Harlan Ellison - City on the Edge of Forever - 8 {unrated}

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endall
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Harlan Ellison - City on the Edge of Forever - 8 {unrated}

Post by endall »

IBDOF-book-detailedview.php?book_id=27979

STO – The City on the Edge of Forever

This classic original star Trek series episode won a Hugo in 1968 for Dramatic Presentation . Not surprisingly since it was written by Harlan Ellison.

The starship Enterprise is investigating ‘time anomalies’ around a distant planet. Doctor McCoy (De Forest Kelly) is inadvertently given an injection of a powerful hallucinogen. He is convinced the rest of the crew is trying to kill him and beams down to the planet. His rescue team find an ancient, ruined city with a time portal capable of showing the entire history of the galaxy. When McCoy falls through the portal in his desperation to escape the Enterprise disappears from orbit leaving the team stranded. The portal explains that McCoy has changed time and the ‘Star Trek’ time line no longer exists. From his tape recording of Time as the portal showed them Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is able to isolate roughly where McCoy emerged. He and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) decide to travel back in time just before McCoy and try to stop him changing the future.

Arriving in New York in 1930 they are given shelter in a charity mission run by Elizabeth Keeler (Joan Collins). Spock, his ears covered by beanie, tries to build a computer from valve radio technology to examine his time tapes and determine exactly when and how McCoy will alter the future. Meanwhile Captain Kirk is concealing their indemnities from Miss Keeler and, as he often did, falling for her. She in return is fascinated by them because she is a lady with a strong belief in a wonderful, peaceful future for the world.

Spock succeeds in building a primitive computer to view the tapes that show two possible futures for Keeler. In one she is killed and the world goes on as normal but in the other she is saved and begins a worldwide peace movement. This movement in turn delays the US entry into WWII this allows Nazi Germany to develop the A-bomb and win the war. This creates the new time line. Kirk is now faced with a dilemma can he allow the woman he loves to be killed and thus save himself, his ship, his crew and the world as we know it?

McCoy finally arrives and is finds his way to the Mission where Keeler puts him to bed to sleep on the affects of the drug. McCoy is convinced the episode is a drug induced fantasy and effuses her offer to meet the friends Keeler says are so like him. Kirk takes Keeler on a date to the movies but on the way she tells him about McCoy. Rushing back to see McCoy at the Mission Kirk leaves Keeler on the other side of a busy New York street. Crossing to join him and the others she is killed by a truck. Kirk does not try to prevent her death indeed he stops McCoy from preventing the accident knowing the consequences.

Going back through the portal they find a surprised rescue team that has only moments before seen them leave. The portal confirms what they already know, since the Enterprise is back, that the paradox has been overturned.

Arguments have raged and will probably continue to about the quality of the original Star Trek series. Dispassionately there is no doubt some of the episodes were bad slaved to Roddenbury’s original concept of a cowboy theme – Wagon Train in Space. A few benefited from the talents of writers like Ellison. Time paradox is well worn SF theme and Star Trek in all its incarnations has returned to it time and time again (pun intended). But it’s always good to be first and if you get it right then it’s a classic and an award winner.

[Mod: Review manually linked, but still unrated. -- Brad, 07-Sep-2007]
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Post by Darb »

I took the liberty of clarifying the subject line a little.

As for the episode itself ... I thought it was one of the better written episodes, and it consistently scores in the top 10 all time faves of ST:TOS in fan and critic polling. Well written, eerie, nostalgic, tragic, and fateful, and well deserving of the Hugo Award it ultimately received. I'd give it a 9.

As for the tell-all novelization about the writing, evolution, and making of episode ... I thought Harlan's carping about Roddenberry's frothing-at-the-mouth opposition to what was originally supposed to be an plot involving highly addictive alien psychrotropic drug, and which ultimately was changed to being an experimental hypo that was accidentally overdosed, was very entertaining and eye-opening.
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