This Star Trek Episode Was Banned In The United Kingdom For Almost 30 Years

In the “Star Trek” episode “The Empath” (December 6, 1968), Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) are on an away mission when they are abruptly kidnapped by off-screen aliens and deposited in a mysterious, blackened chamber somewhere beneath the planet’s surface. While trapped, they encounter a mute woman in purple whom McCoy names Gem (Kathryn Hays). Gem, they find, has an extraordinary superpower. When someone is injured, Gem can heal them by absorbing their wounds into herself. She feels an equal amount of pain. The wound is then healed rapidly.

Gem ends up having plenty of opportunities to use her superpowers as the four characters are repeatedly tortured by evil, large-skulled aliens called Vians (played by Alan Bergmann and Willard Sage). The Vians spend the bulk of the episode tormenting and injuring the Enterprise crew members, sometimes while Gem watches. Gem, meanwhile, offers to heal them each time, becoming weaker and weaker with each healing.

The Vians eventually reveal their reason for their actions. It seems that Gem’s species is about to become extinct thanks to an impending supernova. The Vians can save either her world or another populated world nearby, but don’t have the resources for both. The Vians say they will only save Gem’s world if she proves that she is willing to sacrifice her own life (that is, by healing someone who’s near death), thereby passing a twisted morality test.

It seems the BBC had second thoughts upon gearing up to air “The Empath” for the public in 1970. The broadcaster had already received a number of complaints about “Star Trek” because of some of its rougher material, and an episode about torture, it knew, was definitely going to just keep the angry letters coming. “The Empath,” along with three other episodes of “Star Trek,” were thusly struck from the BBC’s broadcast schedule entirely and left off for literal decades. Ultimately, “The Empath” didn’t air in the UK until the ’90s.

Apparently, when the BBC aired the “Star Trek” episode “Miri,” audiences responded poorly. That episode was a scary, bleak story about a planet of slow-aging children who still recall the centuries-old plague that wiped out their world’s adults. Kirk and co. beam down and contract the plague, growing weird scabs all over their bodies. The Miri character (Kim Darby) is about to turn her planet’s equivalent of 12, however, and now runs the risk of infection. Miri has to convince the other kids, all feral, that Kirk is trustworthy and growing up is okay. Evidently, that episode got a lot of hate mail (though, as noted on the website Space Doubt, the exact nature of the complaints was never revealed).

That was enough, though, for the BBC to be wary. “The Empath” was about to air, and the BBC wasn’t going to take any risks. As such, it outright banned “The Empath” from airing, knowing the episode would be too much for its more sensitive viewers. Indeed, the BBC started to go through its “Star Trek” catalogue more thoroughly, and found two additional episodes it decided to ban: “Plato’s Stepchildren” and “Whom Gods Destroy.” The former featured a group of omnipotent hedonists who psychically forced Kirk and his crew to perform humiliating actions for their entertainment. The latter featured a shape-shifting antagonist who had taken over a mental asylum and formed a cult.

Non-Trekkies might know “Plato’s Stepchildren” as the episode where Kirk kisses Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and “Whom Gods Destroy” as the episode where Yvonne Craig played a scantily-clad, green-skinned dancer … who was killed by her cult leader. The former was too disturbing for the BBC, and the latter too disturbing … but also too sexy.

“The Empath” is indeed disturbing, although most Trekkies might remember the episode better for its low budget. The episode came during the show’s third season, at which point the financing had been cut and the series’ creatives had to get inventive. There’s a reason why Gem and the Enterprise’s crew members are held prisoner in a mysterious black space: it assured that the show’s crew didn’t have to build a set. It’s also a little odd that “The Empath” should be singled out, given how many early episodes of “Star Trek” have a horror bent; monsters regularly kill or mange people throughout the series’ entire first season. 

The ban was still in place in the mid-1980s. Some researchers have found memos attached to the four episodes in question, reading:

“We feel that [the episodes] all deal most unpleasantly with the already unpleasant subjects of madness, torture, sadism and disease. You will appreciate that account must betaken that out of ‘Star Trek’s’ large and enthusiastic following, many are juveniles who would watch the programme no matter what time of day the series is put into the programme schedules.”

“Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry eventually saw that memo and objected strenuously, stating at a 1984 news conference (via Den of Geek):

“I disagree [with the ban] very much. ‘Empath’ to me was a beautiful story […] If someone is to say to me, ‘You can’t have hurt and pain,’ I say, ‘Nonsense!’ Suffering and pain are a part of life. They should be handled and handled well. I feel the same way about violence and sex.”

Roddenberry went on to note that fistfights in most action shows — which were common and expected — usually depicted the two pugilists as enjoying their punch-up. Roddenberry objected to “fun violence” on TV, feeling that “hard violence” was healthier and more accurate.

Eventually, though, standards were relaxed. By the time “Star Trek: The Next Generation” was airing on the BBC in the 1990s, the station finally removed the memo and let the previously banned “Trek” episodes be shown to the public. They are now widely seen.