Episode Title: The City on the Edge of Forever
Air Date: 4/6/1967
Written by Harlan
Ellison
Directed by Joseph
Pevney
Cast: William
Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Lieutenant Commander Spock DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H.
McCoy AKA “Bones” James
Doohan as Lieutenant Commander
Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”
George Takei as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura John Winston as Lieutenant
Kyle Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant
Leslie Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley David L. Ross as Lieutenant Galloway Joan Collins as Sister Edith Keeler John Harmon as Rodent Bart La Rue as The Guardian of
Forever Hal Baylor as unnamed
Policeman Bill Borzage as unnamed drunk Joseph Glick as
unnamed Man in Mission Max Wagner as unnamed
Man in Mission Carey Loftin as unnamed
truck driver Noble 'Kid' Chissell as
unnamed Server Walter Bacon as
unnamed onlooker on street Dick
Cherney as unnamed passerby on sidewalk
Ships: USS
Enterprise NCC-1701
Planets: Guardian’s unnamed homeworld, Earth
My Spoiler filled
summary and review: The episode
begins very dramatically with an unexplored planet that is pulsating large displacement
waves that are distorting both time and space.
The Enterprise is sent to
investigate the phenomenon. The ship is knocked back and forth as it tries
to head toward the strange planet. An
explosion at the helm causes injury to Lt. Sulu, so Dr. McCoy is summoned to
the bridge. McCoy uses a substance
called cordrazine to treat Mr. Sulu. The
treatment gives Kirk a little pause as the substance, although lifesaving in
small doses can be very damaging if used too much. Then if fate or the writer of the episode
were listening the ship is stuck again and McCoy accidentally injects himself
with an overdose of the substance.
 |
| Oops |
This causes Dr. McCoy to lose his
mind and worse in his drugged state he seems more invincible than if he took
PCP. He is able to out mussel everyone
even Spock and run off the bridge. The
deranged doctor finds his way to the transporter room, knocks out Lt. Kyle, steals
his phaser, and beams himself down to the planet’s surface.
Kirk quickly forms a landing party;
this away team consists of himself, Mr. Spock, Mr. Scott, Lt. Uhura, and a
number of security personnel. They beam
down to the planet’s surface. When they
get down there they divide the landing party into two main groups one led by
Mr. Scott and the other led by Lt. Uhura.
As a two group search the area for Dr. McCoy the Captain and his First Officer decide to explore some of these ruins.
They come across a giant doughnut shaped object that according to the
readings for Mr. Spock’s tricorder is the source of all the temporal disturbances
that they have been seeing. They then find themselves getting the shock of
the year when the giant donut starts talking to them! It calls itself the Guardian of Forever. The Guardian claims to be older than our sun,
that it is neither a living being or a machine but both, and that it is more
sophisticated than their primitive minds can possible comprehend. It also seems very happy to meet everyone
because it has been waiting a long time for a question.
At this point Dr. McCoy is found
and in his drugged state still dangerous but a Vulcan nerve pinch from Mr.
Spock shuts him down pretty quick. This
allows for Kirk and Spock to study the Guardian more closely. The Guardian now starts showing off its abilities
by running off imagery of Earth history in its hole completely in black and
white for added old fashioned effect.
Kirk starts to wonder if they could use this thing that can disrupt time
to go back and prevent McCoy’s accident, but Spock points out that the images
are moving too fast to change something with such precision. Kirk asks the Guardian if it can slow down but
the Guardian says it was programed to show history this way, which is a long
way of saying “no.” Despite being a near
living entity the Guardian is a very poor user-friendly time machine. Spock
realizes he is missing an opportunity and begins recording what they are seeing
with the tricorder.
The cordrazine in McCoy’s system allows him to
wake up from the nerve pinch early and when no one is paying attention to him
he leaps at the Guardian and goes through the picture making hole. (That sounds a lot dirtier than it is.) With that McCoy has disappeared into the time
stream. As they tried to call up to the Enterprise for support they find no
answer on the other end. The Guardian
explains that McCoy has changed what was.
This action has wiped out reality as they know it. For now there is no Enterprise, no Starfleet,
and no United Federation of Planets. The
only reason why they are still here is because of how close they were to the
Guardian of Forever when history changed.
 |
| Looking for McCoy |
 |
| Guardian putting on a show |
Realizing they must undo what McCoy
has done they asked the Guardian to replay the time show from before. They will use Spock’s tricorder to pinpoint
the exact moment for them to jump and hope that it takes them to the right
location. Kirk and Spock are the ones
who are going to go but if they do not return within a short period time the
remaining members of the team as a fallback are to, in pairs, follow Kirk and
Spock giving them multiple opportunities to correct this or at least allow
the survivors to find a home somewhere in the past.
 |
| Oh, no! |
Kirk and Spock go through and find
themselves in New York City in the year 1930.
The two notice that they tend to get a lot of attention as they are
dressed rather strangely, not to mention Mr. Spock’s Vulcan ears. In desperation Kirk notices some clothes
hanging on a fire escape so he decides to steal them. They are lucky that the clothes that Kirk
stole happened to be a perfect fit for both him and Mr. Spock but they are
unlucky when a police officer sees this theft.
Since the officer notices Spock’s ears Kirk tries to explain them away,
by telling a tall tale of a child Spock getting his head stuck in an automated
rice picker when he was growing up in China.
The cop has had it and he starts to search Kirk and Spock fortunately the
Vulcan nerve pinch trick works again in the cop is out like a light.
The two men run away and they enter the basement the local 21st Street Mission. They start to make some general plans on how
to locate Dr. McCoy and even try to see about building a computer to work with
Spock’s tricorder. As they finish
putting on their stolen clothes they’re discovered by the head of the mission,
a woman named Edith Keeler. Keeler
demands to know why they’re in her basement. Kirk decides confess he says that
they sought shelter because they were on the run from the police. Keeler
demands to know why they’re being chased by the police. Kirk again confesses that the clothes they
wore were stolen by them. They stole the
clothes because they didn’t have any money and they didn’t want to be
naked. (Actually he didn’t say naked I
just added that.)
Keeler is the best person for Kirk
and Spock to run into. She immediately takes
them under her wing and finds them some honest jobs for a fair wage. She allows them to eat at her soup kitchen
and also sets them up at in an apartment.
While having a meal at her soup kitchen they get the pay the same
“price” as the other beneficiaries and that is to listen to one of Edith
Keeler’s sermons. Keeler encourages the
people in the room to hang on even though they’re in the middle of the Great
Depression. She says she won’t tell them
what should make them happy that’s up to every individual however she claims
that the times coming will be great times.
She says that Man will learn to master the atom and achieve spaceflight.
When this occurs they will cure great
diseases and achieve lasting peace throughout all mankind. Kirk is taken aback by her positive outlook
and her perceptions that many of which came true by Kirk’s own time.
 |
| Find men in the basement put them to work |
Spock sees some men using tools at
the mission and he realizes he needs those tools in order to complete his
computer so he steals them. Edith
Keeler confronts him about this rightfully feeling betrayed and her generosity
to the men. Spock tried to tell her that
he was only going to borrow them and he was going to return them when he was
done. Before she can get another word out
Kirk tells her that Spock’s word is gold if he says he was going to return them
that he was. Keeler, who is clearly as
equally smitten by Captain Kirk as he is about her, agrees to drop the matter
so long as Captain Kirk promises the walk home with her so she can ask him
questions about where he belongs. Spock
is intrigued by her response and asks where she thinks they belong. In her answer she gives a single best
description of the relationship of Spock to Kirk: she says that he belongs at Kirk's side as if he’s always had been there and always will. Kirk she says belongs elsewhere then a mission in New York.
As Kirk walks Keeler home the two
of them talk and she asked him all sorts of questions. She wants to know why Mr. Spock calls him
“Captain” and asks if they’ve been in the service together. Kirk doesn’t answer quite directly and Keeler
says that she knows something is wrong and then utters the magic words to the
Captain, “Let me help.” After she says
that Kirk turns to her and tells her that in the future a great author would
pen that those three words were more romantic than “I love you.” When she asks
where this author comes from he takes her into his arms and points to Orion’s
belt in the sky showing her the star where the planet he comes from orbits. Two people have fallen in love.
While Kirk is out courting Keeler
Spock has gotten his computer working with the tricorder and he sees a newspaper
obituary that shows Keeler dying in a traffic accident. Later when running it again for Kirk it shows
a different future. In this one Keeler is the leader of a peace
movement and she becomes acquainted with Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. Kirk becomes very excited for his love
exclaiming “she is important!” Then Mr.
Spock gives him the grim news that there are two possible futures one where she
lives to meet the President and another when she dies this year. However he was unsure of the date as he was
unable to see it. Kirk asks which future
is the one that must be and Spock doesn’t know.
McCoy either kills this woman or prevents her from being killed. Already you can see in Kirk’s face that this
begins to tear him up. When Spock asks
what is to be done if she must die Kirk doesn’t commit.
Dr. McCoy finally arrives still
maddened by the cordrazine he continues his raving about killers. His rants
scare a poor homeless man. When McCoy
sees the man run away, he notices he looks human and asks him not to run for he
won’t kill him. As McCoy reaches the man
he notices that he is human not just looks.
Although McCoy’s mental instability undermines his senses he gazes
around and notices the constellations in the sky. He mutters that they even got the stars
right. McCoy starts to assume that this is all a trick played on him by some
unknown alien they must have encountered.
Considering their ship’s history that isn’t completely unreasonable for
him to believe. McCoy notices the
clothing and buildings all appearing as if in the past, he thinks about what
medicine was like in those days. The
drugs combined with his own strong empathy starts to feel horror when he thinks
about 20th medicine with people “sewed up like garments!”
 |
| Good cranial development |
McCoy collapses and the homeless
man takes his phaser. While trying to figure out what it is the poor man ends up
disintegrating himself with it. When
McCoy comes to he gets guided to the 21st Street Mission where he
ends up in the warm hands of Edith Keeler, who clearly sees that he needs some
help. She takes him away just as Spock
is beginning his shift.
Kirk and Spock have gotten the
computer working again, it had shorted out from earlier, to Kirk’s heartbreak
they discover that in the “true” timeline Edith Keeler is supposed to die in a
car accident later this year, but exact date is unknown. Keeler surviving means she goes on to found a
peace movement that become so powerful and prevailing in the United States that
delays our entrance into World War II.
That delay allows the Nazis to develop the atomic bomb first and with
that advantage the Axis powers win the war and Fascism triumphs throughout the
world. When they’re done viewing the
tricorder, Kirk confesses that he is in love with Keeler. Spock reminds him of their mission and the
millions, if not billions, of lives will be affected if the timeline is allowed
to be changed.
McCoy wakes up in a bed and is
being cared for by Keeler. He is now
fully recovered from his accidental injection in his mind is his is again. However since he is surrounded by the world
of 1930 he comes to the conclusion that he still must be under the drug's
influence and that he is hallucinating.
Nevertheless he finds is Keeler to be a very pleasant hallucination and
they engage in friendly discussion.
 |
| Good news we got the computer working, bad news. |
 |
| Spock sees two people who fancy one another |
As Kirk and Keeler are finishing up
another date, Keeler trips and nearly falls down the stairs before Kirk saves
her. Spock witnesses all of this and
after Kirk has made sure that Keeler has been settled in for the night Spock
confronts him. He points out the Keeler
could’ve died then in the future would’ve been saved. Kirk goes back and forth saying she supposed to try
to traffic accident not by falling down the stairs, McCoy is not even there
yet. Then he moves into a defense of the
future being unwritten and we don’t really know what’s going to happen. Spock correctly assumes that Kirk is becoming
compromised in order to protect the woman he sleeping with. (I mean he’s in love with. They never mention sleeping, however the way
he and Keeler going on I assume it’s obvious.
They don’t say outright as they were trying to keep everything rated G to use a modern
expression.)
Edith Keeler visits with Dr. McCoy
again and finds that he’s in much better spirits. He is more accepting of his new reality and
that one point he even offers to help around her mission. She tells him that there’ll be plenty of time
to talk about that but right now she’s excited for her date with as she
describes her “man friend .“ She tells McCoy that he’s going to take her to a
Clark Gable movie. This actually turns
out to be a little bit funny later because she actually hasn’t talked to Kirk
about going to the Gable movie but she’s a made up her mind and taking her to
that movie is what Kirk is going to do.
As Kirk and Keeler stroll along on their
date Keeler brings up the Clark Gable movie that she’s decided Kirk is going to
take her to and mentioned a man she recently met named McCoy who kind of
reminded her of Kirk. Kirk stops and
puts his hands on her and exclaims “Dr. Leonard McCoy ?” At that moment Kirk sees McCoy come out of
the mission across the street and coincidentally Spock walks out as well. Kirk crosses the street and calls out to them
and the three men have a reunion.
They start talking to each other about
a mile per minute and Keeler sits on the other side the street wondering what’s
going on. Her fascination with these
three gentlemen leads her to walk across the street heading straight for them
and she makes the fatal error of failing to look before she crosses. That one moment of sudden carelessness
brought on by the moment’s excitement and confusion cost her her life. However McCoy almost saves her but Kirk stops
him allowing the motor vehicle to hit her head on. McCoy is shocked telling the Captain that he
could’ve saved her and asking him if he realized what he is done. Spock says “He knows, Doctor. He knows.”
 |
| Worst moment in his life! |
The three men return to the present
and according to the rest of the away team they have been gone only
seconds. They can once again communicate
with the Enterprise. The Guardian of Forever proclaims that the
timeline has been restored and all is as it once was. Except for of course the poor homeless man in
the 20th century who getting a hand phaser from over 300 years in
the future, having no idea what it was, and no reasonable expectation that it
could be a danger to him, who ended up disintegrated. Of course the all-powerful Guardian is some
sort of elitist and clearly doesn’t care about that poor innocent life that was
taken as a result. Oh well, maybe he was
supposed to die that day. As the Guardian tells them that many such journeys
are possible, the idea now sickens, not excites, Captain Kirk. He says it’s time to get the hell out of
there and calls for the Enterprise to
beam them up.
Additional thoughts:
Far and away the greatest episode of the Star
Trek franchise. It’s a challenge to
come up with something original to say about an episode so celebrated and discussed so
much. One of the things that I notice about certain
episodes of television is that the truly great individual episodes can mark
their greatness by not only how they are celebrated by their fan base and genre,
but how that individual episode can transcend its genre so that I can be
enjoyed by almost any viewer. If I had
to choose one episode to show a non-Star Trek fan that would represent the
franchise this would be this episode. I
think any TV series that is truly good will produce one of these. One that immediately comes to mind is
“College” from the first season of The
Sopranos. Also from my childhood I
would bring up “The Boogieman Cometh” from The
Real Ghostbusters.
There were a lot of hard feelings
after this was all said and done between Harlan Ellison and Gene Roddenberry.
However I have no desire to discuss it.
Both Roddenberry and Ellison were brilliant and both could be jerks from
time to time. Of the two Ellison was the
bigger jerk and was also a major copyright troll; however that doesn’t take
away from his brilliance as a writer. I
also have no interest in discussing previous drafts that many other people find so fascinating. All original drafts may
be more interesting than the episode you get because they all have to be
whittled down to fit a 60 minute plus commercials program that often has a
limited budget.
What I do want to discuss is the
utter tragedy of the character of Edith Keeler.
Edith and her destiny are what tug at the heartstrings in this
episode. Here you have this wonderful
person who tries her best to make the world around her a better place. An intelligent individual who if she wanted
to pursue anything else that might have been more materially rewarding she most
likely would have been very successful; who chooses instead to work in a poor
area in a major city trying her best to help any individual that she can. She tries to put food in people’s bellies,
she tries to put hope in their hearts , and she tries her best to aid those in
need of achieving independence by finding them work and in some cases finding
them place to live that is affordable. Yet this wonderful person is destined for
death by traffic accident, and the cruelest fate of all is that is a good
thing. Because if she’s allowed to
continue living given her wonderful nature she will by being in the wrong place at the
wrong time but with the best of intentions allow the evil Axis powers to win
World War II. So the bright light from
the 21st Street Mission that is Edith Keeler must die so she doesn’t
damage humanity too much.
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| Good person, horrible world |
Captain Kirk has a romantic life that is similar to the comic book character Batman.
Superman has Lois Lane. Lois Lane
is Superman’s one true love who he is destined to be with. She was there from his first appearance in
Action Comics #1 and has been in part of his world in every incarnation. If they ever find themselves in the arms of
another those relationships are ultimately not to last and they find each other
again. Batman has never had a Lois
Lane. There have been numerous women
over the years from Vicki Vale to Vesper Fairchild to Julia Madison to Selena
Kyle. Various groups of fans prefer one
over the other but DC comics has never come out and said: “this person is it.” At this point in Captain Kirk’s career fans have
heard about the young blonde technician that Gary Mitchell set him up with in
“Where No Man Has Gone Before” and there was Ruth who Kirk mentioned and met a
copy of in “Shore Leave.” Later there
will be others but no one crowned as Kirk’s one true soulmate by the officials
of Star Trek. It’s up to each fan who they view his one
true love to be. However as far as this
fan is concerned his one true love is a woman who when he was getting to know
her said “Let me help.” In allowing her
to die he amputated a piece of his soul.
 |
| Let me help! |
So were there any
alternatives? I imagine throughout this
adventure Captain Kirk wish he had traveled back here using his starship. With the Enterprise
at least he would have some control over how he moved through time. Relying on the Guardian for his journey
through the timeline denies him the option of bringing his Edith to the future
with him. I suppose maybe he could to
arrange for himself to stay in this time period and simply try to convince
Edith Keeler not to go through with the peace movement in the 30s,
maybe he could use his knowledge from the future to expose to her what a horror
Adolf Hitler actually was or is. Of
course what would be good for Captain Kirk would not necessarily be good for
the actor William Shatner and the various fans of Star Trek. If Captain Kirk be permitted to leave his
responsibilities behind it and live in the 30s with his one true love the show would
lost its main hero and Shatner would have been out of a job. I love Mr. Spock as
much as anyone but somehow I don’t think the series would have been nearly as
interesting if it continued with the Enterprise
being led by a Captain Spock. The series
is ultimately driven by the interactions of all the characters.
I will say I do feel a little bit
sorry for the Guardian of Forever. With
all its knowledge it’s too bad he couldn’t reach through time and learn a thing
or two about making friends. It seems
really excited at first to meet other intelligent beings but then it began
talking in riddles and insisting on its superiority. As a time travel device it wasn’t very
user-friendly. It didn’t seem to have
any standards on who entered it. When
Kirk and Spock return having retrieved McCoy, the Guardian excitedly proclaims
that many such journeys are possible.
However with his heart so recently been ripped out of his chest the last
thing Kirk wants to do is have it happen again.
He wants nothing to do with the Guardian of Forever. In all honesty would you? As they beamed away I got the impression of
the Guardian was going to be alone again for quite some time.
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| So little time with his soul mate |
FINAL GRADE 5 of 5
