The NBC executives demanded the scene be shot without the kiss
regardless of script. Creator producer Gene Rodenberry insisted it be shot as
scripted. William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols had already decided to stick to
the script regardless of censors and critics. So it was shown as shot in the
Star Trek Original Series episode “Plato's Stepchildren", season 3 episode
10, first broadcast on this day in 1968. The first legitimate kiss between a white
man and an African American woman.
Television historians will dicker over whether this was the
first interracial kiss or not as Shatner had kissed French actress France Nuyen,
who is of Asian descent. While there were a handful of kisses one could point
to this kiss on Star Trek was between the shows main protagonist and lead
female character. It was a major shift in levels of attention. Star Trek was a
popular show, even though it would be canceled due to cost vs ratings at the
end of this third season. It was also a clear kiss with sexual tension between
the two characters and not an off-hand gesture. The plot device allowed for it
to be something for Rodenberry and the actors to step away from but also build
on if the was a reason too. As the years have passed the growth of Star Trek as
a culture touchstone has also allowed the kiss to take on a significance other
earlier moments simply do not have.
Producers and NBC executives were extremely concerned about
southern viewership and ordered that a scene without the kiss be filmed but Shatner
and Nichols simply did things in each take to screw that up from Shatner crossing
his eyes to really flubbing it
As Nichols recounts:
Knowing that Gene was determined to air the real
kiss, Bill shook me and hissed menacingly in his best ham-fisted Kirkian
staccato delivery, "I! WON'T! KISS! YOU! I! WON'T! KISS! YOU!"
It was absolutely awful, and we were hysterical
and ecstatic.
In fact there is no record that NBC ever received any negative
phone calls or letters. According to Rodenberry and Nichols most of the letters
were from girls inquiring what it was like to kiss Kirk or Uhura.
Nichols observed that "Plato's Stepchildren", received
a huge response.
“We received one of the largest batches of fan
mail ever, all of it very positive, with many addressed to me from girls
wondering how it felt to kiss Captain Kirk, and many to him from guys wondering
the same thing about me. However, almost no one found the kiss offensive,"
except from a single mildly negative letter from one white Southerner who
wrote: "I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time
a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms
that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it."
The kiss might have become just a relic to the past as television evolved except that Star Trek did go on to it's own evolution and become one of the most powerful cultural phenomena of all time.
Sources:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/108958268/star-treks-interracial-kiss-50-years-ago-heralded-change
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/star-trek-s-interracial-kiss-50-years-ago-went-boldly-n941181
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_and_Uhura%27s_kiss
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