The City On The Edge Of Forever is hailed by many to be the very best episode of the original Star Trek series. It was the twenty-eighth and penultimate episode of the first season and aired on NBC on April 6th 1967. It won several awards, including the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Episodic Drama on Television and the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
The episode broadcast was not the one that had been originally written by Harlan Ellison. It was changed by contributions made by a number of other writers and a final re-write by Gene Roddenberry himself. The controversy surrounding this has merely added more kudos to the brilliance of the episode and its well deserved high place in Star Trek history and legend.
The Enterprise is being buffeted by time waves emanating from a planet they are trying to hold orbit around. Lt. Sulu (George Takei) is hurt and Dr McCoy (DeForest Kelley) is administering a small dose of cordrazine when he is buffeted violently and injects himself with the entire vial. McCoy reacts violently, rushes to the transporter room and beams himself down to the planet. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) takes a landing party to the surface where they discover an ancient stone ring that is over 10,000 centuries old. When Kirk asks, “What is it?” the stone ring answers, saying it is the ”Guardian of Forever”. It is a portal through time, and to prove it, the portal shows images from Earth’s history.
They have located McCoy and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) incapacitates him with a Vulcan nerve pinch. As they watch the images of Earth’s history on the ring McCoy regains consciousness and jumps into the ring. Uhurra (Nichelle Nicholls) loses contact with the Enterprise and it seems that McCoy has changed history. Kirk and Spock follow McCoy and find themselves in New York during the Great Depression. Spock has timed their jump for them to arrive earlier than McCoy.
They arrive, steal clothes and meet a woman named Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) who runs the 21st Century Mission. She hires them to clean the place for fifteen cents an hour. That night they go to the soup kitchen for dinner where they hear Keeler talk about the future. She predicts atomic energy and space travel. Kirk is captivated by her. She finds them a place to sleep and they earn money from odd jobs whilst Spock uses the tricorder to build a device to find out how the timeline was changed. Kirk spends time with Edith and they fall in love. McCoy arrives at the same Mission without Kirk or Spock knowing. He is unwell and Keeler nurses him back to health.
Eventually Spock discovers that Keeler is their fulcrum. In one timeline she meets with President Roosevelt in 1936 having created an influential Pacifist Movement which delays America’s entry into WWII and allows the Nazis to create nuclear weapons and win the war thereby altering their original timeline. Spock discovers that their original timeline did involve and must involve the death of Keeler in a traffic accident, but if McCoy saves her, then this will allow her to create a new timeline with her Pacifist Movement. As Spock will admit later to Kirk, Keeler is right in her pacifism, but now, is not the right time for peace. However, an emotional Kirk admits he is in love with Keeler. Spock responds: ‘‘Jim. Edith Keeler must die.’’ Otherwise billions in the new timeline will die.
As Kirk is taking Keeler to the movies to see Clark Gable, Keeler mentions McCoy and a shocked Kirk calls Spock. The Starfleet trio are reunited outside the Mission. Seeing them, Keeler crosses the street to join them, but a fast-moving truck bears down on her. Kirk turns to save her but Spock shouts at him and he freezes. McCoy now reacts to save her but Kirk holds him back. She is struck and killed. McCoy is shocked that his friend stopped him. Kirk is distraught but he knows he had no choice. They return to the Guardian’s planet where they are offered more time travel journeys but broken-hearted Kirk now a changed man shouts: ‘‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’’ They return to the Enterprise. All is as it was. But Kirk is a different man. He has been irrevocably altered by the death of Edith Keeler.
What for me makes this episode one of the very best, if not the best, is the focus on the people behind the Starfleet insignia. These three iconic characters are all out of their comfort zones in this episode and reveal themselves to be real people (and a Vulcan), with feelings and emotions. The episode is grounded in character. Even Spock shows an almost human side when comforting and supporting his friend Kirk after Edith Keeler’s tragic death. Kirk hasn’t just saved history, he has had to sacrifice part of himself (the woman he loves) to achieve that end. William Shatner’s performance here is perhaps his finest performance. It is so authentic and it obviously hurts. The later mannerisms he is caricatured for are nowhere to be seen.
The three individuals prove themselves to be moral men (and a Vulcan) in this episode, who will do the right thing no matter the cost to themselves or to others they are close to. Are they not the very living embodiment of the ideals of the Federation? That men and women will aspire to be their very best and put the greater good before our own individual desires. It is in this episode that they show to us that the Universe is in responsible hands with the Federation. Yet we cannot ignore the fact that a potentially great woman has been allowed to die.
Edith Keeler played so well by Joan Collins is a woman undoubtedly ahead of her time. A woman who creates a powerful, Pacifist Movement that will persuade Roosevelt to delay the entry of America into the war. She is the complete antithesis of Adolf Hitler. A woman of compassion, who must be allowed to die because her quest for peace is at the wrong time. We can just about accept this because we are aware now of just how evil the Nazis were and how essential was the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ for victory over the Axis powers. It is a well worn trope of time travel fantasies, returning and stopping Hitler rising to power, but to invert that trope and allow an innocent woman to die to secure the timeline, is very unique and disturbing in its own way.
The ‘What If’ line of historical conjecture has been very fruitful for this period in history. One of its greatest works is: The Man In The High Castle (1962) by Philip K. Dick. The novel features an alternate timeline of a victorious Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. America continued in its isolationism after President Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated in 1934. Both The City On The Edge Of Forever and Philip K. Dick see Roosevelt as the fulcrum around which history could have diverged. I think most historians would concur. Roosevelt was already defying the overall mood of the American people against war. It was no secret that he wanted a response to Japanese and German military aggression. Philip K. Dick goes further as he creates a meta-fiction within his story, with a book titled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which is banned by the Nazis. He creates an alternate, alternate timeline where the Axis Powers lost the war and the USSR collapsed, leaving America and The British Empire as the two global superpowers in a new Cold War.
World War Two has generated many an alternate timeline because it was such a mix of coincidences, close to the wire success and fortunate strokes of serendipity for the allies. A Keeler-led peace movement might have been the ‘Butterfly Effect’ that did delay America joining the fight. Perhaps The Manhattan Project was delayed and the Nazis had the time necessary to develop the Atomic bomb before America? It is these ‘What Ifs’ and their plausible answers that makes this episode of Star Trek not just a profound sci-fi story but such an iconic and fascinating time travel story. The brilliant TV adaptation of: The Man In The High Castle goes into much more detail about the changed timeline and is very, very, unsettling.
There are two questions that I will leave you with, first: why do the Starfleet trio not save Edith Keeler and take her back with them into their own time? Second: when McCoy jumps into the portal their timeline is changed as Uhurra loses contact with the Enterprise. Why then do they not instantly disappear as they could never have existed?
Answers on a postcard to: ‘The Guardian of Forever’. Live well and prosper. ”One to beam up”.
Marc Barham
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