As faulty as one's memory can be, I'd still go on record stating that this was one of the episodes I caught in re-runs in the Seventies that made me a Star Trek fan. Roddenberry and his co-writers skewer racism in the story, and manage to turn the concept on it's head with a brilliantly clever twist. Though on the surface, Bele (Frank Gorshin) and Lokai (Lou Antonio) appear to be of the same race, they are obviously at war with each other because their coloration forms a mirror image of each other.
The episode achieves absurd proportions when Bele proclaims to his nemesis - "You're dead, you half-white"! It's at this point that the viewer either 'gets' it, or doesn't. The inherent nature of racism is entirely wrong headed and unsupportable by any logical rationale. If you were to strip away any of the physical features that define people, whether color, race, nationality, sex or what have you, you have no basis for fear and hate. Imagine if everyone in the world were blind. On what pretext would one be able to base his hatred for another person?
On top of the racial component, the episode also offers that intriguing smack down between Captain Kirk and Bele over the fate of the Enterprise. The destruct sequence by itself would have made for a great episode, but here it's part of a larger story. In fact, it gave Bele one more opportunity to bring his prejudice into the equation by declaring to Kirk - "You can no more destroy this ship than I can change color". Brilliantly played.
However there was one thing that obviously contradicted continuity in the story. It was mentioned that the shuttle-craft Lokai arrived in was stolen from Starbase 4. Yet when it landed in the hangar of the Enterprise, it clearly showed the call numbers of the Enterprise itself - NCC 1701-7. It seems to me this could have been easily avoided by changing the numbers, so I wonder why no one thought of it. Maybe by that time, cast and crew might have gone color blind.
The episode achieves absurd proportions when Bele proclaims to his nemesis - "You're dead, you half-white"! It's at this point that the viewer either 'gets' it, or doesn't. The inherent nature of racism is entirely wrong headed and unsupportable by any logical rationale. If you were to strip away any of the physical features that define people, whether color, race, nationality, sex or what have you, you have no basis for fear and hate. Imagine if everyone in the world were blind. On what pretext would one be able to base his hatred for another person?
On top of the racial component, the episode also offers that intriguing smack down between Captain Kirk and Bele over the fate of the Enterprise. The destruct sequence by itself would have made for a great episode, but here it's part of a larger story. In fact, it gave Bele one more opportunity to bring his prejudice into the equation by declaring to Kirk - "You can no more destroy this ship than I can change color". Brilliantly played.
However there was one thing that obviously contradicted continuity in the story. It was mentioned that the shuttle-craft Lokai arrived in was stolen from Starbase 4. Yet when it landed in the hangar of the Enterprise, it clearly showed the call numbers of the Enterprise itself - NCC 1701-7. It seems to me this could have been easily avoided by changing the numbers, so I wonder why no one thought of it. Maybe by that time, cast and crew might have gone color blind.