Episode Spotlight: TOS

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Season: 1

Production No: 28

Episode Name: The City on the Edge of Forever

 

Director: Joseph Pevney

Written By: Harlan Ellison

 

 

While the Enterprise is investigating the origins of strange ripples in time and space, Dr McCoy stumbles injecting himself with an overdose of cordrazine, making him exhibit signs of extreme paranoia and psychosis. The delirious McCoy storms off the bridge and beams down to a planet that would appear to be the focal point of the disturbances.

 

Kirk, leading a landing party after the doctor is unable to stop him leaping into Earth’s history through a sentient time machine known as "The Guardian of Forever." As a result the U.S.S. Enterprise has ceased to exist and the landing party is stranded on a desolate planet. The Guardian explains that McCoy has somehow interfered with the past, thus changing the future. Kirk and Spock go through the Guardian in an attempt to correct the alteration.

 

Kirk and Spock find themselves in Depression-era America where they encounter social worker Edith Keeler, a missionary and a visionary who, while living in a time of economic and political discord is able to imagine better world yet to come. As Kirk comes to realise that he has fallen in love with Edith, Spock completes work to access his tricorder memory circuits, discovering that in order to repair history Edith Keeler must die in an automobile accident. If they allow McCoy to save her — as he did before — she will start an effective pacifist movement that will delay the United States' entrance into World War II, allowing Nazi Germany to develop the atomic bomb before the Allies.

 

 

Cast:

William Shatner as James T. Kirk

Leonard Nimoy as Spock

DeForest Kelley as Leonard H. McCoy

James Doohan as Montgomery Scott

Nichelle Nichols as Uhura

George Takei as Hikaru Sulu

 

Guest Cast:

Joan Collins as Edith Keeler

John Harmon as Rodent

Hal Baylor as Policeman

Bart La Rue as Guardian of Forever Voice

John Winston as Transporter Chief

David L. Ross as Lt. Galloway

 

Show Notes: Writer Harlan Ellison's script went through many revisions by Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana before reaching the final broadcast version, resulting in much resentment from the writer. In the original screenplay, there were two guardians, in the form of statues flanking the time portal, McCoy's part was taken up by the drug addict and dealer crewman Beckwith, and Captain Kirk’s actions in the story climax were somewhat different.

 

Ellison's original script for "The City on the Edge of Forever" won the 1966-67 Writers Guild of America Award for Best Teleplay. The final aired version of the episode won the 1967 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

 

Star Notes: Joan Collins’ role as visionary Edith Keeler was in sharp contrast to her stint as Alexis Carrington Colby on Dynasty.

 

Memorable quotations:

Edith: "I think that one day they’re going to take all the money that they spend now on war and death..."

Kirk: "...and make them spend it on life?"

 

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