ST: TOS; The City on the Edge of Forever Ep#28
A real gem. A true classic. An award winning show (a Hugo in 1968). Myriad plot twists, solid characterizations, intriguing and plausible alternative world. Fast paced, but packed with human touches--nothing is sacrificed just to move the plot along or artificial to serve the plot or time allotment. Humor, pathos, it's got it all.
If only I didn't loathe Joan Collins so much, I'd rewatch this happily forever.
Thoughts? Share your favorite line or moment or your least favorite line or moment.
"Edith Keeler must die."
That line still gives me chills. What a tragic and wonderful episode. There are so many ways it could have gone wrong or could have been overdone, but they kept the focus tight on the human experiences in the episode and that is what makes it an utter classic, IMHO.
Maybe the best episode though I am partial to Tribbles. I look forward to re-watching it this week.
My favorite line, "I am endeavoring, ma'am, to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bear skins."
Most heart wrenching moment in Star Trek ever:
Spoiler (mouseover to read):
Dr. McCoy: You deliberately stopped me, Jim. I could have saved her. Do you know what you just did?
Spock: He knows, Doctor. He knows.
Yeah it's a gem all right.
Arguably one of the finest episodes of any TV show ever. Forcing our captain to make an impossible decision and then live with it for the rest of his life was some heavy shit and the episode did not give them an easy way out on it, thankfully.
As I recall, Harlan Ellison was pretty pissed off with the re-writes to his story. Originally, it was an officer addicted to space drugs who OD's and runs through the Guardian of Forever, messing up the timeline -- this didn't agree with Roddenberry's utopian universe, so they rewrote it to have McCoy get accidentally injected.
I've always been fond of the story Kirk makes up, with Spock's help, to explain Spock's strange appearance to the cop -- Spock being Chinese and having had his ears caught in a rice picker as a child. Hilarious!
Hell is other people.
And I love that the Hayes Office (or whoever made these decisions back then) allowed Kirk to say "hell". His line, "Let's get the hell out of here." is so poignant and true.
Seriously, this was such a great episode. No matter how much you loathe Joan Collins, she was perfect in this. I would say a top 10 guest starring performance for Trek.
Just watched it just now and it is a really powerful episode. Very well written by Ellison and Coon. Well acted. Had so many memorable lines.
Someone is missing from this thread. Tis passing strange.
A few moons ago, I floated a theory that there's a lot more going on in this episode than it seems. Specifically, I think that Spock knew a lot earlier than he admits that Edith had to die for the Nazis to be defeated. I don't think this was their first time in the past, either; they were stuck in a loop, of which we only see the final iteration.
"Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon." (Chesterton)
Hmmm. That is an interesting theory. I also have to wonder about his bear skin computer....
Couldn't the series be considered one giant trip through the time loop or whatever that circle of stone was called? I'm not even sure what I mean by that--I just had a glimmer of something. Perhaps more will come to me later. (I'm serious, btw, not snarking or being facetious).
Great episode. The idea that somebody in the 1930s could start a U.S. pacifist movement so successful it keeps us out of WWII was ludicrous, but necessary for the moral dilemma involved.
And even though Ellison is still pissed off over 40 years later, I prefer the rewrite. His original ending was overly-complicated and didn't fit with the character of Kirk as he developed in the series. (When you're hired to write an episode of somebody else's tv show, you don't get to change the main character to suit yourself, even if your version is more interesting.)
You know, I know everybody says this is the best episode evah, but that ludicrous plot point has always kept me from being able to totally get into it. I wonder if there is something else they could have come up with that would have been more believable, but still necessitated her dying.Originally posted by Baldwin
But there WAS a strong movement to keep America out of the war. It was more isolationist than pacifist, but still.
What ending did Ellison want? I never heard.
Yeah, I know. And it disappeared as soon as the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the United States. I'm not sure how Edith's movement would have kept the U.S. at peace after that.
She was so persuasive she actually kept the Japanese from bombing us?
See had the US on such pacifistic footing that the embargo on Japan was not in place and thus no need for Pearl Harbor.
See, simple. Just like rice picker accidents explain Spock. (I love that line.)
Although if you wish to probe deeper, US out of the war doesn't seem likely to end with Nazis conquering the world. I can maybe give Ellison a pass on that as it may have seemed so to Americans a few decades after the war (The Man in the High Castle came out just a few years earlier). I think it more likely to have resulted in a "Mirror,Mirror"-style future, not that that would be a good thing. It would have been interesting if Keeler's death were only responsible for the Enterprise itself, which would have made Kirk's decision even more personal.
Also, this is possibly the original treatment by Ellison. I make no guarantees on its authenticity.
Spoiler (mouseover to read):
It includes a Kirk who fails to act and tries to let Keeler live. Spock is much harsher and he does what needs to be done. Also, there's the redshirt to end all redshirts - a character whose existence has absolutely no effect on the universe when he dies.
Last edited by parzival; 14 Mar 2010 at 09:45 PM.
Okay, so we have established that Keeler prevented the Japanese from bombing the US and stopped Germany from attacking Russia and bleeding themselves dry.
No wonder Kirk loved her. What influence that woman had!
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