Star Trek - The Original Series, Vol. 35 - Episodes 69 & 70: That Which Survives/ Let That Be Your Last Battlefield DVD
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Rating:  -
As the 3rd and final season quickly comes to an end, I'm left unsurprised that Classic Trek got axed at this season's end. After a long string of poor and uninspiring episodes (where had all the great scriptwriters gone after the first two seasons?) this volume is just the next installment of forgettable drivel. The first episode is just very, very poor with terrible scriptwriting and Spock is inexplicably made out to be some obnoxious old maid with pms. The overall dialogue is very poor and the story is just plain stupid. Why wouldn't a force strong enough to send the Enterprise 1000 light years away just simply destroy the Enterprise right away instead of playing games with the crew is unexplained. Why would the computer have to make replicas of Lee Meriwether specifically for individual crew members without being able to kill at will is another ridiculous failing of the plot. I can safely say that this episode "That Which Survives" is one of the worst 3 episodes in the entire classic trekdom.
The second episode is an interesting fable about racial discrimination and intolerance which pricks the conscience and successfully achieves its intention of provoking discomfort among its viewers to look at themselves to see if they are guilty of similar actions themselves. The script is quite good and the acting is good as well and not as bad as the other reviewers have made it out to be. This episode ranks among the better ones of season 3 as well.
Overall, we have one horribly bad and one average episode putting this volume under the "give it a miss" category if you are deciding which volumes to collect.
Rating:  -
These two episodes are so bad that fans are looking for something to say and find the "Batman" connection with the guest stars (Meriwether & Groshin). Yechh!!! Holy Pork Fat, Batman!
But on a postive note, "That Which Survives" could have been so much more if they only bothered to do a few more rewrites. The stark cheap sets on that episode didn't even stick out! Well, maybe when Kirk told Spock to fire at the 'computer' and the unnamed Lt. fired at the 'cube' hanging from the ceiling, which made no sense at all! And that's with the full-length original episode. It looks like they edited something important out of the story, or more probably just ran out of time.
On a negative note, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield was a poor excuse of a 'moral story' about prejudice. The plot had some stupid points (left side, right side skin color) while it clobbered you over the head with the lesson, the home planet destroyed itself! Long gone are the 'morals' being nested in a good story.
p.s. Will Amazon ever allow us to give out a zero rating?
Rating: -
That Which Survives-Only the Sulu fan club (he features prominently here) could disagree that the best thing about this episode is Lee Merriweather-and she plays an automaton! A lot of the old tricks are here, like Kirk outsmarting a computer (come to think of it, even the computer console looks familiar!).
Basically, this should have been a half-hour show (actually it shouldn't even have been a show). Senseless dialogue is contrived, both on the planet and on the Enterprise, just to pass the time until the next commercial. Hard to find a worse episode, in my opinion.
Tidbit: For the remainder of the show, the final credits would
feature the 2nd season theme music. While this is a very minor detail in itself, it seems symbolic of other changes. The episodes become more formulaic as the parties concerned begin to see the writing on the wall for the show. The absence of new music, as budgets draw tight, also contributes an increasingly stale and defeatist feel to the late episodes. (1 star)
Let that be your Last Battlefield-This episode, employing actors done up in half-black, half-white face makeup, is a none-too subtle statement about race relations. While Star Trek is to be commended for not ignoring controversial issues, the show's forays could be grossly oversimplistic; this episode is a case in point. Most viewers will have gleaned the difference between Lokai and Bele long before the crew becomes aware. This is also another talky episode, and while the actors do a good job expressing their choler through some truly acrimonious exchanges, the viewer gets the idea pretty fast.
The second half of the episode is not without its plusses though. The auto-destruct sequence was a nice touch, as were the montages of burning cities (which must have struck a cord in early 1969, as today). The conclusion leaves the viewer with much to ponder, both specifically about Bele and Lokai's fate, and more generally about hatred's powerful momentum. One other welcome aspect was the fact that the Enterprise and her crew were basically powerless here. This thankfully (in my opinion) spares us the need for a pat conclusion to such a complex problem. On the other hand, it is interesting to ask whether a first season episode would have been so pessimistic. The answer is almost certainly no. But a lot had changed in two years, and not just in the Star Trek universe. (3 stars)
Rating:  -
Volume 35 of the Star Trek DVD series features two good episodes from the third season with guest appearances from stars of the recently cancelled Batman TV series.
Lee Meriwether plays Losira in THAT WHICH SURVIVES, the last of a long extinct alien race on a deserted planet. When the Enterprise arrives at the planet, crew men are being fatally assaulted by Losira, who keeps appearing and disappearing from the Enterprise to the planet's surface. To make matters worse The Enterprise runs into technical problems leaving Scotty to try and sort them out. In the end it turns out that Losira is nothing more than the planet's defence system which is still runnning long after she and her entire race died out. This ending is somewhat strange and leaves the viewer scratching their head. None the less THAT WHICH SURVIVES is still a good episode. The story is pretty good despite the confusing ending and ee Meriwether has always been top notch eye candy. Strangely Mr.Spock is rude to almost everyone in this episode which makes the viewer wonder......
Frank Gorshin plays Bele in LET THAT BE YOUR LAST BATTLEFIELD a Charonian Police Officer tracking down an outlaw named Lokei (played by Lou Antonio). His search brings him to The Enterprise. Bele insists that Lokei has committed some terrible crimes nad must pay the price. However Lokei pleads that his kind on Charon are treated like this by authority regardless of what they have done. Essentially this episode tackles the racism issue head on. Bele and Lokei are both Charonians but Bele has black skin on the right side and white on the left while Lokei is the reverse. The entire conflict seems to be a big joke but thats what the producers wanted to get across. That racism was ridiculous and pointless. The problem with this episode is it is way too preachy. The story is basically Bele and Lokei screaming at eachother about morals throughout. Thus the message is crammed down viewers throats. Still this is a great Star Trek episode despite the lack o developed plot. Good casting and a stragnely effective episode that deals with this issue that plagued the 60's.
Overall this is one of the better third season DVD's. There are flaws but it's not terrible. These are two goods episodes with great guest stars. Highly recommended!
Rating:  -
...some people just keep on pluggin' the same old paranoia.
"That Which Survives" suffers from terrible cheapness, though it benefits from an interesting performance by Lee Meriwether as the image of the last surviving member of a long-dead alien race, Losira, who is now nothing more than a computerized planetary defense system...for an entirely extinct race, that can no longer benefit from it. Losira begins appearing and disappearing aboard the Enterprise, killing various crew members and performing acts of sabotage. Kirk and Crew go on an alien hunt on the nearest planet, and there also encounter the strange woman, whom they correctly surmise is some sort of lethal hologram. The story hasn't got much plot, but it holds your attention, and Lee Meriwether was always first-rate eye-candy.
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" is a great episode, if heavy-handed. Lou Antonio and Frank Gorshin are the last surviving members of two severely prejudicial races living on the planet Charon, their polarized attitudes evident even on their very bodies: one is white on the right side and black on the left, the other black on the right side and white on the left. Antonio's race is the oppressed proletariat class, Gorshin's the decadent bourgeois - Antonio seeks asylum on board the Enterprise, and Gorshin, a Charonian policeman, demands his return for trial on several crimes. The aliens begin infecting the Enterprise with their enflamed rhetoric, and prove to be utterly consumed by hatred of each other and ruthless in the extreme as to achieving their separate goals.
What's best in this episode are the performances of the two guest stars, the fiery Gorshin especially, and the all too memorable finale in which the perpetual antagonists deliberately throw themselves into eternal warfare rather than work out their differences - even once they know their home planet has completely destroyed itself in precisely the same useless conflict, and they, themselves, are its only surviving remnants.
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