Star Trek: The Original Series
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the adventures of the starship and its crew. It later acquired the retronym of ''Star Trek: The Original Series'' (''TOS'') to distinguis ...
'' titled "
Plato's Stepchildren
"Plato's Stepchildren" is the tenth episode of the third season of the American science fiction television series '' Star Trek''. Written by Meyer Dolinsky and directed by David Alexander, it was first broadcast on November 22, 1968.
In the ep ...
", season 3 episode 10, first broadcast November 22, 1968,
Uhura
Nyota Uhura () is a fictional character in the ''Star Trek'' franchise. In the original television series, the character was portrayed by Nichelle Nichols, who reprised the role for the first six ''Star Trek'' feature films. A younger Uhura is ...
(played by black actress
Nichelle Nichols
Nichelle Nichols (, born Grace Dell Nichols; December 28, 1932 – July 30, 2022) was an American actress, singer, and dancer best known for her portrayal of Nyota Uhura in ''Star Trek'' and its film sequels. Nichols' portrayal of Uhura was g ...
) and
Captain Kirk
James Tiberius Kirk is a fictional character in the '' Star Trek'' media franchise. Originally played by Canadian actor William Shatner, Kirk first appeared in '' Star Trek'' serving aboard the starship USS ''Enterprise'' as captain. Kirk lea ...
(played by white actor
William Shatner
William Shatner (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor. In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the ''Star Trek'' franchise, from his 1965 debut as the captain of the starship ''Enterpris ...
) kiss. The episode is often—incorrectly—cited as the first example of an
interracial
Interracial topics include:
* Interracial marriage, marriage between two people of different races
** Interracial marriage in the United States
*** 2009 Louisiana interracial marriage incident
* Interracial adoption, placing a child of one raci ...
kiss
A kiss is the touch or pressing of one's lips against another person or an object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely. Depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, romance, sexual attraction, ...
on television.
Background
The first interracial kiss on television is debated, with several examples identified in the 1950s. For example, Shatner had another interracial kiss more than 10 years earlier on a 1958 episode of ''
The Ed Sullivan Show
''The Ed Sullivan Show'' is an American television variety show that ran on CBS from June 20, 1948, to March 28, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the '' CBS Sunday Night M ...
Asian
Asian may refer to:
* Items from or related to the continent of Asia:
** Asian people, people in or descending from Asia
** Asian culture, the culture of the people from Asia
** Asian cuisine, food based on the style of food of the people from Asi ...
ancestry. This was during a scene from the
Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
production of ''
The World of Suzie Wong
''The World of Suzie Wong'' is a 1957 novel by British writer Richard Mason. The main characters are Robert Lomax, a young British artist living in Hong Kong, and Suzie Wong, the title character, a Chinese woman who works as a prostitute. ...
''.
Production
In the first season episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of", first broadcast in October 1966, there is a friendly kiss between Uhura, played by Nichols and Christine Chapel, played by
Space Seed
"Space Seed" is the twenty-second episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series '' Star Trek''. Written by Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber and directed by Marc Daniels, it first aired on February 16, 1967.
In the ...
, there is also a kiss between characters played by
Ricardo Montalbán
Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG (; ; November 25, 1920 – January 14, 2009) was a Mexican and American film and television actor. Montalbán's career spanned seven decades, during which he became known for performances in a var ...
and
Madlyn Rhue
Madlyn Soloman Rhue (née Madeline Roche, October 3, 1935 – December 16, 2003) was an American film and television actress.
Personal life - youth and education
Rhue was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from Los Angeles High School, and st ...
.
In the second season episode " Mirror, Mirror," first broadcast on October 6, 1967, Kirk and Lt. Marlena Moreau, played by BarBara Luna, an actress of Filipino-European ancestry, kiss on the lips. Meanwhile, Mirror- Sulu, played by Japanese-American actor
George Takei
George Takei (; ja, ジョージ・タケイ; born Hosato Takei (武井 穂郷), April 20, 1937) is an American actor, author and activist known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the fictional starship USS ''Enterprise'' in the televi ...
, kisses Uhura's neck.
In "Plato's Stepchildren," which was broadcast in 1968, the kiss is involuntarily forced by
psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...
. Shatner recalls in ''Star Trek Memories'' that
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
insisted their lips never touch, using the technique of turning their heads away from the camera to conceal this. However, Nichols writes in her 1994 autobiography, ''Beyond Uhura,'' that the kiss was real, even during takes in which her head obscures their lips. She also gave this account in multiple recorded interviews.
When NBC executives learned of the kiss they became concerned it would anger TV stations in the Deep South. Earlier in 1968, NBC had expressed similar concern over a musical sequence in a
Petula Clark
Petula Sally Olwen Clark, CBE (born 15 November 1932) is an English singer, actress, and composer. She has one of the longest serving careers of a British singer, spanning more than seven decades.
Clark's professional career began during the ...
special in which she touched
Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927) is an American singer, activist, and actor. As arguably the most successful Jamaican-American pop star, he popularized the Trinbagonian Caribbean musical style with an interna ...
's arm, a moment that has been incorrectly cited as the first physical contact on American television between a man and woman of different races. At one point during negotiations, the idea was brought up of having Spock kiss Uhura instead (as Spock was half Vulcan), but William Shatner insisted that they stick with the original script. NBC finally ordered that two versions of the scene be shot—one in which Kirk and Uhura kissed and one in which they did not. Having successfully recorded the former version of the scene, Shatner and Nichelle Nichols deliberately flubbed every take of the latter version, thus forcing the episode to go out with the kiss intact.
As Nichols recounts:
Knowing that Gene was determined to air the real kiss, Bill shook me and hissed menacingly in his best ham-fisted Kirkian staccato delivery, "I! WON'T! KISS! YOU! I! WON'T! KISS! YOU!"
It was absolutely awful, and we were hysterical and ecstatic. The director was beside himself, and still determined to get the kissless shot. So we did it again, and it seemed to be fine. "Cut! Print! That's a wrap!"
The next day they screened the dailies, and although I rarely attended them, I couldn't miss this one. Everyone watched as Kirk and Uhura kissed and kissed and kissed. And I'd like to set the record straight: Although Kirk and Uhura fought it, they did kiss in every single scene. When the non-kissing scene came on, everyone in the room cracked up. The last shot, which looked okay on the set, actually had Bill wildly crossing his eyes. It was so corny and just plain bad it was unusable. The only alternative was to cut out the scene altogether, but that was impossible to do without ruining the entire episode. Finally, the guys in charge relented: "To hell with it. Let's go with the kiss." I guess they figured we were going to be cancelled in a few months anyway. And so the kiss stayed.
Reception
There are no records of any public complaints about the scene.Nichols, pp.196-197 Nichols observed that "Plato's Stepchildren", which first aired on November 22, 1968, "received a huge response. We received one of the largest batches of fan mail ever, all of it very positive, with many addressed to me from girls wondering how it felt to kiss Captain Kirk, and many to him from guys wondering the same thing about me. However, almost no one found the kiss offensive," except from a single mildly negative letter from one white Southerner who wrote: "I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it." Nichols said "for me, the most memorable episode of our last season was 'Plato's Stepchildren.'"
In 2016,
TVline
''TVLine'' is a website devoted to information, news, and spoilers of television programs.
History
In late 2010, ''Entertainment Weekly''s Michael Ausiello announced that he would be leaving ''EW'' after nearly two years in their employ to est ...
ranked the kiss as one of the top 20 moments of ''Star Trek''. In 2016, '' Radio Times'' ranked the kiss as the 25th best moment in all ''Star Trek'', including later spin-off series. The cultural impact of the kiss was noted by '' National Geographic'', in 2016. WhatCulture ranked this the 8th best romantic-sexual moment in ''Star Trek''.
See also
* " Rejoined", a ''Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'' episode in which two female Trills kiss
* '' Golden Boy'', Lorna Moon and
Sammy Davis Jr.
Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, dancer, actor, comedian, film producer and television director.
At age three, Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the ...