Here’s Why the BBC Banned ‘Star Trek’ … and Yvonne Craig!

STAR TREK, from left: William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy, 1966-69. — Everett Collection

What To Know

The BBC banned four episodes of the original Star Trek series—”Miri,” “Plato’s Stepchildren,” “The Empath,” and “Whom Gods Destroy”—due to concerns over their themes of madness, torture, sadism, and disease, which were deemed unsuitable for children.
While “Plato’s Stepchildren” is famous for featuring one of television’s first interracial kisses, the BBC’s ban was more likely related to the sadistic behavior of the episode’s villains, rather than its progressive social content.
These censorship decisions reflected the more conservative broadcasting standards of the era, both in Britain and globally, which often clashed with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s intent to address complex social and political issues.

I was too young to watch Star Trek when it originally aired on NBC during the sixties. However, because the show experienced such a revival through the syndicated market, I got to know every single episode by heart through repeated viewings and by reading James Blish’s fantastic adaptations in those old Bantam paperbacks. The original version of Trek, with its groundbreaking stories and diverse cast pushed boundaries in the 1960s. But across the pond, the BBC had different ideas about what was appropriate for audiences, primarily children, and banned several episode of the show.

Which Star Trek episodes did the BBC ban?

The first banned episode is “Miri.” This episode features the crew visiting a planet inhabited by childlike humanoids who are actually ruthless adults. Following the first screening of “Miri” on British television in December of 1970, the BBC reported that they had received an unusually large number of complaints regarding that particular episode.

According to Alastair Stewart over at Den of Geek, when Star Trek was rebroadcast on the BBC during the mid-eighties, when viewers inquired about “Miri” and the three other episodes that I will talk about shortly, this was their canned response:

“There are no plans to screen the four episodes because we feel that they deal most unpleasantly with the already unpleasant subjects of madness, torture, sadism, and disease.”

STAR TREK, William Shatner, Nichelle Nichols, Season 3, Episode 67, 'Plato's Stepchildren.' The first interracial kiss on TV, November 22, 1968.

Paramount TV/Courtesy: Everett Collection.

Now, this next one is a bit of a double whammy. “Plato’s Stepchildren” features one of the first and definitely most well-known interracial kisses on American television. While certain regions in the US voiced their concerns about this episode, the BBC’s ban likely stemmed from completely different issues that were addressed in their previously mentioned mid-eighties response to Trek fans — probably the sadism that the Platonian villains of the episode inflicted on the Enterprise crew.

Next up, we have “The Empath.” This episode features a race of merciless aliens who use Kirk and his colleagues as guinea pigs in their experiments into the human aptitude for self-sacrifice. The real victim, though, is an empath, a woman with the ability to absorb other people’s pain. While the psychological torment might seem tame today, I guess the BBC found it too disturbing for viewers.

And lastly, we have “Whom Gods Destroy.” In this episode, Kirk and Spock go on a mercy mission when they beam down onto a planet to take medical supplies to an asylum. However, they fall into the hands of Garth, a demented inhabitant who has the power to change his form and who also possesses the ultimate explosive. Being deprived of this episode for decades is such a shame because this episode was graced with the presence of one of TV’s all-time beauties.

I’m talking about the lovely Yvonne Craig. I’ve got to think that Yvonne filmed this episode right after wrapping up her work on the third season of Batman. What a year 1968 had to be for her and, of course, for her fans.

STAR TREK, Yvonne Craig, (as an Orion slave girl) & Steve Ihnat, Season 3, 'Whom Gods Destroy,' January 3, 1969.

Paramount/Courtesy: Everett Collection

Let me put a bow on this whole banning conversation by saying that it is important to remember that these censorship standards were from a more conservative time, not just in Britain, but pretty much everywhere.

According to journalist Mark Donaldson over at Screen Rant, “Roddenberry had grown frustrated with the increasing censorship of network television, which made it difficult to discuss the social and political turmoil that defined America in the 1960s.”

Despite those frustrations over increased censorship, I think it’s fair to say that the original Star Trek series, as well as its various follow-up iterations, have successfully answered his mandate to challenge conventional thinking. And, thankfully, by the 1990s, all four of the episodes discussed in this article were finally aired by the BBC, and at long last, Trekkies everywhere got a chance to witness the “Yvonne Craig experience.”