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The Stop
Originally broadcast on NBC on 6 April 1967, ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ (Season 1, Episode 28) received critical acclaim at the time and won several awards, including the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. With its original screenplay written by Harlan Ellison,1 it is generally considered to be the single best episode of the original series.2
A brief synopsis follows, but there are far worse ways to spend an Easter Monday than zoning out for 50 minutes watching one of the best episodes of one of most famous shows in television history.3 If you’re interested, ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ streams on Netflix, but I’m sure there are other places to see it.
Synopsis:
While treating Mr Sulu for an injury sustained while the Enterprise passed through violent time distortions, Dr McCoy accidentally injects himself with a dangerous amount of cordrazine.4 The overdose causes him to go mad and a paranoid McCoy beams himself down to the unexplored planet below.
A landing party is formed5 to search for McCoy and discovers the ruins of an ancient city and an odd stone archway - the source of the time distortions. When Kirk asks a question the archway speaks, introducing itself as the Guardian of Forever - and explains it is a portal to any time and place.
The Guardian starts showing scenes from Earth’s history, when McCoy suddenly appears and jumps into the portal, disappearing into the distant past. Immediately, the landing party discovers the Enterprise has vanished. The Guardian explains that McCoy has changed the past and that the Enterprise and all they knew, no longer exists.
Faced with being stranded on the planet with no past or future, Kirk and Spock decide to go back into history to stop McCoy before he can change it. The Guardian begins to replay the Earth history and they jump through the portal, finding themselves in New York City in 1930 - in the midst of the Great Depression. Stealing clothes from a fire escape to better blend in, the two meet Edith Keeler, played by … Joan Collins,6 who runs the 21st Street Mission. She offers them a place to sleep and some odd jobs to earn money. Spock sets about cobbling together tools so that he can fix his tricorder to discover exactly how McCoy altered history.
Unknown to Kirk and Spock, McCoy arrives and is taken into the Mission by Edith who nurses him back to health. Meanwhile, Spock completes his work on the tricorder and discovers that Edith is supposed to die in a traffic accident, and that McCoy had evidently saved her life. In the resultant - altered - history, she founds a pacifist organisation that causes the USA to delay its entrance into World War II. This delay allowed the Nazis to develop and use nuclear weapons, changing history as we know it. Unfortunately, Kirk is falling in love with Edith,7and when he tells Spock, his friend replies that she must die into order to prevent millions of deaths and restore the future to its rightful course.
While going with Kirk to see a movie, Edith mentions McCoy. Kirk jumps to attention and tells her to wait on the sidewalk for him as he calls out to Spock. They both run back to the Mission, arriving just as McCoy is leaving. The three embrace with the relief of being reunited.
Curious, Edith begins to cross the street to join them, unaware that she is in the path of a speeding truck. Kirk sees her approaching and the oncoming truck and tries to warn her, but Spock stops him. McCoy, unaware of what he’s about to do, starts to run out to help her but Kirk holds him back and the truck kills Edith instantly.
Kirk, Spock and McCoy are returned to the archway, where the rest of the landing party are waiting. Scotty asks what happened as from his perspective they had only left a moment ago. The Guardian tells them that, ‘Time has resumed its shape. All is at it was before. Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway.’ A depressed Kirk only says, ‘let's get the hell out of here,’8 and they all return to the Enterprise.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to this article from The Guardian. It’s certainly worth a read - and you’ll never look at vending machines the same way.
'A Day in the Life of Almost Every Vending Machine in the World'
The Book
I’ve been a Beatles fan for 40 years and until recently my favourite book about them has been Philip Norton’s Shout! The Beatles in their Generation. That’s still a great book - but One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time has recently taken its place. Written by Craig Brown (award-winning journalist, satirist and columnist) it’s a biography of The Beatles told in a series of vignettes which collectively paint a vivid and constantly engaging picture of the band and the 1960s.9
Remember: You can buy One, Two, Three Four: The Beatles in Time at Amazon, but you can also get it from your local bookstore. And that’s better for everyone.
The Sounds
Considering today’s book recommendation, I thought a Beatles playlist appropriate. It’s not easy choosing a selection, but these are a few of my favourites. Feel free to shuffle or skip through, but please listen to it in order at least once as there is method to the mix!
The Question
Today’s question is from Nick Bostrom (Professor of Applied Ethics, University of Oxford), author of Superintelligence and the Director of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute.10
“Which questions should we not ask and not try to answer?”
And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion from your regular journey.
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Until the next stop …
Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) was a prolific American writer who worked in various genres, including science fiction and speculative fiction. For more information, follow this link to the Guardian’s obituary: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/29/harlan-ellison-obituary
For all things Star Trek - and I mean all things - there is no better online resource than Memory Alpha: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_City_on_the_Edge_of_Forever_(episode)#Summary
In the early 1970s, there was precious little science fiction on television, so I searched out Star Trek wherever I could find it. I was consumed by the series and credit my academic interests in no small part to its truly mind-bending stories. Though in 1977 my seven-year-old self was permanently changed by the arrival of Star Wars, I’ve always returned to Star Trek because of these stories. Because Star Trek was never about the ‘special’ effects, the sets, the dubious alien costumes or even the soft focus in which every female actor seems to be filmed. Star Trek was about the story - and the actors doing their earnest best to bring that story to life.
In the Star Trek universe, cordrazine is a strong stimulant - ‘tricky stuff’ as Kirk helpfully comments, just before McCoy injects Sulu.
In typical Star Trek fashion, anybody who’s anybody beams down to the surface - Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, and a couple of others - presumably leaving the ship in the hands of the random guy who pops down in the helmsman’s chair once in a while.
Joan Collins was 34 when she filmed this episode; her fee helped send the production over its budget.
Kirk’s love interests are legion; seriously, you start to wonder when he has time to captain the ship. However, the ethical conundrum he faces in his relationship with Edith marks it out from the others - and it appears he is genuinely heartbroken when he has to do the right thing to save untold millions.
The network objected to the use of ‘hell,’ but relented to pressure from the Star Trek cast and crew who believed it was the only appropriate word to use in the situation. It is one of the first times (and possibly IS the first time, but this is somewhat debated) this word was used as a profanity on television.
https://www.nickbostrom.com/