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'The City on the Edge of Forever' by Harlan Ellison |
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While treating an unwell Lieutenant Sulu on the bridge of the Enterprise, Doctor McCoy accidentally injects himself with an overdose of cordrazine; the drug causes him to become paranoid and violent, and in his madness he overpowers several members of the crew and beams down to the surface of a nearby planet. Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Commander Spock and a landing party chase after him, but they are too late, and can only look on as the delirious doctor leaps through the portal of a living time machine called ‘The Guardian of Forever’. Suddenly, the Enterprise ceases to exist, leaving the landing party stranded on the planet; the Guardian explains that McCoy went back into Earth's history and changed events, thereby altering the future. Kirk and Spock follow McCoy through the portal and arrive in America during the Depression, a few days before he is due to arrive and change history. The two officers meet Edith Keeler, a social worker who helps them to find work to pay for the equipment that Spock requires to build a tricorder. But unknown to Kirk and Spock, Edith has also taken in another recent arrival: Doctor McCoy. Over the next few days Kirk falls in love with Edith. After Spock finally completes work on his tricorder, he accesses its records - and Kirk is devastated to learn that Edith should have been killed in a car accident; however, when a recovered McCoy saved her, Edith subsequently went on to start a pacifist movement that delayed the United States' entry into World War II; this allowed Hitler's Germany to develop the atomic bomb first, and enabled the Fuhrer to conquer the world. Kirk realises that in order to repair history, he must ensure that the woman he loves dies...
William Shatner (Captain James Tiberius Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (First Officer Lieutenant Commander Spock), DeForest Kelley (Doctor Leonard H. ‘Bones’ McCoy), James Doohan (Chief Engineer Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott), Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Nyota Uhura), George Takei (Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu), Joan Collins (Edith Keeler), John Harmon (Rodent), Hal Baylor (Policeman), David L. Ross (Lieutenant Galloway), John Winston (Transporter Chief), Bartell La Rue (Voice of the Guardian of Forever)
Directed by Joseph Pevney
TX:
6th June, 1967
Notes:
*Featuring Captain James Tiberius Kirk, First Officer Lieutenant Commander Spock, Doctor Leonard H. ‘Bones’ McCoy, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura and Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu