Lost Love and the Mutable Past

TOS: Episode 28: The City on the Edge of Forever

Episode 28 stands as what many people consider the best Star Trek episode ever written and produced. Interestingly, it carries with it a complicated production history. That is, Harlan Ellison, the original writer, dictated what was considered by Gene Roddenberry to be a brilliant story. Unfortunately, it didn't fit the Star Trek form, and so Roddenberry rewrote the story and produced it based on the new version. Ellison was displeased. He shortly after submitted his own original script for consideration and won the Writer's Guild award for outstanding teleplay of 1967-8. Roddenberry's reworking of the story won the 1968 International Hugo Science Fiction award. More recently, the episode has also been regarded one of the top 100 television moments ever produced.

"The City on the Edge of Forever" offers a number of exciting elements. First of all, we get our first full view of Kirk genuinely vulnerable to love. Though he's shown strong interest in women in previous episodes, Episode 28 will show us a new Kirk. Secondly, we have launched fully into a genuine sci-fi exploration. Star Trek has come to understand itself more completely, now almost at the end of season 1, and so episodes are framed in genuine speculative circumstances. In "City" we find ourselves, once again, dealing with the complexities of space-time, alternate realities, and too the possibilities of utterly changing history. Finally, the irreplaceable Joan Collins of Dynasty fame, among other things, guest stars, early in her television career, as our fair love interest. Beautiful!

Episode Summary
As the episode opens the ship is exploring unexplained temporal disturbances, that is, ripples in time. Sulu is hurt during a consol explosion, and McCoy rushes to the bridge to treat him. In the midst of a temporal disturbance (ship shake) McCoy accidentally overdoses himself with a medication that serves as a maddening intoxicant at such dosages. Rushing off, McCoy beams himself down to the planet below. Following him, Kirk and Spock arrive on the planet with an away team, discovering a flashing, talking ring, that turns out to be the cause of the time ripples. The ring speaks to Kirk, introducing itself as The Guardian of Forever. McCoy runs into the ring, and the Guardian announces, shortly after, that in doing so McCoy has arrived on earth, and radically changed human history. Kirk and Spock are forced to follow with the hope of correcting the error.

Arriving in the past, Kirk and Spock find themselves in the Great Depression of the 1930's. Overcoming the problems of their out of place costumes through theft and lying, Kirk and Spock accidentally meet Edith, a social worker played by Joan Collins. Almost immediately, Kirk is struck by feeling for her. Edith shows herself as a charismatic, and positive thinker, with a great vision of the future. Kirk is moved by her views, and her demeanor, and falls deeply in love. In the meantime, Spock determines a way to sort out what detail McCoy changed in the past, though it will take time. Waiting for McCoy to arrive on the one hand, and Spock to determine the change on the other, Kirk has ample time to spend with his new love.

Episode Tidbits
With the popularity of the episode, I can admit to some of the plot points that drive the poignancy of it. It really is a dear love story. Joan Collins has a beautiful, and charming determination in her characterization of Edith that pulls the story along. Kirk's feeling for Edith softens his character too. The episode differs aesthetically from previous ones. It is told with the help of dramatic stringed music, unlike that used in any other Star Trek episode previous. It depends too, on character exploration--McCoy in his madness, Kirk in his affection, Spock in his steely determination to succeed.

The unfortunate truth of this episode is that Kirk must choose between the loss of his heart's desire, or the loss of all history and the universe as he's known it. In Ellison's original teleplay, Kirk was unable to choose at the expense of his own heart. Spock instead made the decision for him. In the retelling, Kirk does choose, and decides that sticking to history as it had occurred before McCoy's intervention is what must be done. Roddenberry decided that the collapse of Kirk into his own ultimate vulnerability of being in love, at the expense of the universe itself, would contradict the forthright dedication to larger principles that Kirk has always shown. Further, Roddenberry also thought that such an event would undermine the audience's trust in our captain.

The moment when Kirk chooses is heart breaking. The episode does well at making us sympathetic to Kirk's own feeling. William Shatner acts the part convincingly, most especially at the end when he is facing his own loss.

This episode really deserves its regard as the best Star Trek episode ever written. I know Next Generation devotees that will try to disagree with me, perhaps. I'll certainly include Picard's experiences in "The Inner Light", Episode 125 of that series, in which he encounters a space probe that 'transports' him to another life complete with family, as at the top of that list as well.

Be careful with how you watch "The City at the Edge of Forever." This is no Star Trek Drinking Game.

Comment from Harlan Ellison during a 1990's interview on His View of The Import of the Episode:
"The human heart will always win out over logic. There is a nobility in the human heart, that we have to pay attention to. It's exactly what separates us from everything else that exists in this universe. Time and gravity take their toll. But kindness, courage, ethics, friendship, and love will always yank you through one way or the other."

Episode Quotations
"In this zinc-plated, vacuum tubed culture?" --Spock describing the earth's past

"A lie is a very poor way to say hello." --Edith (Joan Collins), upon meeting Kirk and Spock for the first time

"I don't pretend to tell you how to find happiness and love, when everyday is just a struggle to survive. But I demand that you do survive. Because the days and years ahead are worth living for." --Edith, speaking to the people she feeds in her social efforts

"I find her most uncommon, Mister Spock." --Kirks expression of his feeling for Edith