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| The City On The Edge Of Forever |
| Production Number |
28 |
| Air Date (US) |
1967-04-06 |
| Season |
1 |
| DVD Disc No. |
7 |
| Rating |
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Cast:
William Shatner as James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard H. McCoy
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
George Takei as Hikaru Sulu
Guest Cast:
Joan Collins as Edith Keeler
John Harmon as Rodent
Hal Baylor as Policeman
David L. Ross as Lt. Galloway
John Winston as Transporter Chief
Bart La Rue as Guardian of Forever Voice
Creative Staff:
Director: Joseph Pevney
Written By: Harlan Ellison
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| Description |
McCoy accidentally injects himself with an overdose of cordrazine, a drug which makes him exhibit signs of paranoia and madness, while treating an ailing Sulu on the Bridge. Delirious, he beams down to a nearby planet's surface, with Kirk and a landing party on his heels.
They are too late to stop the doctor from leaping through a living time machine called "The Guardian of Forever." At that moment, the U.S.S. Enterprise ceases to exist and the landing party is stranded. The Guardian explains that McCoy went back into Earth's history and changed it, thereby altering the future. Kirk and Spock go through the Guardian, to Depression-era America, a few days before McCoy is to arrive and change history.
They encounter a social worker, Edith Keeler, who helps them find work to pay for the equipment Spock requires to build a tricorder. Unknown to Kirk and Spock, Edith has taken in the recently-arrived and ill McCoy. Kirk promptly falls in love with Edith and is devastated when Spock completes his tricorder and discovers that in order to repair history, they must let Edith Keeler be killed in an auto accident. If they allow McCoy to save her — as he did before — she will start an effective pacifist movement that will delay the United States' entrance into World War II, thus allowing Hitler's Germany to develop the atomic bomb first and conquer the planet.
When the moment comes, a heartbroken Kirk stops McCoy from saving Edith, and the three officers journey back through the Guardian, where they find things as they should be again.
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| Trivia |
| The background on this show is 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. |
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