Star Trek - The Original Series, Episode 28: The City On the Edge Of Forever
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Leonard Nimoy, William ShatnerProducer: Douglas S. Cramer
Writer: Gene Roddenberry
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 46 minutes
Release Date: 1994-04-15
Publisher: CBS Paramount International Television
Studio: CBS Paramount International Television
VHS Movie Reviews of Star Trek - The Original Series, Episode 28: The City On the Edge Of Forever
Movie Review: Episode on the edge of greatness
Summary: 5 Stars
Every Star Trek fan knows and loves this episode. Owning it is rewarding, as it can be watched again and again. But the episode raises some questions. What about Harlan Ellison's original script, which (unlike the filmed version) won a Writer's Guild of America award? What are the political implications? And there's the point another reviewer brought up... does the importance of Edith Keeler fade due to Kirk's subsequently prodigious love life?
Kirk and Spock travel back in time to 1930s Earth to fix something that went wrong due to another time traveler. (In the filmed version, this is McCoy, who accidentally suffers a drug overdose and escapes to a planet where a time portal exists.) They travel to the past and meet Edith Keeler, a Depression-era social worker with visionary ideas played by Joan Collins -- yes, THAT Joan Collins. She is luminous in this role, commanding the episode whenever she is on screen.
There's a painful twist of fate: Spock learns that if Edith Keeler does not die, she will lead a peace movement that delays the entrance of the USA into WWII, thus letting the Nazis win. Therefore Edith Keeler must die, though Kirk has fallen into love with her. I have always been disturbed by this story line, because it suggests that pacism is wrong, even though (at least at times) Trek seemed to be endorsing a platform friendly to pacifism. (But, to be fair, the Enterprise did pack a lot of weaponry, and some of the most exciting episodes involved space battles.)
Watching the episode recently on tape, I decided that the idealism more than makes up for the hedge against pacifism. Someday man will harness incredible energies and reach the stars, Edith declares, and the money now spent on death and destruction will someday be used to solve the problems of mankind rather than to hurt people. The beauty of it is that we listen to these speeches through the eyes and ears of Kirk and Spock, and we therefore "know" her idealism will prevail. In 1967, we DID know that mankind would survive the problems of the 30s and 40s, some of the worst that humanity ever faced. And if we survived those problems, the episode subtly suggests, we can survive the problems of the 60s or the problems of today. There is a future worth living for.
Now, as to Ellison's original script. That script had less of a role for McCoy. I find that replacing a renegade drug dealer (from the original script) with a drugged-out McCoy was probably an improvement. De Kelly, as McCoy, does some of the best acting in the entire series here, going from calm to lunatic to desperate to charming. My favorite line: "That's quite all right dear... because I don't believe in you either."
The biggest change deals with Kirk's decision. Can he sacrifice the woman he loves in order to save millions of people? In Ellison's original script, Kirk is blinded by love and is unable to make the right decision. According to Ellison, this made him more fallible and human, and was therefore better.
But c'mon already. In the course of Star Trek, Kirk saves the galaxy, or at least entire planets, how many times??? Would a man whose role it is to save the galaxy turn away from the right decision when the entire future is at stake? For just one woman? Could he possibly do less than Rick in Casablanca, who finally realized that the lives of a couple of people mean little when the whole world is in the balance? It is enough, I think, for Kirk to be psychologically torn apart by what he has to do... elsewhere in the series, he unfailingly does the right thing, at least by the final act, and he usually does it so easily. (A theme later explored in Star Trek II.) For our hero to suffer such a loss is asking enough. Then there is the question of whether Edith Keeler means much in light of all the affairs Kirk has later. Well, watching the tape again put my mind at ease. As I stated, Joan Collins commands the screen and takes over the episode like no guest star before her. There is never another heroine like her, not on ST nor on any ST spinoff. Edith Keeler's idealism is truly Roddenberry's own. It is not surprising that Kirk's affairs are so ephemeral after this episode. We never meet a woman of her equal again.
All the creative elements in this episode -- the writing (including the marvelous little touches of humor in the script), the acting, the music, even the cinematography are all at their finest. Depression-era New York is recreated beautifully; we are reminded that people had trouble surviving. The basic idea of the story is still Ellison's, while the nuances and fine points are due to Roddenberry, DC Fontana, and others. But in any event, the result is a poetic masterpiece, like almost nothing television ever produced.
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Summary of Star Trek - The Original Series, Episode 28: The City On the Edge Of Forever
The standard-bearer for the entire Star Trek canon, this episode begins with a medical accident that leaves Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) a paranoid madman. Leaping through a time portal to Earth's Great Depression of the 1930s, McCoy causes disastrous changes to history that include the disappearance of the Enterprise. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) must follow him and undo whatever disruptive action he took centuries before. There, Kirk meets a kindly social worker, Edith Keeler (Joan Collins), with whom he falls in love before realizing that her fate is the key to a restored future.A shattering drama, "City" brings out the best in the cast and production teams, looking like a feature film that found its way onto television. The background on this show is equally compelling and sometimes hysterically funny, beginning with a highly fanciful script by Harlan Ellison (including a scene with cast members riding a carousel that passes in and out the side of a mountain) that was either rewritten by series creator Gene Roddenberry or producer Gene L. Coon, depending on who's telling the story. Ironically, Ellison's original version won a Writer's Guild award, while the revision captured a Hugo, but the real prize is the episode itself. --Tom Keogh
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