“The City on the Edge of Forever”
Star Trek: The Original Series
Season 1, Episode 28
Directed by: Joseph Pevney
Written by: Harlon Ellison
Original air date: 6th April 1967
Here we have the first good time travel episode of Star Trek. The plot is handled well and it’s light years ahead of the previous time travel instalment, Tomorrow is Yesterday. That said, it’s not without its problems.
The Enterprise is caught in a wave of temporal distortions around an unexplored planet. A console explodes and injures Sulu, so McCoy comes to the bridge and revives him with cordrazine, which Kirk warns is “tricky stuff.” Moments later, another distortion hits the bridge and McCoy accidentally injects himself with the cordrazine hypospray. Clumsy.
McCoy flies into a hammily acted mania, screaming “Murderers!” and “Assassins!” (There are several more scenes of McCoy raving, and admittedly it does get tiresome and repetitive.) He beams down to the planet and Kirk and crew follow him. On the surface they encounter the Guardian of Forever among some ancient alien ruins.
While the design is basic and the voice is cheesy, I like the concept of the Guardian. When asked by Kirk whether it is machine or being, it says, “I am both and neither. I am my own beginning, my own ending.” Spock questions its riddles and the Guardian says that it is answering “as simply as your level of understanding makes possible.” He then deduces that it’s a time portal and the Guardian confirms that it’s a gateway to the past by showing them images of Earth history.
I was intrigued to know more about the nature, history and purpose of the Guardian and the ancient aliens who built it (did they build it?). But of course that’s not what this episode’s about. The Guardian is really just a plot device, a tool to get McCoy back to the 1930s so he can alter the timeline. That’s fine. That’s often how time travel stories go. What’s important is the time travel and the impact of the time travel, not the time machine.
So that’s what happens. McCoy jumps through the portal and all of history changes. The Enterprise disappears and the Guardian says that everything they knew is gone. The writers don’t attempt to explain why the landing party haven’t disappeared too. I guess we can deduce that it’s their proximity to the Guardian and all those time distortion waves it’s giving out, but it would’ve been nice for one of the characters to ask the question. When something very similar happens in Star Trek: First Contact, Dr Crusher asks, “But if [the Borg] changed history, why are we still here?” and Data surmises that the temporal wake the Enterprise-E is trapped in must’ve protected them.
Anyway, Kirk and Spock work out the approximate time McCoy has gone back to and follow him through the portal. They arrive in 1930 in New York City during the Great Depression. I quite enjoyed the moment that they steal clothes to blend in better and are accosted by a police officer, and Kirk tries to explain Spock’s Vulcan ears: “He caught his head in a mechanical rice picker.” These kinds of amusing moments involving characters from different times are one of the reasons time travel is such a popular storytelling device.
Soon they meet social worker Edith Keeler (Joan Collins). Refreshingly, Keeler is a strong, independent and well-written female character, a rarity in this very male-dominated series. (Anyone else notice that Uhura was the only woman in the landing party at the start?) Keeler sees the good in people, offering Kirk and Spock a job right after they admit theft to her, no doubt because the Depression has forced a lot of people into that situation. She’s also shrewd and remains curious about them, recognising that they’re out of place somehow and determined to find out why.
I enjoyed Keeler’s interactions with Kirk and Spock, and particularly with McCoy when he shows up later. We then get the revelation from Spock, after fashioning a rudimentary computer to access data from the time vortex about the period, that Edith Keeler has two possible futures. One in which she dies in a road accident, the other in which she meets the president. Spock isn’t sure which future they’re meant to be protecting at this point, which made for great suspense. Later, Spock gets more data, discovering that, if she survives, Keeler will found a pacifist movement that will delay the US’s entry into the Second World War.
This revelation comes as part of the best dialogue scene I’ve heard so far since I started reviewing TOS’ time travel episodes. It’s brilliantly written and exactly what makes time travel so compelling.
Kirk: But she was right. Peace was the way.
Spock: She was right, but at the wrong time. With the A-Bomb, and with their V-2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world.
Kirk: No.
Spock: And all this because McCoy came back and somehow kept her from dying in a street accident, as she was meant to. We must stop him, Jim.
And so we head into the tragic final act of the episode, in which Kirk and Spock have to let Edith Keeler die. Generally, this is done well. I did notice some minor discontinuity in the dialogue. Keeler tells McCoy that her “young man” is taking her to see the new Clark Gable movie and McCoy has no idea who that is. In the next scene, she says, “If we hurry, maybe we can catch the Clark Gable movie,” and Kirk responds, “What?” So, you know, was Kirk taking her to the movie or not? She seemed pretty set that that was the plan, and if Kirk’s “taking her”, then it’s his plan—yet he knows nothing about said plan. Maybe I’m nitpicking, but it jarred.
Anyway, the point of the scene is that Keeler mentions how McCoy also didn’t know who Clark Gable was, and Kirk reacts. He goes back to tell Spock and they both run into McCoy. Keeler follows, stepping into the path of a truck that mows her down. We don’t see the impact, probably because the network wouldn’t allow it (apparently NBC were really uncomfortable with Kirk saying “hell” in the final scene, as there had been only one instance of profanity on TV at that point). Still, it’s dramatic and sad and you really do feel for Kirk in those moments.
Saying that, I really could’ve done without Kirk’s admission that he “loves her” a few scenes before. I don’t buy it. He’s only known her a few days. What we actually see is a blossoming friendship between two people who admire and are curious about each other, and could turn into something deeper with time. It’s as though the writers felt that her death could only have the required impact if she was a Kirk love interest, and needed to add that in. In doing so, they reduced Keeler’s character. We don’t need to be told that Kirk loves her to be sad when she dies. She’s a good character, a good person. It makes the tragedy of her death all about Kirk losing somebody he loved, whereas it should be about the world losing somebody who had the best of intentions for humanity at the wrong time.
Kirk, Spock and McCoy return to the future to find that “time has resumed its shape” and all is well. Although it feels abrupt, the writers nail the bittersweetness of the ending with Spock’s sombre, “We were successful,” and Kirk’s, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The way they return to the future is confusing, though. Earlier the Guardian said they’d be returned if they were successful, so let’s assume the Guardian sent them back. But we cut from seeing the three of them on the street to seeing them jumping through the portal. That makes it look like there was something on the other side to jump through, even though we know there wasn’t. Doesn’t really work.
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