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"The City on the Edge of Forever" is the penultimate episode of the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is episode #28, production #28, first broadcast on April 6, 1967. It was repeated on August 31, 1967 and marked the last time NBC aired the series on Thursday nights. The teleplay is credited to Harlan Ellison, but was controversially rewritten by several hands before filming : see Controversy. It was directed by Joseph Pevney. It guest-stars Joan Collins as Edith Keeler.
Overview: The crew of the Enterprise discovers a portal through space and time, which leads to McCoy accidentally altering history.
Plot
On stardate 3134.0, the Starship USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, investigates temporal disturbances centered on a nearby planet. During the investigation, a burst of energy hits the ship, and Mr. Sulu is injured when the helm controls explode. The jolt causes him to go into cardiac arrest and Dr. McCoy injects him with cordrazine, a powerful drug that instantly revives Sulu. However, the Enterprise is battered by another wave of energy and Dr. McCoy accidentally injects himself with an overdose of the drug, causing him to become violently paranoid.
Delusional, McCoy flees from the bridge, knocks a transporter technician unconscious, takes his phaser, then escapes the ship of "murderers and assassins" by beaming down to the planet. To capture McCoy, Kirk forms a landing party with himself, Mr. Spock, Mr. Scott, Lieutenant Uhura and two Security personnel. The transporter coordinates had been set to the center of the time disturbance where they find ruins as far as the eye can see. Spock finds that the source of the time distortions is an ancient ring of glowing, stone-like material, somewhat like a Stargate, but older than Earth's Sun. In response to a question from Kirk intended for Spock, the gateway identifies itself as the "Guardian of Forever", explaining that it is a doorway to any time and place.
The Guardian's portal creates a cloud of mist and inside images form. It begins to play a loop of moving scenes from all eras of mankind. The Guardian indicates all one has to do is step through and they will be transported to the era that is currently playing. Spock begins to record as many of the images with his tricorder as he can while history rapidly passes. Enthralled, Kirk even asks the Guardian to "slow down," but it says it can only play events at one speed.
The landing party finally locates the crazed Dr. McCoy and subdues him, however McCoy manages to escape and leaps through the Guardian portal before anyone can stop him. Suddenly, everything seems to shift and the landing party loses contact with the Enterprise. The Guardian then informs the landing party that history has just been altered. The Enterprise has disappeared because the timeline change has erased it from existence.
Kirk believes that McCoy somehow altered the past, erasing the history that they knew. Without the Enterprise, the landing party will be stranded forever on this desolate planet. Kirk asks the Guardian to loop the history images again, which it does. As the events pass by, Kirk and Spock get ready to jump through to a time just before where McCoy entered and attempt to undo whatever alteration he has made to the past. Kirk informs Scotty that if they do not return, the landing party will have to jump through the portal to an era of their choosing to survive. When the era McCoy jumped to comes up, Kirk and Spock leap through.
The two materialize in New York City, back on Earth, during the 1930s Great Depression era. The appearance of their uniforms, and Spock's ears, shock some passersby. Kirk decides to steal some clothes he spots hanging on a fire escape, but as he does so, they are approached by a policeman. Kirk tries to explain that Spock is Chinese, and that Spock's ears are the result of an accident he suffered in a "mechanical... rice picker" as a child. The cop tries to arrest them, but Spock uses the Vulcan nerve pinch to disable him, and the two manage to slip away, running into the basement of a nearby building.
There they meet a woman named Edith Keeler, who identifies herself as a social worker of the 21st Street Mission. They apologize for their trespassing, and offer to work for Edith. Her kindness wins over and she allows them to stay. In the meantime, Spock needs to analyze the data from his tricorder, but without assistance from the Enterprise computers, it will be nearly impossible in "this zinc-plated, vacuum-tubed culture." He begins to construct a processor interface, jury-rigged with 1930s-era vacuum tubes and electronics "hardly very far ahead of stone knives and bearskins." Spock uses what he built to figure out what parts of history Dr. McCoy altered.
Kirk already begins to fall in love with the beautiful Edith and leaves to get to know his host a little better. He finds her to be a remarkable visionary with a positive outlook about what the future holds for mankind, where one day everyone will be free to explore the universe, without war, hunger, or poverty. Kirk wonders if only Edith knew how right she will be.
Unknown to Kirk and Spock, McCoy now materializes from his leap into the portal. He shows up in an alley, still delusional, and shouting about killers and assassins. He accosts a bum on the street, asking him what planet this is, and if it's all just an illusion. McCoy muses and rants about what the primitive medical technology must be like, and then falls unconscious. The bewildered man finds McCoy's phaser and accidentally vaporizes himself.
Dr. McCoy wakes up, and stumbles his way into the 21st Street Mission, asking for coffee. Edith sees him in line and rushes to his aid. McCoy still looks terrible, and Edith takes him to lie down. Just as he leaves the room Spock appears, having just missed him.
Spock finally finishes his jury-rigged interface, and as Kirk observes, he analyzes the tricorder data. The information it reveals is shocking. They discover Edith would have died soon in a traffic accident, but somehow McCoy's actions save her from that fate. They look at the results of the incident and see that she becomes widely known as the "Slum Angel" and forms a pacifist movement that gains in popularity at the outset of World War II. She even ends up meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This meeting causes a chain of events that delays the entry of the United States into the war. The delay gives Nazi Germany time to develop a nuclear bomb through heavy water experiments and, with their V-2 rockets, the edge they need to conquer the world. Kirk, not wishing to see Edith killed, is appalled by the fact that if Edith doesn't die as she is supposed to, history will be altered for the worse.
Meanwhile, she nurses McCoy, who is slowly coming to his senses but still thinks everything is an illusionary side effect of the cordrazine overdose. He tells her who he is and where he is from. Edith does not believe his fantastic story, but tells him that he would fit in nicely with her new eccentric boyfriend, who will later be taking her to a Clark Gable movie. McCoy says he knows what a movie is, but not who Clark Gable is.
As Kirk and Edith start to walk toward the movie house, she mentions off-handedly that McCoy also didn't know who Clark Gable is. Kirk is excited to learn that Bones is alive and well at the shelter. He warns Edith emphatically to "Stay right here," then dashes across the street to Spock, who left the mission with them but went in another direction. As he reaches Spock, McCoy exits the mission right in front of them. The three comrades enjoy an enthusiastic but brief reunion. Edith watches the curious trio of friends from the street corner, and slowly crosses the street to join them, oblivious to a fast-moving truck that is approaching her.
Kirk takes a step or two in her direction instinctively, and freezes when Spock says, "No, Jim!" McCoy then sees Edith's danger and turns to move past Kirk into the street. Despite his love for the woman, Kirk holds McCoy back. The truck hits Edith and she is killed. The shocked and bewildered McCoy is furious with Kirk, exclaiming "You deliberately stopped me, Jim. I could have saved her. Do you know what you just did?!" Kirk pushes him away, speechless with his own agony; and Spock responds grimly: "He knows, Doctor. He knows."
History is thus reverted to normal and Kirk, Spock and McCoy are returned to the Guardian's planet after several days in 1930s New York. The rest of the landing team still waits, and Scotty indicates that the three had only been gone for a few moments. The Guardian says, "Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before." The Guardian adds, "Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway." Lieutenant Uhura informs Kirk that the Enterprise is signaling and asking whether the away team wishes to beam up. Kirk, grim and visibly scarred, says, "Let's get the hell out of here." (This marks the first time in the original Star Trek series in which profanity of any kind was used).
40th Anniversary remastering
This episode was remastered in 2006 and aired October 7, 2006 as part of the 40th anniversary remastering of the Original Series. It was preceded a week earlier by "The Naked Time" and followed a week later by "I, Mudd". Aside from remastered video and audio, and the all-CGI animation of the USS Enterprise that is standard among the revisions, specific changes to this episode also include:
- The time planet has been updated and appears more realistic. Much of the episode's original effects were enhanced but remain unchanged.
- When the episode was remastered in 2006, the scene of the bum vaporizing himself with McCoy's phaser was not shown in the new syndicated print. The scene abruptly cuts from McCoy collapsing with the man standing over him, to McCoy wandering into Edith's mission house. The edit does remove a potential on-screen goof, where the bum's death could have altered the course of history due to McCoy's presence.
City on the Edge of Forever side-by-side comparisons
Controversy
The script was commissioned in early 1966 from Harlan Ellison. Justman and Solow's book Inside Star Trek recalls that the script was delivered late.
His original script was considered to be an excellent script by production staff (Bob Justman wrote a memo saying "This is the best and most beautifully written screenplay we have gotten to date ... If you tell this to Harlan, I'll kill you"), but they were concerned that it would be too expensive to stage, and that it was "not Star Trek" - they were troubled by certain story elements, such as the inclusion of narcotics dealing, and the ending, in which Kirk freezes at a critical moment. Ellison did a number of rewrites himself, delivering his Second Revised Final Draft in December 1966. The story was still considered too expensive to shoot as written and was instead rewritten internally, variously by Steven W. Carabatsos, Gene L. Coon, D. C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry himself. Ellison was unhappy with the rewrites, and considered disowning the script by putting his "Cordwainer Bird" pseudonym on it.
Roddenberry would later repeatedly claim that Ellison's original script had Scotty dealing drugs, but Scotty does not even appear in that script. Ellison set out his side of the story in a 1995 book containing two drafts of his story outline, his first draft teleplay and the teaser and first act of his second revised draft (the latter dated December 1966).
The episode finally started shooting on February 3, 1967, and finished on February 14, 1967. It took seven and a half days to film, more than was typical for an episode, and according to Inside Star Trek came in at $250,000, compared to the weekly average of around $185,000.
The ancient ruins were the result of someone mis-reading Harlan Ellison's description in the script of the city as "covered with runes."
Critical acclaim
The filmed version of "The City on the Edge of Forever" is considered the best episode of the original series by many critics. TV Guide ranked it #68 in their 100 Most Memorable Moments in TV History feature in its July 1, 1995 edition, and also featured it in another issue on the 100 greatest TV episodes of all time. It is one of the most widely acclaimed episodes of the original series of Star Trek. It was awarded the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation at that year's World Science Fiction Convention. It would be twenty-five years before another television program would receive that honor; the next recipient being the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Inner Light".
Harlan Ellison's original version won a Writers Guild of America award for best dramatic hour-long script.
Original script
In the original script, Lieutenant Richard Beckwith, a drug dealer selling the illegal "Jewels of Sound," kills Lieutenant LeBeque after he threatens to expose Beckwith's activities. After escaping to the planet's surface, with Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Yeoman Rand and six Security guards close on his heels, he enters a Time Vortex, watched over by the Guardians of Forever, to escape. The time changes he effects cause the Enterprise to become a pirate vessel.
The rest of the show is roughly the same (with Keeler being the focus of the time travel, Kirk's growing love for her), but with more emphasis on Kirk and Spock spying on Keeler, waiting for Beckwith to find her. The script also includes an additional character in the person of a legless World War I veteran known Trooper. Beckwith murders Trooper with a shot from a phaser, but his death, unlike Edith Keeler's survival, does not alter the continuity of time; the Guardian of Forever explains that Trooper's life was unimportant, to Kirk's great distress.
The ending has Beckwith being captured, and Edith Keeler being hit by a truck in a fatal vehicle accident. But in this version, Beckwith attempts to save Edith, and Spock must tackle and stop him. Captain Kirk, knowing she must die, but wanting her to live, as he has fallen completely in love with her, is frozen in indecision and does nothing.
With the timeline set right, Beckwith attempts to escape again, but the Guardians of Forever have set a trap for him—he finds himself in an exploding supernova, and just before he dies a fiery death, is pulled backwards in time and forced to relive his agonizing death again and again for all eternity.
The very last scene was a quiet one between Kirk and Spock, where Spock treats his captain compassionately, telling him that "no other woman was ever offered the universe for love." (In his adaptation of the story in Star Trek 2, James Blish explained to readers that he tried to preserve the best elements of both Ellison's original script and the final rewrite. In Blish's version, Kirk allows Edith to die, with the result that Spock tells him, "No other woman was ever almost offered the universe for love"
The Second Revised Final Draft had McCoy bitten by a toxic animal, which caused him to go insane and beam down to the Guardian's planet.
Ellison's original story outline had the action set in Chicago instead of New York, and the Slum Angel's name was Sister Edith Koestler, not Keeler. This confusion seemed to carry over into the final storyline, where in the closing credits of the episode that ultimately aired, the character is erroneously identified as "Sister Edith Keeler." Such a title would seem unlikely, given her romantic involvement with Kirk.
Revisiting the Guardian
The final words of the Guardian in this episode were, "Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway." This line clearly indicated the intention that future stories may be written about adventures in time via the Guardian. Although there have been no further appearances of the Guardian in TOS or any subsequent movies or live action series, the portal is revisited in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "Yesteryear", and numerous books, including Peter David's novel Imzadi.
The events of City on the Edge of Forever are revisited in the Crucible trilogy, released for Star Trek's 40th anniversary.
The gateway returns in the first Star Trek: New Voyages episode, In Harm's Way. This episode so impressed D. C. Fontana that she joined the New Voyages project as a screenwriter.
Notes
- In her autobiography, Joan Collins incorrectly recalls the part of Edith Keeler as being a fascist sympathizer, one who was in love with Adolf Hitler.
- When Kirk and Spock first appear on a street in Depression-era New York, a poster promoting a boxing match at Madison Square Garden appears on a door behind them. The poster was later duplicated and adapted for use in a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 episode set in San Francisco around the same time.
- With the exception of some stock footage of New York City used on this episode (in which the Brooklyn Bridge may be seen as well as a street in front of the apartment Kirk and Spock live in), all the exterior shots were filmed on "the back forty", Desilu Studios' film backlot in Culver City, California. Previous episodes that shot there were "Miri" and "The Return of the Archons". The 21st Street Mission was part of the back forty set known as Main Street and was referred to originally on The Andy Griffith Show as the Grand Theatre. (Look also for an appearance of "Floyd's Barber Shop" in the scene with Kirk and Keeler holding hands in the street!)
- Fifteen years earlier, these same exterior sets had been the town of Silsby in Superman and the Mole Men and the streets of Metropolis in the first season of the Adventures of Superman.
- Actor Eddie Paskey, William Shatner's lighting stand-in and a frequent supporting actor and extra on Star Trek, drove the truck that killed Edith.
- This episode is featured on the "Star Trek: Fan Collective - Time Travel" DVD set. It is the second of fourteen episodes featured, on disc one of the four-disc set.
- A famous episode of Men Behaving Badly consists entirely of the main characters sitting on the couch and watching an episode of Star Trek. The episode is never named, but due to the description of the plot given to the various characters who briefly pop out, the episode is clearly City on the Edge of Forever.
References
- ^ Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman (1996). Inside Star Trek: The Real Story. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-00974-5.
- ^ Ellison, Harlan (1996). The City on the Edge of Forever: The original teleplay. White Wolf. ISBN 1-56504-964-0.
External links
- This archived newsgroup posting is an in-depth review of Harlan Ellison's book The City on the Edge of Forever, which contains the various scripts and a lengthy essay about their writing and revisions.
- "The City on the Edge of Forever" at Memory Alpha
- "The City on the Edge of Forever" at The Internet Movie Database
- Detailed Review of Ellison's First Draft Script
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