The City on the Edge of Forever
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"The City on the Edge of Forever" is a first season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast on April 6, 1967. It is episode #28, and is written by D.C. Fontana, based on an original script by science-fiction author Harlan Ellison, and directed by Joseph Pevney. It guest stars Joan Collins as Edith Keeler.
Quick Overview: The crew of the Enterprise discovers a portal through space and time.
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On stardate 3134.0, the starship USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, investigates temporal disturbances centered around 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 cardiac arrest and Dr. McCoy injects him with cordrazine, a powerful drug that instantly recovers Sulu. However, the Enterprise is battered by another wave of energy and Dr. McCoy accidently injects himself with an overdose of the drug, causing him to go mad.
Delusional, McCoy flees from the bridge, knocks a transporter technician unconscious, then escapes the ship "of murderers and assassins" by beaming down to the planet. Kirk forms a landing party, along with Mr. Spock, Mr. Scott, Lt. Uhura and several security personnel, to chase after McCoy. They arrive at his coordinates and discover ancient ruins centered around a large stargate-like portal made of glowing stone. This site happens to also be where the time distortions are emanating from. The gateway begins to speak when Kirk asks Spock "what it is", and identifies itself as "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 much 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 lose contact with the Enterprise. The Guardian then informs that landing party's history has just been altered. The ship disappeared because the timeline changed and it no longer exists. Because of their proximity to the Guardian, the temporal shift doesn't directly effect the landing party. Everything else has changed.
Kirk believes that somehow McCoy has altered the past, erasing all the history that they knew. Without the Enterprise the landing party would be stranded forever on the 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 altering he's done to the past. Kirk informs Scotty that if they do not return, then 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 a city, back on Earth, during the 1930s Great Depression era. The appearance of their uniforms, and Spock's ears, shock some passerbys. 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 explains 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 goes to arrest them, but 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. He begins to construct a processor interface, jury-rigged with 1930's era vacuum tubes and electronics and uses it 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 man on the street, asking him what era of history 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 accidently vaporizes himself.
Dr. McCoy wakes up, and stumbles his way into the 21st Street Mission, asking for a bowl of soup. 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, just having 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 will die 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 forms a pacifist movement that gains in popularity during the beginnings of World War II. She even ends up meeting with the President of the United States. This meeting causes a chain of events that delays the United States entry into the war. The delay gives The Nazis time to develop a nuclear bomb and the edge they need to take over the world.
Kirk, not wishing to see Edith killed, is repulsed by the fact that if Edith doesn't die like she is supposed to, history will be altered for the worst.
Meanwhile Edith 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 doesn't believe his fantastic story, but tells him that he would fit in nicely with her new eccentric boyfriend (Kirk) who she informs will be meeting up with her later if the Doctor would like to meet him.
On his way to see a Clark Gable movie with Edith, Kirk learns Dr. McCoy is at the shelter when she unexpectedly starts talking about her new "doctor friend". Kirk is excited to learn that Bones is alive and well, and also very near. He then actually spots him across the street as he exits the mission building.
Kirk calls over to Spock who is sweeping the sidewalk just a few feet away from McCoy. Kirk and Spock rush over to meet the overjoyed and bewildered doctor. Edith watches the curious trio of friends from the street corner, and she starts to cross to meet them. As she does, a fast moving truck barrels straight for her.
Despite his love for the woman, Kirk holds McCoy back when he notices the truck. The truck hits Edith and she is killed. History is thus reverted back to normal and Kirk, Spock and McCoy are returned to the Guardian's planet. The rest of the landing team still awaits, indicating the three had only gone for a second and came back. The Guardian then politely asks if anyone else would like to journey through time, but Kirk responds: "Let's get the hell out of here." This marks the first and only time in the original Star Trek series in which profanity of any kind was used.
Trivia
Harlan Ellison's original script was altered in Gene Roddenberry's shooting script, for which Ellison is still annoyed and bitter to this day. His original script (along with two of the rewritten versions) is now available in book form.
In the original script, Crewman Beckwith, a drug dealer selling the illegal "Jewels of Sound", kills Crewman LeBeque after he threatens to expose Beckwith's activities. After escaping to the planet's surface, with the Captain and Mr. Spock close on his heels, he enters the Guardians of Forever time portal 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 ending has Beckwith being captured, and Edith Keeler being hit by a truck in a fatal vehicle accident. But in this version, it is Spock who must hold the Captain back, as he has fallen completely in love with her.
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 death again and again.
A later draft, written with Ellison's pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird" had McCoy bitten by a toxic animal, which caused him to go insane and beam down to the Guardian's planet.
The final draft as seen on television was rewritten by D.C. Fontana, although it had Gene Roddenberry's name on it. The portal is revisited in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "Yesteryear", and numerous books, including Peter David's novel Imzadi.
Honors
"City on the Edge of Forever" 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 received that honor.