With Episodes Like This, Star Trek Should Have Lasted Forever

Our local Fox station has recently begun playing re-runs of Star Trek. Years ago, we got them once a day, at which time we managed to tape half of the series' episodes, though I often botched the job, and we ended up pitching the tapes, which were already suffering tracking problems after only a couple of viewings. Bummer. But now I can watch them again, and it was my good luck that one of the first ones I caught was the iconic The City on the Edge of Forever.

It's a bad day on the U. S. S. Enterprise. The ship, sent to explore some wacky time-space anomalies emanating from nearby, finds itself right in the middle of these tears in time, which shakes the ship, which causes Dr. McCoy (DeForrest Kelley) to accidentally inject himself with a large amount of a dangerous drug, which makes him go stark raving mad. Convinced everyone around him is out to get him, he beams down to the surface of the troublesome planet and finds the Guardian of Forever, an intelligence that keeps track of history and allows visitors to leap into the past, which McCoy does, with disastrous consequences.

Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and the rest of the landing party, unable to halt his flight, are in for a shock when the Guardian informs them that he has changed something that has negated the existence of the Enterprise and the Earth as they know it. Their only hope lies in time travel, which means approximating the time of McCoy's jump, pin-pointing his calamitous interference and putting a stop to it.

So it is that Kirk and Spock find themselves in New York City during the Great Depression, hopelessly out of place, scarcely able to explain away Spock's ears ("They got caught in a mechanical rice picker"), little knowing how to go about their essential task in such a strange land with nothing in the way of tools but what Spock disdainfully calls "stone knives and bear skins." Yes, they're in a tricky spot, and the inevitable culture clash is rich with comedic possibilities, while a romantic angle develops when Kirk turns on the charm with visionary humanitarian Edith Keeler (Joan Collins in an atypically virtuous role).

But the trouble really begins when Spock discovers what it is that McCoy has changed, creating a painful moral and ethical crisis. We get more emotion from Shatner than usual in this episode, while Nimoy has some hilarious scenes. Though Kirk is the one experiencing the anguish in this episode, Spock has to deliver the bad news to his captain, which he does with characteristic detachment, though in the aftermath, he exhibits something that looks an awful lot like sympathy.

The City on the Edge of Forever is a sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, always thought-provoking tale from Star Trek's first year. Watching episodes like this, it's hard to believe the original series only lasted three seasons.