46 Years Ago Today: The Kirk/Uhura Kiss
- Thread starter Joanna McCoy-Kirk
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Apart from the kiss the episode was pretty dire and not one of Trek's best! I've read that this episode was banned on BBC television for many years not because of the kiss but because of the quality of the story itself. Kirk pretending to be a horse, Nimoy doing a Greek dance around shatner's head! Weird stuff in the day!
JB
JB
The claim predates Asherman. "A Visit to Star Trek's Movie Launch," by Marguerite Michaels (in the Boston Globe) is dated December 10, 1978. In the article, Michaels claims that "television's first interracial kiss was on the Enterprise."
A ProQuest search doesn't uncover the claim being made any earlier, which leads me to speculate that it may have been from the Paramount marketing department, churned up to promote Star Trek--The Motion Picture.
Random aside/interesting discovery made while investigating this: Stanley Robertson (the creative executive NBC assigned to Star Trek) wrote a column called "L.A. Confidential" for the Los Angeles Sentinel.
A ProQuest search doesn't uncover the claim being made any earlier, which leads me to speculate that it may have been from the Paramount marketing department, churned up to promote Star Trek--The Motion Picture.
Random aside/interesting discovery made while investigating this: Stanley Robertson (the creative executive NBC assigned to Star Trek) wrote a column called "L.A. Confidential" for the Los Angeles Sentinel.
Let's not overlook the other good things as well, such as the sky outside the Platonian compound, changing from a day to night look...
I love those kinds of touches.
How did I never notice that? That's amazing. I guess I was so busy despising most of the episode all these years that I never really looked at the details.
I'd say the best things in "Plato's Stepchildren" are:
1. Michael Dunn's heart-touching scene at the end.
2. The music (but that can be said for any episode).
3. Barbara Babcock's beauty and her speaking voice.
The forced encounters with Uhura and Chapel would be way down my list, appearing somewhere after Kirk and Spock's excruciating song and dance routine. So that's like, way down.
Actually the article states:
My favorite thing about this episode by far is:
My second favorite thing is how the actors, especially the stars but including the guest stars, play it so well. It's not a great story but they don't turn in a lackluster or halfhearted performance.
And Barbara Babcock, what more need I say. I think she's my favorite guest star.
The article was updated after I posted that correction here. The section I quoted was copied and pasted directly from the article before the update.
Neil
Michael Dunn?
I think so, too. Well, that and the line about "Where I come from, size, shape or color makes no difference."
Was anyone else surprised by Leonard Nimoy's singing? He has such a deep and resonant speaking voice that I was surprised that his singing was nothing at all special. I mean, he CAN carry a tune, which is more than Shatner and Kelley could do, as Star Trek V showed us.
But I thought anyone with such a lovely speaking voice would have a more noteworthy singing voice.
Let's not overlook the other good things as well, such as the sky outside the Platonian compound, changing from a day to night look...
I love those kinds of touches.
How did I never notice that? That's amazing. I guess I was so busy despising most of the episode all these years that I never really looked at the details.
Don't feel bad, Zap: it only jumped out at me a year or two ago.
Was anyone else surprised by Leonard Nimoy's singing? He has such a deep and resonant speaking voice that I was surprised that his singing was nothing at all special. I mean, he CAN carry a tune, which is more than Shatner and Kelley could do, as Star Trek V showed us.
Singing is funny. I'm no expert about it, but I've noticed over the years that oftentimes, great singers have speaking voices that are nothing to write home about. Here, the opposite is in play, I suppose!
Jim Neighbors is a high-talker with a baritone singing voice.
I'm sure that if Nimoy had studied singing with a teacher, he could have produced a decent baritone voice. And I think in "Plato's Stepchildren" he was playing a mortified Spock rather than giving a full performance. He has a better singing voice on his LPs.
He does have a decent voice. A bit of practice and he could be quite enjoyable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGF5ROpjRAU
Was anyone else surprised by Leonard Nimoy's singing? He has such a deep and resonant speaking voice that I was surprised that his singing was nothing at all special. I mean, he CAN carry a tune, which is more than Shatner and Kelley could do, as Star Trek V showed us.
Singing is funny. I'm no expert about it, but I've noticed over the years that oftentimes, great singers have speaking voices that are nothing to write home about. Here, the opposite is in play, I suppose!
Perhaps it's all due to training, then -- actors train their speaking voices, and singers train their singing voices. I'm sorta surprised the training doesn't seem to carry over at all, but then, I know nothing about it, being entirely untrained in either realm.
Sorry, I did not realize it was edited after you quoted it.
I posted a brief/nitpicky response to this on my blog: http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2014/11/tvs-first-interracial-kiss.html.
In short, I think this is a valuable piece, but (as noted here) the author makes a few mistakes in his/her account of behind the scenes Trek lore.
In short, I think this is a valuable piece, but (as noted here) the author makes a few mistakes in his/her account of behind the scenes Trek lore.
25 years before "the kiss", possibly the first interracial thumb-war.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY_IGq13LX8[/yt]
The first interracial hand-holding actually appears to be in The Littlest Colonel between Shirley Temple & Bill Robinson from 1935 (another 8 years earlier).
Slow progress that.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY_IGq13LX8[/yt]
The first interracial hand-holding actually appears to be in The Littlest Colonel between Shirley Temple & Bill Robinson from 1935 (another 8 years earlier).
Slow progress that.
^ TV in the 1930's? Fairly rare & experimental.
Just different kinds of media, plus it's about breaking a barrier more than the type of media it was done on.
Just different kinds of media, plus it's about breaking a barrier more than the type of media it was done on.
The studio probably figured it wouldn't spark any controversy since Shirley Temple was 6 years old at the time.
Yay, I got a mention at the end! Thanks, Harvey!
The more I think about this, if someone was going to get upset about this kind of thing, wouldn't they be more upset if it was a little white girl?
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