The City on the Edge of Forever is a first season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast on April 6, 1967. It is episode #28, and is written by D.C. Fontana, based on an original script by science-fiction author Harlan Ellison, and directed by Joseph Pevney . It guest stars Joan Collins as Edith Keeler.

On stardate 3134.0, the U.S.S. Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, investigates temporal disturbances centered around a nearby planet. During the investigation, a burst of energy hits the ship, and Mr. Sulu is injured when the helm controls explode. The jolt causes him cardiac arrest and Dr. McCoy injects him with cordrazine , a powerful drug that instantly recovers Sulu. However, the Enterprise is battered by another wave of energy and Dr. McCoy accidently injects himself with an overdose of the drug, causing him to go mad.

Delusional, McCoy runs from the bridge, knocks a crewman unconscious, then escapes the ship "of murderers" by beaming down to the planet. Kirk and Mr. Spock form a landing party and chase after McCoy. They arrive at his coordinates and discover ancient ruins centered around a large stargate-like portal made of glowing stone. This site happens also to be where the time distortions are emanating from. The gateway begins to speak to the landing party, identifying itself as The Guardian of Forever and is apparently a doorway to any time and place.

Spock locates the crazed Dr. McCoy, however McCoy manages to escape and runs through the Guardian portal before anyone can stop him. Suddenly everything seems to shift, and the landing party lose contact with the Enterprise. Spock believes McCoy's actions have somehow altered the past. Because of their proximity to the Guardian, the temporal shift doesn't directly effect the landing party. Everything else has changed. Kirk and Spock set the portal to a time just before McCoy enters to undo whatever altering he's done to the past and step through it.

They suddenly arrive in a city, back on Earth, during the 1930's Great Depression era. Spock surmises that the temporal currents brought them to this particular point in time, because this is where the events had all changed. They're appearance of their uniforms, and Spock's ears, shock some passerbys. They are approached by a policeman, and Kirk explains Spock's pointed ears as an accident he suffered in a mechanical rice picker as a child. The two then steal some clothes and disguise themselves and "fit in", running to what appears as an abandoned building.

There they meet a woman named Edith Keeler, who identifies herself as a social worker of the 21st Street Mission. They offer to work for Edith, in the meantime Spock begins to constructs a jury-rigged tricorder and uses it to figure out what parts of history Dr. McCoy altered. Kirk already begins to fall in love with the beautiful Edith.

Unknown to Kirk and Spock, Dr. McCoy later shows up at the mission and is recovering in a bed. Earlier McCoy accosts a man on the street and then falls unconscious. The man picks up his phaser and accidently vaporizes himself. McCoy recovers and tells Edith he's a medical doctor onboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Mc Coy doesn't realize he's in the 1930's.

Spock finishes his tricorder, made from an array of vacuum tubes and other primitive 1930's hardware. The information it reveals is shocking. Edith is somehow the centerpoint to the temporal disruption. They discover McCoy's actions save her from dying in a car accident. Because she isn't killed, she ends up meeting with the President of the United States. The meeting causes a chain of events where she starts a great pacifist movement that delays the United States entry into World War II. The delay gives The Nazis time to develop a nuclear bomb and the edge they need to take over the world. Kirk, not wishing to see Edith killed, is repulsed in the fact that if she doesn't die like she is supposed to, history will be altered for the worst.

On his way to see a Clark Gable movie with Edith, Kirk learns Dr. McCoy was at the shelter, and then spots him across the street. Despite his love for the woman, Kirk holds McCoy back as a truck barrels down on her and she is killed. History is thus reverted back to normal and Kirk, Spock and McCoy are returned to the Guardian's planet, where the rest of the landing team only saw them leave for a second and come back. The Guardian then asks if anyone else would like to journey through time, but Kirk responds: "Let's get the hell out of here."

Trivia

Harlan Ellison's, original script was altered in Gene Roddenberry's shooting script, for which he is still annoyed and bitter about to this day. His original script is now available in book form.

In the original script, Crewman Beckwith, a drug dealer selling the illegal "Jewels of Sound", kills Crewman LeBeque after he threatens to expose Beckwith's activities. After escaping to the planet's surface, with the Captain and Mr. Spock close on his heels, he enters the Guardians of Forever time portal to escape. The time changes he effects cause the Enterprise to become a pirate vessel.

The rest of the show is roughly the same (with Keeler being the focus of the time travel, Kirk's growing love for her), but with more emphasis on Kirk and Spock spying on Keeler, waiting for Beckwith to find her.

The ending has Beckwith being captured, and Edith Keeler being hit by a truck in a fatal vehicle accident. But in this version, it is Spock who must hold the Captain back, as he has fallen completely in love with her.

With the timeline set right, Beckwith attempts to escape again, but the Guardians of Forever have set a trap for him - he finds himself in an exploding supernova, and just before he dies a fiery death, is pulled backwards in time and forced to relive his death again and again.

A later draft, written with Ellison's pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird" had McCoy bitten by a toxic animal, which caused him to go insane and beam down to the Guardian's planet.

The final draft as seen on television was rewritten by D.C. Fontana, although it had Gene Roddenberry's name on it. The portal is revisited in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode Yesteryear, and numerous books.

External link

• The City on the Edge of Forever episode summary at Memory Alpha , a Star Trek WikiWiki