10 Times Star Trek Went Woke

The Savage Curtain is a strange episode. For Uhura, it was an ending. This was Nichelle Nichols' final appearance in Star Trek until The Animated Series, though her scene with Lincoln forms the basis for this entry. When aboard the ship, Lincoln refers to her as a "Negress", for which he then apologizes. She assures him that in her time, people respect who they are and that she is not offended.

The context in which the scene is set - featuring Uhura and Abraham Lincoln - lacks any subtly, in true Trek fashion. It is one of the last episodes in the series' run while featuring one of the most explicit references to the Civil Rights Movement to that date. Here, Lincoln is treated as the 'president to end all presidents' - a true hero of a man that all others should aspire to be. Kirk's reaction - including the call for full dress uniforms - highlights this. 

Uhura's assurance that people have learned not to be offended by words is at best naive and at worst sugarcoating the power of language. The episode aired barely a year after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and three years after the assassination of Malcolm X. The United States Civil Rights Movement was facing opposition in almost all directions, so the inclusion of this scene feels like an attempt to say - things will get better, though thanks to the actions of this 'heroic' and stalwart Lincoln and men like him.

There is another message in the episode about the banality of violence on television, evidenced by the Excalbians en masse enjoying the death matches playing out on the planet's surface. This is lost amid the execution of the script. 

The Savage Curtain is perhaps best viewed as an episode that set out to do too many things, with the end result failing to rise above the sum of its parts.