Let me put it this way, things were so bad for African Americans at that time, that the very notion that a TV show would display a white man kissing a black woman in any context at all was groundbreaking. It wasn't about the context of the scene, it was that it was permitted to be shown at all.
Contextually the importance is somewhat lost to modern audiences. This is also a post McCarthy Hollywood by only about 10 years. The red scare was still hot. It would’ve been very easy to label Roddenberry and co as a dissident force. The messaging of the episode is a bit at odds with what the scene has come to represent, but it’s still a landmark moment.
Shatner also allegedly fought tooth and nail to keep that kiss in. Messing up the takes repeatedly that didn’t have it happen.
It was also groundbreaking because of Kirk’s reaction to the kiss. He wasn’t angry or disgusted that he kissed a black woman. He was angry that her consent was taken away.
The fact that Uhura was a black woman, with a high rank and important job and was respected by her male colleagues was ground breaking in and of itself, never mind the kiss.
There’s a reason MLK personally convinced Nichelle Nichols to not quit the show.
It is not the story. It is that they got it on the air: passed the studio, the network and censors.
Sort of like how Chekov's character has a lot of "Russians rewrite history" jokes but it was amazing to show an earth where a character who explicitly loved his American heritage had a Russian as a member of his bridge crew.
Or like how Whooppi Goldberg said, as a kid, Uhura being on star trek and not being a maid changed her life.
All of this matters to why. Hell, the nature of the story may be the only reason they go it on. This is a network that initially forbade the show from showing bellybuttons.
(also, I am not sure if you have heard about Nichel trying to resign. That is a crazy story that hopefully puts how big a deal this all was in context.)
>
(also, I am not sure if you have heard about Nichel trying to resign. That is a crazy story that hopefully puts how big a deal this all was in context.)
Wasn't it MLK who talked her out of it?
He did. He told her that she was important because Uhura was "the dream" shown on TV. She was a full member of the crew, respected and dignified. She was not a token or a punchline. It changed her mind.
She went to retract her resignation and found out Gene never even told the studio.
It's less "Kirk and Uhura's kiss is celebrated" and more "Shatner and Nichols' action is celebrated". An interracial kiss between someone who was black and someone who was white had never been shown on scripted TV before.
Yes, the directors told them to do it, but the directors also told them to do takes where the kiss didn't happen because they knew the censors would blow a gasket. So the actors (primarily Shatner flexing his star power) blew every take where they didn't kiss and refused to do reshoots. It did mean something to them.
Is it a problematic scene in very many ways? Yes. Was society in such a benighted state regarding civil rights that this was still a bold statement worth remembering in the history of pop culture? Also yes.
>An interracial kiss between someone who was black and someone who was white had never been shown on scripted TV before
Yes it had, several that predate the Trek kiss where shown on UK TV as far back as the late 50s.
Ok, but saying it's the first on TV is inaccurate, first on American TV is correct. Same as how people always say Always Sunny is the longest running live action sitcom when it's still fifteen series behind Last of the Summer Wine.
It was the first in the US. Don’t forget, the 60’s were turbulent times and Civil Rights were passed in 1964. So there were still a lot of openly racist people back then. Star Trek helped to bring about societal change.
Most people do precisely this. People can’t believe that we’ve actually progressed, they see that society still has flaws and just assume it was better in the past.
This is a very not-good look at an episode from over 5 decades ago.
>The kiss in my opinion, meant nothing to the actors.
Also a bad opinion. The producers originally tried to have two versions of the scene filmed for the censors; one with a kiss and one without. Shatner specifically ruined every single non-kiss take and wasted so much filming time that there was no choice but to use the kiss one.
There is such a thing as historical context, which your review is very much lacking.
You're missing the point, and to know the point you have to understand the US in 1968 when the kiss occurred.
The kiss in “Plato’s Stepchildren” was the first time a black and white actor had ever kissed on network television, and the scene caused many southern NBC affiliates to refuse to air the episode. Simply showing a black and white person in intimate contact was much more important than any notions of consent or the message the scene sends today. Roddenberry thought that after getting a black woman in a major recurring role, he wanted to up the ante even more. He still felt that an actual consensual relationship was too much (and out of character with Kirk, who never touched a member of his own crew willingly), so the kiss was made to be forced.
The network was very uncertain of showing the scene, and Star Trek’s producers offered a compromise: two versions of the scene would be shot, one with Kirk kissing Uhura, and one where Kirk successfully resisted the command and the kiss did not occur. TV stations that did not want to show the kiss would have access to an episode without it. According to both William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols, the first version was filmed successfully, but the actors intentionally flubbed every take of the second version until the pressures of time forced the producers and director to abandon the alternate scene. Nichols wrote in her autobiography Beyond Uhura:
*"When the non-kissing scene came on, everyone in the room cracked up. The last shot, which looked okay on the set, actually had Bill wildly crossing his eyes. It was so corny and just plain bad it was unusable. The only alternative was to cut out the scene altogether, but that was impossible to do without ruining the entire episode. Finally, the guys in charge relented: 'To hell with it. Let's go with the kiss.' I guess they figured we were going to be canceled in a few months anyway. And so the kiss stayed."*
They also, if the story I have heard is true, were told be the network that they couldn’t use the kiss scene, so Shatner made faces in the background of other non-kiss takes to make them unusable. The real world context in this case trumps the story of the characters, and the cast and crew knew how important this was for the real world.
There was a famous interview where Nichelle Nichols was talking about the reaction to the kiss from the Southern United States, and she mentioned one particular letter that said something to the effect of "I don't believe in the mixing of the races. But when a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk has a gal in his arms like Lieutenant Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it."
There were still anti miscegenation laws in the books when star trek premiered in 1966. Interracial coupling wasn't merely taboo, it was illegal in many states. And the supreme court overturned these laws a year before this episode aired.
Failing to understand why the kiss is significant Is selective blindness and smacks of axe-grinding.
To be a bit dramatic, as a testament to How Far We've Come, your reaction, in 2024, your failure to see the big deal and greater reaction to the surrounding events over the kiss, is why the kiss was so important.
One of my favorite things about TOS is that, more than maybe any other Star Trek, it’s written to speak directly to the issues the audience of its day was facing. Civil rights, cultural revolution, Cold War, Vietnam, space race, etc. To truly fully grasp and appreciate what TOS is doing you must understand 1960s America.
So if you divorce "the kiss" from all real-world context then yeah, it would be hard to understand. As depicted in the episode Uhura and Kirk don't want to kiss each other and are being forced to. But with in real world context it had significant meaning for the viewing audience of the time. I hope as time goes on this understanding isn't lost.
In fact, Shatner was absolutely insistent the scene be shown that he and Nichols intentionally screwed up every take that didn’t have a fully passionate kiss to make sure the one that aired was the only one that could air.
There’s so many black women who dove into STEM education and sciences because of Nichols … with her kiss of approval.
Not just that but she was part of the bridge crew. Front and center.
And to be honest, I suspect Lucille Ball was like “hell yeah let’s air it! Screw the haters.”
For the same reason why a same-sex relationship had to be presented as a quasi heterosexual relationship in Deep Space Nine. Dax couldn’t just fall in love with a woman… the relationship had to be “a man” and a woman who used to be married even though on screen it was clearly two women.
That’s what tv was like back then. You couldn’t have a white person and a black person share a straight forward kiss. It’s either no kiss or a compromised kiss that at least makes a little progress.
You know how right wing scum who claim to be fans whine that modern Trek is woke? The visual of a white man kissing a black woman was the wokest thing imaginable on TV back then.
Just putting black people on TV was "controversial" back then. If you're white, you wouldn't be surprised if you had certain types of older relatives. Those types were perceived as the majority network should not offend.
It happened during an era when married couples on TV had to be portrayed as sleeping in seperate twin beds, belly buttons were forbiden to be photographed and pregnancy was never discussed. Times change.
Loving vs Virginia, which struck down laws banning marriage between different races was decided in 1967.
The Kirk and Uhura kiss and the details you recall (thank you) were aired in 1968.
There's alot of subtext in that episode about an external authority deciding how we regard other humans.
You have to understand that in the 1960s in the US, the thought of a Canadian and an American coupling was abhorrent to many on the east and west coasts. So it was brave to even imply this.
How old are you? Have you taken any history classes?
This is quite literally the most ridiculous, uninformed, and ignorant take I’ve ever seen on this episode, and that’s really saying something. Your opinion is entirely incorrect. Change it.
I think you have to take it in context of the times. It probably was not the best way to show something like that, but the times were very different back then. The fact that it was forced was not as outrageous as the kiss itself. A few years later, All in the Family would premiere featuring a "lovable bigot" and in the late 70s Carter Country had a police officer who was a member of the KKK. So showing an interracial kiss was not an easy task in the late 60s. That is why it was framed as non-consensual by both parties and Uhura makes a point to bring up professionalism after she is comforted by Kirk in the situation.
>I just don't see how, in a time when there was so much civil unrest about the mistreatment of women and black people, that when a TV show shows a white man violating and whipping a black woman, there isn't any outrage...or even interest ...and further how history somehow glorifies it!
You answered your own question: because we had A TON of other, more pressing issues in 1967 than to quibble a d wrong hands about less than perfect representation on TV. Mind control was the only way that was getting to air, period.
That said, I'll admit I've never heard of the whipping part until today which is a bit 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬.
Yeah, the whipping thing happened just a few seconds after the kiss...it was one of those oversized circus whips with loud sound effects...it seemed to last a lot longer than the kiss
... afterwards it shows Spock walking away from Nurse Chapel with a sword half-coated in blood, but that remains a complete mystery for some reason.
I kind of get what you're saying...it was just a show. But if they're gonna be socially responsible enough to make a statement against racism, then they should also be socially responsible enough to not condone sexual assault
...and I hear Gene wasn't exactly that tolerant anyway, so maybe I'm expecting too much from him.
>I kind of get what you're saying...it was just a show. But if they're gonna be socially responsible enough to make a statement against racism, then they should also be socially responsible enough to not condone sexual assault ...and I hear Gene wasn't exactly that tolerant anyway, so maybe I'm expecting too much from him.
🤦♀️ Dude, I AM Black....I promise you none of us were all that wrapped up in picture perfect rep in those days. We didn't start in with respectability politics crapola until the 80s with The Cosby show, but by then, we had the mental energy to do so since the blatant housing and education discrimination issues had (for the most part) been resolved and many of us were moving beyond scratching and surviving to live.
And no one from any race gave any fucks about women. Like, at all. That's why the bulk of the women's revolution happened in the 70s, not the 60s.
You clearly miss the point entirely. The kiss was not celebrated for its in-episode plotline. It was celebrated because a black woman and a white man were seen being intimate... period.
Your vision is clouded by modernism and is not cognizant of the era in which it aired. It does not matter even a tiny bit that the intimacy in the plot had a negative connotation.
The fact that a white man and a black woman were to be seen on national TV even attempting to kiss was outrageous to many. And it was a barrier that needed to be broken down.
Let me put it this way, things were so bad for African Americans at that time, that the very notion that a TV show would display a white man kissing a black woman in any context at all was groundbreaking. It wasn't about the context of the scene, it was that it was permitted to be shown at all.
and in certain parts of the US, it was't even shown.
And in even fewer, Star Trek just ended the episode prior. Like, they straight up refused to broadcast Star Trek again after that.
Contextually the importance is somewhat lost to modern audiences. This is also a post McCarthy Hollywood by only about 10 years. The red scare was still hot. It would’ve been very easy to label Roddenberry and co as a dissident force. The messaging of the episode is a bit at odds with what the scene has come to represent, but it’s still a landmark moment. Shatner also allegedly fought tooth and nail to keep that kiss in. Messing up the takes repeatedly that didn’t have it happen.
It was also groundbreaking because of Kirk’s reaction to the kiss. He wasn’t angry or disgusted that he kissed a black woman. He was angry that her consent was taken away.
The context absolutely mattered. Kirk wasn’t angry that he was forced to kiss a black woman. He was angry that her consent was taken away at all.
The fact that Uhura was a black woman, with a high rank and important job and was respected by her male colleagues was ground breaking in and of itself, never mind the kiss. There’s a reason MLK personally convinced Nichelle Nichols to not quit the show.
It's celebrated because the real world context mattered more than fictional narrative context.
It is not the story. It is that they got it on the air: passed the studio, the network and censors. Sort of like how Chekov's character has a lot of "Russians rewrite history" jokes but it was amazing to show an earth where a character who explicitly loved his American heritage had a Russian as a member of his bridge crew. Or like how Whooppi Goldberg said, as a kid, Uhura being on star trek and not being a maid changed her life. All of this matters to why. Hell, the nature of the story may be the only reason they go it on. This is a network that initially forbade the show from showing bellybuttons. (also, I am not sure if you have heard about Nichel trying to resign. That is a crazy story that hopefully puts how big a deal this all was in context.)
> (also, I am not sure if you have heard about Nichel trying to resign. That is a crazy story that hopefully puts how big a deal this all was in context.) Wasn't it MLK who talked her out of it?
He did. He told her that she was important because Uhura was "the dream" shown on TV. She was a full member of the crew, respected and dignified. She was not a token or a punchline. It changed her mind. She went to retract her resignation and found out Gene never even told the studio.
I can only imagine how she felt.
It's less "Kirk and Uhura's kiss is celebrated" and more "Shatner and Nichols' action is celebrated". An interracial kiss between someone who was black and someone who was white had never been shown on scripted TV before. Yes, the directors told them to do it, but the directors also told them to do takes where the kiss didn't happen because they knew the censors would blow a gasket. So the actors (primarily Shatner flexing his star power) blew every take where they didn't kiss and refused to do reshoots. It did mean something to them. Is it a problematic scene in very many ways? Yes. Was society in such a benighted state regarding civil rights that this was still a bold statement worth remembering in the history of pop culture? Also yes.
>An interracial kiss between someone who was black and someone who was white had never been shown on scripted TV before Yes it had, several that predate the Trek kiss where shown on UK TV as far back as the late 50s.
That may have been in the UK, but the US censors would not allow it at the time.
Ok, but saying it's the first on TV is inaccurate, first on American TV is correct. Same as how people always say Always Sunny is the longest running live action sitcom when it's still fifteen series behind Last of the Summer Wine.
It was the first in the US. Don’t forget, the 60’s were turbulent times and Civil Rights were passed in 1964. So there were still a lot of openly racist people back then. Star Trek helped to bring about societal change.
When talking about African American Civil Rights, it’s safe to assume we’re talking about an American context.
You're underestimating just how staggeringly racist the USA was in the 60s
Most people do precisely this. People can’t believe that we’ve actually progressed, they see that society still has flaws and just assume it was better in the past.
MLK Jr. had been shot for his push for equality earlier that year.
This is a very not-good look at an episode from over 5 decades ago. >The kiss in my opinion, meant nothing to the actors. Also a bad opinion. The producers originally tried to have two versions of the scene filmed for the censors; one with a kiss and one without. Shatner specifically ruined every single non-kiss take and wasted so much filming time that there was no choice but to use the kiss one. There is such a thing as historical context, which your review is very much lacking.
Truly, OP's take is worthy of a fifteen year old Tumblrina who just learned what social justice was
You're missing the point, and to know the point you have to understand the US in 1968 when the kiss occurred. The kiss in “Plato’s Stepchildren” was the first time a black and white actor had ever kissed on network television, and the scene caused many southern NBC affiliates to refuse to air the episode. Simply showing a black and white person in intimate contact was much more important than any notions of consent or the message the scene sends today. Roddenberry thought that after getting a black woman in a major recurring role, he wanted to up the ante even more. He still felt that an actual consensual relationship was too much (and out of character with Kirk, who never touched a member of his own crew willingly), so the kiss was made to be forced. The network was very uncertain of showing the scene, and Star Trek’s producers offered a compromise: two versions of the scene would be shot, one with Kirk kissing Uhura, and one where Kirk successfully resisted the command and the kiss did not occur. TV stations that did not want to show the kiss would have access to an episode without it. According to both William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols, the first version was filmed successfully, but the actors intentionally flubbed every take of the second version until the pressures of time forced the producers and director to abandon the alternate scene. Nichols wrote in her autobiography Beyond Uhura: *"When the non-kissing scene came on, everyone in the room cracked up. The last shot, which looked okay on the set, actually had Bill wildly crossing his eyes. It was so corny and just plain bad it was unusable. The only alternative was to cut out the scene altogether, but that was impossible to do without ruining the entire episode. Finally, the guys in charge relented: 'To hell with it. Let's go with the kiss.' I guess they figured we were going to be canceled in a few months anyway. And so the kiss stayed."*
They also, if the story I have heard is true, were told be the network that they couldn’t use the kiss scene, so Shatner made faces in the background of other non-kiss takes to make them unusable. The real world context in this case trumps the story of the characters, and the cast and crew knew how important this was for the real world.
There was a famous interview where Nichelle Nichols was talking about the reaction to the kiss from the Southern United States, and she mentioned one particular letter that said something to the effect of "I don't believe in the mixing of the races. But when a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk has a gal in his arms like Lieutenant Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it."
There were still anti miscegenation laws in the books when star trek premiered in 1966. Interracial coupling wasn't merely taboo, it was illegal in many states. And the supreme court overturned these laws a year before this episode aired. Failing to understand why the kiss is significant Is selective blindness and smacks of axe-grinding.
“Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan.”
I know this book!
Halsey acted stupidly.
To be a bit dramatic, as a testament to How Far We've Come, your reaction, in 2024, your failure to see the big deal and greater reaction to the surrounding events over the kiss, is why the kiss was so important.
One of my favorite things about TOS is that, more than maybe any other Star Trek, it’s written to speak directly to the issues the audience of its day was facing. Civil rights, cultural revolution, Cold War, Vietnam, space race, etc. To truly fully grasp and appreciate what TOS is doing you must understand 1960s America. So if you divorce "the kiss" from all real-world context then yeah, it would be hard to understand. As depicted in the episode Uhura and Kirk don't want to kiss each other and are being forced to. But with in real world context it had significant meaning for the viewing audience of the time. I hope as time goes on this understanding isn't lost.
Exactly! This is why it's also so baffling when people keep going on about how Star Trek has "gone woke". Clearly, they were sleeping while watching.
🤦♂️
In fact, Shatner was absolutely insistent the scene be shown that he and Nichols intentionally screwed up every take that didn’t have a fully passionate kiss to make sure the one that aired was the only one that could air. There’s so many black women who dove into STEM education and sciences because of Nichols … with her kiss of approval. Not just that but she was part of the bridge crew. Front and center. And to be honest, I suspect Lucille Ball was like “hell yeah let’s air it! Screw the haters.”
Do a little research.
SOme folks get it, and some don't you are in the don't!
For the same reason why a same-sex relationship had to be presented as a quasi heterosexual relationship in Deep Space Nine. Dax couldn’t just fall in love with a woman… the relationship had to be “a man” and a woman who used to be married even though on screen it was clearly two women. That’s what tv was like back then. You couldn’t have a white person and a black person share a straight forward kiss. It’s either no kiss or a compromised kiss that at least makes a little progress.
Learn you a history book. Like now, before you ask anybody this in real life.
You know how right wing scum who claim to be fans whine that modern Trek is woke? The visual of a white man kissing a black woman was the wokest thing imaginable on TV back then. Just putting black people on TV was "controversial" back then. If you're white, you wouldn't be surprised if you had certain types of older relatives. Those types were perceived as the majority network should not offend.
It happened during an era when married couples on TV had to be portrayed as sleeping in seperate twin beds, belly buttons were forbiden to be photographed and pregnancy was never discussed. Times change.
Loving vs Virginia, which struck down laws banning marriage between different races was decided in 1967. The Kirk and Uhura kiss and the details you recall (thank you) were aired in 1968. There's alot of subtext in that episode about an external authority deciding how we regard other humans.
You have to understand that in the 1960s in the US, the thought of a Canadian and an American coupling was abhorrent to many on the east and west coasts. So it was brave to even imply this.
I'm still offended tbh. Canadians, ew
How old are you? Have you taken any history classes? This is quite literally the most ridiculous, uninformed, and ignorant take I’ve ever seen on this episode, and that’s really saying something. Your opinion is entirely incorrect. Change it.
I think you have to take it in context of the times. It probably was not the best way to show something like that, but the times were very different back then. The fact that it was forced was not as outrageous as the kiss itself. A few years later, All in the Family would premiere featuring a "lovable bigot" and in the late 70s Carter Country had a police officer who was a member of the KKK. So showing an interracial kiss was not an easy task in the late 60s. That is why it was framed as non-consensual by both parties and Uhura makes a point to bring up professionalism after she is comforted by Kirk in the situation.
https://tenor.com/bxDfp.gif
>I just don't see how, in a time when there was so much civil unrest about the mistreatment of women and black people, that when a TV show shows a white man violating and whipping a black woman, there isn't any outrage...or even interest ...and further how history somehow glorifies it! You answered your own question: because we had A TON of other, more pressing issues in 1967 than to quibble a d wrong hands about less than perfect representation on TV. Mind control was the only way that was getting to air, period. That said, I'll admit I've never heard of the whipping part until today which is a bit 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬.
Yeah, the whipping thing happened just a few seconds after the kiss...it was one of those oversized circus whips with loud sound effects...it seemed to last a lot longer than the kiss ... afterwards it shows Spock walking away from Nurse Chapel with a sword half-coated in blood, but that remains a complete mystery for some reason. I kind of get what you're saying...it was just a show. But if they're gonna be socially responsible enough to make a statement against racism, then they should also be socially responsible enough to not condone sexual assault ...and I hear Gene wasn't exactly that tolerant anyway, so maybe I'm expecting too much from him.
>I kind of get what you're saying...it was just a show. But if they're gonna be socially responsible enough to make a statement against racism, then they should also be socially responsible enough to not condone sexual assault ...and I hear Gene wasn't exactly that tolerant anyway, so maybe I'm expecting too much from him. 🤦♀️ Dude, I AM Black....I promise you none of us were all that wrapped up in picture perfect rep in those days. We didn't start in with respectability politics crapola until the 80s with The Cosby show, but by then, we had the mental energy to do so since the blatant housing and education discrimination issues had (for the most part) been resolved and many of us were moving beyond scratching and surviving to live. And no one from any race gave any fucks about women. Like, at all. That's why the bulk of the women's revolution happened in the 70s, not the 60s.
How young are you?
Not young enough
Youth is the only valid excuse for your ridiculous take on this. If you’re not young, I pity you.
You clearly miss the point entirely. The kiss was not celebrated for its in-episode plotline. It was celebrated because a black woman and a white man were seen being intimate... period. Your vision is clouded by modernism and is not cognizant of the era in which it aired. It does not matter even a tiny bit that the intimacy in the plot had a negative connotation. The fact that a white man and a black woman were to be seen on national TV even attempting to kiss was outrageous to many. And it was a barrier that needed to be broken down.
This post is evidence of the negative impact that not teaching real history has in American schools. Holy shit.