10 Star Trek Episodes That Were Banned

7. The Empath

When the BBC chose to ban episodes of The Original Series it always (reading back now, anyway) smacks of stuffy, uptight, hang-writing. One time they might actually have had a point, however, was concerning the Season 3 episode, The Empath. This still has the power to induce a wince in audiences never 50 years later, and didn't make it to air in the entire country until 1994.

In the episode, while visiting an apparently doomed planet, the crew is repeatedly subjected to torturous experiments by its inhabitants. It's not graphically shown, and the majority of the horror is left to the descriptions, but the graphical nature of what's said allows the audience to paint a horrific picture in their minds.

The subject matter of the episode, and the unflinching nature of the way it's described, rendered the episode banned again by the BBC. However, the critical reception it received in America led to scores of fans petitioning the broadcaster to show it, and the other episodes, in the UK. They responded; "There are no plans to screen the four episodes because we feel that they deal most unpleasantly with the already unpleasant subjects of madness, torture, sadism, and disease."