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It's nice to chance upon a truly terrible ep of STAR TREK just to remind yourself that TOS genuinely did have some truly awful crap even during its first two seasons. To wit: "The Alternative Factor," aka "incomprehensible shouting set to the cover of King Crimson's ISLANDS."
So I've finally gotten to near the end of the first season of STAR TREK and yup, it's "City On The Edge Of Forever." Since this is one everyone, even people who don't like Star Trek, cite as their best episode ever, I'd love to say it's overrated.
But alas, it is not.
But alas, it is not.
Oh sure, I can nitpick a few things. The plot device that gets the ball rolling--McCoy accidentally injects himself with a drug that makes him go bonkers and beam down to a planet where he steps into a time-travel device--is a bit abrupt, for one. But that's just about all.
Otherwise, it's a series of magnificently plotted+acted moments w/true pathos and the most famous guest star in TOS history in Joan Collins, who looks radiant even if there's a bit too much vaseline and cheesecloth on the camera lens during her closeups for my tastes sometimes.
Harlan Ellison famously wrote the script for this one, and because Ellison is Ellison (i.e. an infamously abrasive asshole) he complained until the day he died that Gene Roddenberry had 'ruined' it by changing aspects of the story. But here's the thing: the changes improve it.
Ellison wanted the guy who goes back in time and ends up changing history by saving Edith Keeler's life (which leads to Hitler winning WW2) to be a drug dealer aboard the Enterprise. Nah, Harlan. Works much better if it's Bones.
Even worse, Ellison's original script had a postscript where Spock takes Kirk aside to give him some consolatory philosophical observations at the show's end. A nice bit of screenwriting, but one that would have completely destroyed the power of the episode's actual ending.
The single most powerful part of "City On The Edge" IMO, the thing that slams it home and makes it immortal, is the ending. No musings on life or death, no consolation, just Kirk returning to his own time w/a haunted thousand-yard stare, saying, "Let's get the hell out of here."
It's brutal. It's the ending of "Eleanor Rigby" in TV form, it's Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave (no one was saved). No happy endings, no feel-good wrap up, just "I want to get as far away from here and what I had to do as possible."
Also, there's a wonderfully cold, harsh Ellison touch that often gets forgotten in "City On The Edge," that scene where the boozy bum who first encounters the whacked-out McCoy when he beams into 1930 picks up his dropped phaser and accidentally obliterates himself.
The point: history isn't changed at all. It adds up to nothing. Because some people just aren't important and never were. There *are* disposable characters in the great drama of human history, and don't you forget it. Oof.
It's a fantastic conclusion to the first season of STAR TREK. Except--whoops--it's not the last episode, the last episode is one with the hilariously over-the-top title "Operation: Annihilate!"
And don't let that name fool you: it's one of the best episodes of the season.
And don't let that name fool you: it's one of the best episodes of the season.
Okay, so you can niggle here and there: Spock should probably understand his own Vulcan physiology and not be 'surprised' to find out he has a second set of eyelids. And you gotta love how Kirk's dead brother is just a quick shot of Shatner with a porn 'stache.
And sure, the alien menace looks like those rubber 'puke' novelty items you could order from the back of a comic book in the '80s. Hey, it's ST:TOS special effects, they were blowin' budgets by this point. But it's great to end the season on a big rousing sci-fi adventure.
It's a tribute to how sturdy the show had become, particularly the chemistry between its leads, that you could wrap the season on a show whose villains are rubber dog vomit gag gifts flying around on strings and have it be a highlight. B/c the sci-fi premise is extremely solid.
It's so easy to forget how a lot of stuff you see in Trek has just become commonplace as premises get recycled over and over again in movies, shows, books, etc. But TOS was able to draw on the golden age of sci-fi (and many of their writers!) and present ideas nearly fresh.
In 1967, the idea of a creature that attacks you, implants thousands of microscopic parasites into your body to control you and make you part of an alien centralized hive mind...that was really bold for network TV. Today? "Oh, that's like the Zerg, bro." It's very well done.
Gotta love the subtitles representing the flying dog puke creature after being phasered (it's accurate).
