Star Trek: 15 Most Culturally Significant Episodes
2. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
The third season of the Original Series was plagued with many production and quality issues, which led to the show finding itself cancelled. Though it is somewhat easy to write off the final year, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield has endured as one of Star Trek's starkest lessons on bigotry.
Frank Gorshin, the Riddler from the '60s Batman series, guest stars as Belle, a member of the Cheron race, chasing Lokai. Lokai is his countryman, but he is different. They are each black on one side and white on the other, though they are mirror images of each other. Therefore, accordingly to Belle, Lokai is an inferior specimen.
The episode highlights the simple pointlessness of hatred due to the colour of one's skin. The two men have fought for thousands of years, chasing each other through the cosmos. Meanwhile, Cheron burned.
They return to a dead planet, ravaged by a civil war that has caused the extinction of both of their peoples. Unable to process this, they both continue the fight, losing themselves forever in the pain and hatred they feel for each other.
This is an episode that has very little in the way of subtext. It is all there on screen to be seen - it shines a mirror at the audience, reminding them that to judge one on one the colour of their skin is pointless and self-destructive. The episode ends darkly, with no resolution for the two warring men.