trek I’d seen before I started this grand watch. (Thanks, eighth grade science teacher!) That meant I knew the twist that Bele and Lokai view one another as being of different races given the way their paint-jobs are mirrored. Maybe, without that foreknowledge, the reveal that they seem so much the same when they see themselves as inherently different would have more impact and the surprise would drive more of the episode’s themes home in a more satisfying fashion.
But I don’t think so. The dialogue in the episode is still very direct and loud in the points and parallels it’s trying to draw, and while the point of “Battlefield” is admirable, it’s delivered in such a way that you wish the writers would have just written an op-ed rather than shoehorning one into a story. Still, as much as I value subtlety, and as much as the issues raised by “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” are still relevant today, maybe the episode needed to be louder, more direct, more forceful and less subtle in what it was trying to say, to get through to a society that was confronting the awful legacy of segregation head on in a big way.
[4.4/10] Welcome to Filler: The Episode. What a waste. There is so much promising material in this one, so many things that could otherwise be really cool or interesting, but it gets pretty interminable at points and so on the nose and obvious and uncomfortable in places that the entire thing falls apart. Let’s talk about the three worst scenes of the episode, two of which should be the best scenes.
The first is the one where the Platonians screw with Kirk and Spock in order to try to get McCoy to agree to stay with them. It goes on forever. We get it -- these guys are cruel and will use torture and humiliation to get what they want. Having Kirk and Spock do fifteen different varieties of some horrible or embarrassing thing does nothing to drive that point home any more. It’s a big instance where it felt like this episode was running short, and this was an easy place to put padding.
The other side of the coin is that this should have been a highlight of the episode, and not just the ironic “this is garish, entertaining garbage” sense. Seeing dignified Captain Kirk and stoic Spock have to dance and play should be, alternatively, unnerving or fun. “Plato’s Stepchildren” never really hits either mark (though their initial little jig gets a bit of it). Instead, it’s all so over the top and lengthy that it robs the sequence of any power.
The second is the scene where Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Alexander (the little person “jester” of the other Platonians) come up with the scheme to give themselves the godlike powers. On a minor note, it opens up all sorts of plot hole problems when having telekinesis would be super useful down the line, but whatever. More importantly, it is just an unending scream of exposition and repetition. Again, the thrust of the scene is clear -- we can use this chemical to out-power the bad guys. It’s a little dumb, but it’s not the dumbest treknobabble solution to a problem these three have come up with.
The rub is that they explain it and explain it and then explain it again just to make sure you understand every niggling detail. The script is flabby as hell, robbing this big solution scene of having momentum because the show gets so bogged down in explication.
Then there’s the last sequence featuring the addition of Uhura and Nurse Chapel, which has a myriad of problems. Let’s get this part out of the way first -- this is another instance of Trek using something very rape-y as an incidental plot point, and not really having the facility or tone as a series to handle it. That’s a big problem and makes a lot of those closing scenes tough to watch (and not in the way the show intended). It’s a recurring issue on the show, which is troubling, but I try to make allowances for this just being one of those Sixties things that are a little horrifying now but were taken for granted at the time. It’s still pretty rough though.
(Though hey, credit where credit is due, the scene also includes the first interracial kiss on television, so there’s that.)
But even apart from the broader social issues that scene raises, it also doesn’t work for its intended purpose. It should be horrifying to watch people forced to be sexual with one another or torture one another against their will, and in different hands, you could explore that in a really interesting way. (See: Jessica Jones). Something like turning Nurse Chapel’s dreams of being with Spock into a nightmare because of the lack of consent could be a legitimately chilling and interesting thing to examine.
“Plato’s Stepchildren” just uses it for set dressing though, just something else that escalates the danger and shows the Platonians are bad guys. We already knew that, and it shortchanges the characters at the center of the sequence. Nevermind that the lines and acting are over the top and overdone, and again, go on forever, taking away and zip or poignancy that they might otherwise have.
Again, there’s some decent material buried within the episode. I love the character of Alexander. The actor gives a good performance, and there’s some real pathos to him, being made to think he is something lesser and subject to the whims of those around him. His desire not to become a god like the Platonians but just to be taken away from them, to be anything but them, is heart-rending. The show again lays it on too thick with his attempt on the Platonian leader and Kirk’s usual effort at speechifying at the end of the episode, but there is, as usual, the germ of something good.
There’s also the germ of something worthwhile in Bones having to choose between honoring Kirk’s wishes that he not give in to the Platonians demands and sparing his friends from their torture. The decision doesn’t carry the weight that it should because the “tortures” are all so miscalibrated, but it’s a legitimate idea.
It’s also really frustrating that the episode basically squanders getting Kirk and Spock to be able to sing and dance and do other goofy stuff. They could go really fun and bonkers with the whole thing (something the show’s done in prior “everyone’s acting funny for reasons beyond their control” episodes) but instead the results just feel like a bad local talent show. Nevermind the fact that the cast’s ability to successfully mime being pulled around via telekinesis varies widely throughout the episode.
The theme of “Plato’s Stepchildren” is clear -- even people supposedly devoted to classic philosophy and the mind can be corrupted by power -- Kirk and the Platonian leader basically announce as such at the end of the episode. But it’s a trite lesson, one Star Trek has hit several times before, and the buffoonery at the center and numerous, needless reaction shots all make “Plato” feel like a thirty minute story that left the producers stalling for time. There’s some good idea and good scenes, but for the most part, this one is a mess, and a plodding mess at that.
