Star Trek episode review — 3.15 — Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

Original air date: January 10, 1969
Director: Jud Taylor
Writer: Oliver Crawford (story by Gene L. Coon)

Rating: 9/10

Perhaps Star Trek’s most effectively gripping commentary on race, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” is a pretty good episode that shows the Enterprise dealing with an age-old alien conflict that they know nothing about.

It’s pretty interesting stuff, even if the racial allegory is a bit on the nose, with a couple of people who hate each other because while they’re both half white and half black, they’re each half white and half black on different sides. It does a pretty good job of showing how surface-level something like racism is.

If there’s a complaint I have, it’s that this is mainly just a Kirk episode. It doesn’t give Spock or McCoy all that much to do, but at the same time, Kirk does shine.