Star Trek breaks a cultural barrier by airing an interracial kiss - November 22nd, 1968

On this day in 1968, during a turbulent year for race relations in America, actors William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols shared a prominent kiss on an episode of Star Trek.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show for those interested in the big and small

(00:20):
moments of history. I'm Gabe Bluesier, and in this episode
we're talking about one of the most famous kisses in
the galaxy and how it reflected a changing perspective on
race in the late nineteen sixties. The day was November nineteen,

(00:47):
during a turbulent year for race relations in America. Actors
William Shatner and Nachelle Nichols shared a prominent kiss on
an episode of Star Trek. According to Gallup polls, when
the episode premiered, fewer than twenty percent of Americans approved
of marriage between white and black people. While still pretty low,

(01:10):
that was way up from the less than five percent
who approved just one decade earlier. Acceptance of mixed race
relationships was on the rise in the US, and the
kiss on Star Trek was an early sign of that
changing point of view and of the victories of the
ongoing civil rights movement. A campy sixties sci fi show

(01:32):
might seem like an odd vehicle for delivering a cultural message,
but the genre and the show were actually well suited
to the task, As William Shatner once explained, quote, setting
Star Trek three hundred years in the future allowed creator
Gene Roddenberry to focus on the social issues of the

(01:53):
nineteen sixties without being direct or obvious. Despite its standing
as landmark moment in American television, the kiss between Shatner
and Nichols is about as far from romantic as you
can get. It takes place in a third season episode
of the original series titled Plato's step Children. The admittedly

(02:17):
strange plot follows the crew of the U. S s.
Enterprise as they encounter a group of human like aliens
called the Platonians, who patterned their culture after the teachings
of the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates. Despite their
high minded culture, or perhaps because of it, the aliens

(02:38):
turned out to be arrogant and cruel in the episode.
Using their telekinetic powers, which is a whole story in itself,
the aliens control the Enterprise crew like puppets for their
own amusement. In one scene, they force an embrace between
the black communications officer played by Nichols and the white

(02:58):
captain played by Shatner. Both characters attempt to resist, but
in the end, Lieutenant Uhura and Captain Kirk are forced
to kiss as the playton Ians look on like the
total creeps they are. The episode was slated to premiere
just a little over a year after the Supreme Court

(03:18):
delivered its historic ruling on the case of Loving v. Virginia.
That decision struck down several state laws and declared interracial
marriage legal in the United States. In light of the
racial climate in the country, NBC executives were nervous when
they saw the script for Plato's step children. They were

(03:40):
worried that an interracial kiss might upset their TV station
affiliates and viewers in the Deep South. The scene was
shot as scripted, but to appease the networks, the showrunners
also filmed an alternate version with the kiss occurring off screen. However,
Michelle Nichols later wrote in her autobiography that she and

(04:03):
Shatner deliberately messed up their lines so that the original
take would have to be used. She wrote, quote, we
did a few takes, but Bill was deliberately trying to
flub it. At one point he even crossed his eyes
to make me laugh. In the end, all the concern
was for nothing. The episode aired with the kiss intact,

(04:26):
and the network herred few complaints. According to Nichols, the
episode did get more fanmail than the paramount studio had
ever received for a single episode of Star Trek, but
the majority of letters were positive. In the decades that followed,
intimacy between black and white characters became more and more

(04:46):
common on television. But it's worth noting that the kiss
between Kirk and Hera wasn't the first TV kiss between
actors of different races. In fact, it wasn't even the
first interracial kiss on Star Trek, and that's to say
nothing of earlier shows going as far back as the
nineteen fifties, such as I Love Lucy. It all depends

(05:09):
on what you consider a kiss and how you distinguish
one ethnicity from another. But the truth is it doesn't
really matter which TV kiss came before or after another.
In the end, each one was important to someone watching
at home, someone who was seeing their own relationships reflected
on screen for the first time in their lives. That

(05:32):
may sound like a stretch given the unromantic context of
the kiss on Star Trek, but consider this. The kiss
between Ahura and Kirk didn't shock any of the characters
in the show. It's not played for laughs, and their
difference in race isn't written as an issue for anyone.
In fact, there's no comment or discussion of it at all.

(05:55):
For some viewers, that was a welcome change from real
life and a chance to imagine a similar future for themselves,
a better one where they could love as they please
without other people's hang ups getting in the way. I'm
Gabe Louisier and hopefully you now know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. If you enjoyed

(06:19):
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at t d i HC Show, and if you have
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beam them on over to This Day at i heart
media dot com. Thanks to Chandler May's for producing the show,

(06:41):
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in History Class. For more
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