that the kiss was real, even in takes where her head obscures their lips. When NBC executives learned of the kiss they became concerned it would anger TV stations in the Deep South. There were, however, few complaints about the scene. Nichelle Nichols observes that "Plato's Stepchildren" which first aired in November 1968 "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." Nichols notes that "for me, the most memorable episode of our last season was 'Plato's Stepchildren.'" Reception It was one of several episodes not screened by the BBC because of their "unpleasant" content, including torture and sadism. (The other episodes that were censored in this way were "The Empath", "Whom Gods Destroy" and "Miri".) The U.K. reviewed Star Trek in part as a children's show and restricted episodes that included several with overt depictions of torture and sexuality they felt were not appropriate for children. For example, Marta's dance in "Whom Gods Destroy" was deemed too sexual for it to be recommended as children's viewing material. In 2009, Newsweek pointed out the moral lessons of this episode, in particular Kirk's lines to the oppressed alien. The alien is being mistreated on the planet, and is surprised when Kirk informs him about Starfleet standards. In 2016, TVLine ranked this as having another one of the top twenty moments of Star Trek, noting the scene where Spock and Kirk are forced to dance by the powerful but cruel aliens. On the fiftieth anniversary of the first broadcast of Star Trek, National Geographic noted the Kirk-Uhura kiss as "iconic", which they describe as connecting to the period's civil rights issues. In 2016, Radio Times ranked the kiss between Uhura and Kirk as the 25th best moment in all Star Trek. In 2016, SyFy noted this episode for actress Nichelle Nichols presentation of Uhura, as having her