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Reviewed by Alan Duncan
While Star Trek is regarded as one of the mainstays of TV Science Fiction, with its optimistic, prejudice-free view of the future of the human race, virtually none of its storylines, especially in the original series, ever even hinted at the existence of gays, lesbians, bisexual or transgender people as part of this future. While the episode I'm talking about here does little to address this situation directly, it came closest in the original series to striking a chord with the feelings of persecution experienced by sexual minorities and most other marginalised groups. Indeed, its imagery depicting the race battle between blacks and whites in the USA at the time, stands out in the mind long after initial viewing.
The storyline concerns the interruption of an Enterprise mission by an encounter with a stolen Federation shuttlecraft. Aboard the craft is a humanoid alien, Lokai. He is in a bad way due to an oxygen leak in the shuttle and he refuses to answer Kirk's questions. Shortly thereafter, an invisible ship is detected approaching the Enterprise, the purpose of which soon becomes clear. It deposits another alien, Bele, aboard the ship. Bele is another member of Lokai's race. Bele states that he is there to take Lokai, an escaped criminal, back into custody. Kirk, ever the stickler for the Starfleet book, insists that the due process of Federation law must be followed and Lokai must stand trial for the theft of the shuttle craft first. In this case Kirk's insistence is probably for the best, as it soon becomes clear that things are not as simple between Bele and Lokai as a criminal/lawmaker relationship.
Lokai: "Benefactors! He's a liar. He raided our homes, tore us from our families, herded us together like cattle then sold us as slaves".Rather than being a common criminal Lokai is actually a political criminal -- an activist. His crimes were to seek a better life for his people, who were under the rule of Bele's people.
Bele: " They were savages, Captain. We took them into our hearts, our homes. We educated them."
Lokai: "Yes, just education enough to serve the master race."
Bele: " You were freed."
Lokai: "Freed. Were we free to be men, free to be husbands & fathers, free to live our lives in equality and dignity?"
Bele: "There is an order in things. He asked for Utopia in a day. It can't be done."What differences could deserve genocide? In this case, it is a question of skin pigmentation. The unique characteristic of Bele and Lokai's race is the evolution of their skin pigmentation - half black, half-white. Bele's people, the majority, were white on the left side of the body and black on the right. Lokai's were the direct opposite, hence all the centuries of hounding and persecution on Lokai's race. Does this puerile treatment of a group over such a petty difference sound familiar? That's the somewhat obvious racial parallel I mentioned earlier, but it doesn't stop at race. Lokai's feelings on his people's lot in life sum up the feelings of minorities who are persecuted for one trivial reason or another, all around the world.
Lokai: " Not in a day, and not in 10 times 10,000 years by your thinking. To you, we are a loathsome breed who will never be ready. Genocide for my people is the plan for your Utopia."
Lokai: "How can I make your flesh know how it feels to see all those who are like you -- and only because they are like you -- despised, slaughtered and even worse, denied the simplest bit of decency that is a living being's right? Do you know what it would be like to be dragged out of your hovel and into a war on another planet? A battle that will serve your oppressors and bring death to you and your brothers?"This is a not-so-thinly veiled comment on the treatment of gays by the Nazis during WWII. Homosexuals were considered the lowest of the low in the hierarchy of the concentration camps and German society. Towards the end of the war, when the commanders of the Third Reich realised they were losing, they turned to the gay internees, and told them they were real Germans after all. As such, they would be released after the war in return for proving their loyalty to the State (which had treated them worse than dirt) by going to the front to fight. Of course, the idea was that they should never return. Indeed, Bele and Lokai's planet was run like a concentration camp.
Bele: "You're finished Lokai. Oh, we've got your kind penned in on Sharron, into little districts and it's not going to change. You've combed the galaxy and come up with nothing more than multi-coloured trash, do-gooders and bleeding hearts. You're dead, you half white."In the end, the Enterprise reaches the planet, only to find it lifeless -- the population claimed by battles of hate and fear.
Kirk: "Your planet is dead. There's nobody alive on Sharron because of hate!"The two sides had been so consumed by their differences, to the exclusion of all else, that the extermination of difference became an obsession. This shows that the gay community is right in sticking to a "middle road" of activism and persuasion. It is working for us gradually. By talking to those who would oppress us, we are letting them get to know us as something not to be feared. If we descend to the levels of those groups who really are obsessed with hating and destroying us, that's when things become dangerous.
Spock: "To expect sense from two mentalities of such extreme viewpoints is not logical."If we continue to make people see that our differences in sexuality are just one ingredient of our overall mission in life, and concentrate on exterminating the paranoia that elements of society create on both sides, then we really will be a big part of the future that Star Trek predicts.
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