10 Star Trek Episodes That PISSED People Off
Star Trek has never been afraid to court controversy - here are 10 examples of some of the biggest!
Star Trek has, from time to time, produced episodes that are heartwarming and uplifting. There have been episodes that show the lighter side of the future, from friendships to love stories to even the bond between person and ship.
This is not that list.
Gene Roddenberry knew exactly what he was doing when he set out to create his show, to tell morality plays on a weekly basis, reflecting the wrongs he saw in society back on the audience that was watching. For many, many years, Star Trek has never been afraid to tackle some of the deeper and darker aspects of the world around it.
There are times when these attempts have been met with contempt by an audience that wasn't always ready for them. George Takei spoke recently during the Star Trek Day panel that Roddenberry may have been a pioneer, but he also was very aware he needed to continue having a career to be able to tell these stories.
This points on this list refer to episodes that have been released and, for one reason or another, have drawn the ire of a section of the viewing audience, beginning with one of the biggest examples of this.
10. Plato's Stepchildren
The infamous kiss between Uhura and Kirk in Star Trek has long been a tent-pole in the history of not only Star Trek, but in history in general.
While the status of the episode containing the first interracial kiss on television has since been debated - even in Star Trek itself, with Kirk kissing Lt. Marlena Moreau in the second season episode Mirror, Mirror (Moreau was played by Filipino actress BarBara Luna).
The furor that preceded the filming of the kiss was in anticipation of the fallout from conservative television stations, as the fear was that they would refuse to screen the kiss. They were, in a way, correct.
The kiss has gone down in infamy however, as Nichols reflected later, the taboo of the piece was greater than the fallout. While there was hate mail, it was nothing like the deluge that they had been expecting.
Star Trek showed, with that one moment of television, that some taboos were ready to be challenged.