TOS: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

             This is an episode I hadn't seen since I was very young. This is also one of those episodes that isn't about Star Trek so much as it is about us today and how so many of us allow ourselves to be driven by hatred. Even in an era with a black President things in America are still pretty tense and maybe more people should watch this episode. On a lighter note it is also the episode where Shatner refuses to correctly pronounce, "sabotage," which I have heard joked about for a long time but didn't catch on my initial viewing.
             The episode begins with the Enterprise on a vital decontamination mission to save a planet with billions living on it. While on there way there they encounter a drifting shuttlecraft that was reported missing from Starbase 4 a few weeks earlier. They bring it aboard and find its single occupant to be a black and white faced man named Lokai. He insists he isn't a criminal for having used the shuttlecraft without permission, but isn't exactly happy about the idea of being taken to the Starbase to face the charges. The Enterprise continues on its way but is intercepted by a very fast moving invisible (budget problems any one?) scout ship that destroys itself when it impacts the shields. Before its destruction it beams and opposite pattern black and white faced man named Bele over. Bele demands they turn over custody of Lokai to him to face charges on their home planet Cheron. 
             Kirk naturally refuses to be pushed around by Bele, but Bele uses some sort of mental powers to take over the ships navigation and only gives it up when Kirk threatens to destroy the Enterprise. There is a lot of fighting between Bele and Lokai and it comes out that the only reason they really hate each other is the difference in the color patterns on their faces. The ship arrives to do its contamination duties, but once done Bele takes over navigation again and takes them to planet Cheron. But instead of finding their homeworld intact it has been totally destroyed by a civil war leaving no one alive. Kirk lets Bele and Lokai beam to the surface and then gets the hell out of their.

             Review: Not a super complicated episode, but one with a point to make. The scene at the end of Bele and Lokai running through the Enterprise overlayed with shots of burning buildings went on too long, but otherwise this episode had good pacing. 

7 out of 10