On their way they spot a spaceship heading into the sun.  However, despite Uhura’s best efforts they cannot communicate with it and despite Scotty’s best efforts they can’t tractor beam it.  What do they pay these guys for?!  The matter resolves itself when they hear a voice on the radio saying “I’m finally free!” before the ship plummets into the Sun.  I know how he feels.  I’ve had mobile phone contracts that have left me feeling like that.

It turns out that crazy disease is heading straight to the planet Denova where, coinidentally, Kirk’s brother lives.  A Kirk family get together sounds like a lot of fun, sitting around, catching up, having Shatner-style sing-alongs.  When the landing party beams down, Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Ms Spacegirl and a random extra find nobody around.  It’s eerily quiet until an angry mob of… four people attack.  Bizarrely, they shout at the landing party, warning them to run and protect themselves, but act as if they want to bash in their heads.

Kirk visits his brother, only to find a hysterical woman, who turns out to be Kirk’s sister in law.  Kirk’s brother Sam lies dead on the floor.  Peter, Sam’s son is unconscious.  You would think that Kirk would break down, distraught.  This is his brother, after all.  However, he composes himself swiftly and beams up with Bones and Peter, leaving Spock on planet.

In sick bay, Kirk talks to his sister-in-law.  She manages to blurt out, “They came eight months ago.  Things. Horrible things”.  Vague it up a notch please, you’re being too specific, love.  McCoy says that she has to fight to get answers out.  I wish she’d fight harder.  She says that the people on the planet’s surface are being forced to build ships.  And then she dies.  It’s sad.  ish.  Since Kirk doesn’t seem too cut up by it, why should I be?

Kirk beams back down.  He and the landing party go investigatin’ with phasers set to kill.

As they look around, we see a selection of jellies stuck on a wall.  Without warning they fly at the crew.  Wibbly.  Wobbly.  Phaser.  Dead.  “It doesn’t even look real” says a space girl.  You can say that again.   Just as they are leaving Spock suddenly gets jellied in the back.  Never turn your back on a jelly, Spock!  Everyone knows that!  Kirk peels it off, but it’s too late and Spock is left, like, all spaced out, man.

After examining Spock, McCoy reports to Kirk that there’s nothing he can do.  Spock then gets out of bed and runs to the Bridge to take on the entire room in a fight.  You have to admire his self-belief.  Hey look!  All the cast are in this one scene.  Not many scenes where that happens.  Anyway, they restrain him and return him to sick bay.

Despite Spock’s assault on the Bridge one scene ago, he advises that he is able to return to duty.  He believes he can control himself.  I know how he feels.  I get that way around chocolate biscuits.  We see spock giving himself a pep talk and then bursts through his restraints.  I find chocolate biscuits also have this effect on me.  Spock then attacks the transporter engineers: Scotty and Mr Random.  However, despite Spock’s strength and skill, it takes more than that to defeat a Scotsman and Scotty soon recovers and locks his phaser on Spock, holding him until Kirk gets there.

It seems that Spock was intending to beam down to capture a jelly.  He tells Kirk that he is the only man for the job as he has control of his actions despite the influence of the Jelly.  Of course, jelly is no match for Mr Spock when he’s armed with a lunch box.  We learn that the jelly is in fact a one-cell creature.  It is a single brain cell which although not physically connected to the others, does form part of the same being.  After many attempts to terminate it’s influence, they fail.  However, Kirk remembers that the captain of the ship flying into the sun said he was free.  This is the clue that they need to figure out how to escape the creature.

Kirk comes up with one wacky solution: to exterminate the entire planet.  Deep breath.  Let’s call genocide our Plan B, Jim.

Spock and McCoy cannot see a solution.  Hmm… why did the sun free the captain of the spaceship earlier? Well it wasn’t heat or radiation, but what other properties could the sun possibly have?  Nope, nobody can figure it out.  Suddenly Kirk blurts out the thought that the audience has been screaming for minutes now: “Light!”  It seems so obvious now!  Why didn’t a collection of Starfleet’s best officers think of that earlier?

Duh!

With this new theory to test, McCoy rigs up an experiment and it works!  The light has turned the jelly into a flat squishy pancake!  But will it free somebody under the jelly’s influence?  Spock volunteers to sit under the intense light to see if it will free him of the influence of the jelly.  Insanely, though, he says that as there will be no goggles on the planet, he won’t wear any for this experiment.  What?!  This is utter madness!  Firstly, I’m sure some people will have goggles.  Secondly, why not try it first with goggles so that if it doesn’t work, he’ll still have his eyesight to try more tests with.  Anyway, it’s academic because they flood the chamber with light with Spock and no goggles inside. 

Spock exits the chamber saying that he is free of the creature.  Hooray!  However, he has been left blind.  Didn’t see that one coming, no pun intended.  So there’s no more looking at Nurse Chapel’s legs for you, Spock.  Only after the experiment does McCoy realise that the entire spectrum of light was thrown at Spock.  It wasn’t necessary.  His eyes could have been saved!  What a mistake-a to make-a!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, they drop satellites around the planet, switch ‘em on and operate ‘em.  Many dead jellies later and all is well.  A message reports that it is working and everyone is freed.  So it’s high fives and Mexican Waves all around the ship!  Except for McCoy who looks upset.  Kirk tells McCoy  that Spock’s eyesight wasn’t his fault.  McCoy doesn’t respond.

However, Spock then wanders on to the Bridge.  It transpires that his blindness was only temporary.  Hooray. It all worked out.  No need to recruit a guide dog with pointy ears!

So it’s all laughs at the end.  I do love a happy ending.

…but wait just a second, didn’t Kirk’s brother just die?!  His brother!  His sister-in-law too.  Kirk got over them pretty quickly.  Who’s going to look after Kirk’s nephew?  Also, by killing all the jellies, didn’t Kirk just commit genocide (or jellicide at least)?  These questions are conveniently forgotten as the episode draws to an end.

Watching this episode decades after if was made is the best way to watch it, in fact nowadays it is the only way to watch it!   This is the last episode of the first season of Star Trek.  Looking back on season one, it shows what an inventive show it was.  It was very much a product of its time, with all the colour, fashions, attitudes and designs of the sixties, and as a result is filled with surprise, wit, vision and charm. 

You can’t beat a bit of Trek.

McCoy assaults an engineer and beams down to the planet’s surface to the source of the time ripples. Kirk follows with a landing party, for once making the excellent choice of taking Uhura along as well as Spock, Scotty and two random red shirt wearing crewman.

It transpires that the cause of the time disturbances is a large stone circle which acts as a portal to another dimension. It’s a bit like Stargate. Unlike Stargate, however, Star Trek’s portal can talk! It’s the guardian of forever.  In your face, Stargate.

While McCoy runs around, demented, the stone cheerio displays images from Earth’s past and claims it to be a gateway to history. Just as Kirk considers what he could go back and do, barmy old Bones jumps through the hole. Uh-oh.

Imediately, the landing party are told that the Enterprise, the crew, the Earth as they knew it – have gone. McCoy changed the past, deleting the days from that point onwards. This means that landing party have no choice but to go back, find McCoy and stop him breaking time.

Kirk and Spock jump back a month or so before McCoy arrives, finding themselves in America during the great depression. The general public stare at their crazy futuristic outfits as if they’ve never seen two grown men in Starfleet uniforms. Don’t these people watch Star Trek?! One swift outfit change (and a hilarious scene with a police officer) later and they blend in perfectly.  As hobos.

They are spotted by, of all people, Joan Collins! Okay, okay she’s playing the part of Edith Keiller: hobo helper! That’s right, kids, she runs a mission for hobos! Kirk and Spock offer to work for her in order to get some cash to buy radio equipment. Meanwhile, Joan talks to random hobos about the future, space travel and atomic power.  Coincidentally, three things they’ll never get to experience.

Spock builds a piece of equipment which displays the future!  Handy!  It identifies the point in time at which history changed and reveals two possible futures. Kirk discovers that either Edith Keiller will either become president in 6 years, or will die this year. They can’t both happen. There’s a chance that in order to set things straight, she must die.

McCoy then materialises out of thin air, ranting about assassins and other wacky shenanigans. Even the craziest of hobos finds him a bit too mad. So while McCoy has a little cry and a sleep, a hobo steals his phaser and vaporises himself.  That’s certainly one way to resolve the city’s homeless problem.

The next day McCoy stumbles into Edith’s kitchen, but Spock is too busy focusing on his soup-dishing duties to spot him. It’s soup, Jim, but not as we know it.

Soon, Spock discovers how Edith will destroy his future. She will lead a peace movement which effectively lets the Nazis win the second world war. Somehow, McCoy prevented her death. Kirk announces that he is in love with Edith. In the 23rd century, this will be referred to as ‘crazy talk’.

The fresh 1930′s air has done wonders for McCoy’s condition. He wakes up and seems to be back to his old self. Hooray, the drugs didn’t do any permanent damage! As least, none that we can see. For all the viewer knows, McCoy’s nipples may now dispense custard.

In a powerful scene, Kirk and Spock are reunited with McCoy, but as Edith runs across the road to join them, a car hits her and she, dramatically, becomes road pizza.

They go back through the stone circle to find that normal history has resumed, although nobody seems very happy about it.

Overall, this is a wonderful episode of Star Trek. One of the problems with Star Trek’s numerous time travel tales is that they didn’t have a consistent method of achieving time travel, so there’s a lot of ‘wasted’ episode given over to establishing the time travel mechanism for this particular tale. In this case, the way of travelling through time is more than a little bizarre: a talking stone circle? Really? That’s the best you could come up with? However, that said, the story is really excellent and genuinely presents the main characters with a proper problem.  Kirk puts the future before his own feelings and before the life of Edith. He makes a choice that kills her. This episode doesn’t pull any punches and remains as one of the best written episodes ever made. Each character is well-realised and given great dialogue. City on the Edge of Forever proves the versatility and quality of the show.

Cast & Creative Staff
 
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:
Dave Armstrong as Kartan
Craig Hundley as Peter Kirk
Majel Barrett as Christine Chapel

Creative Staff:
Director:  Herschel Daugherty
Written By: Stephen W. Carabatsos 

Official Web Page

A landing party of Kirk, Spock and four security men beam down and find a tiny spacecraft and a bearded man. Or is it a tiny man and a bearded spaceship. I forget. Either way: man and spaceship.

It would seem that the effect which faded everything out of existence centered around the planet. Starfleet sends out a red alert warning that the effect affected all quadrants of space. Kirk and the Commodore believe it could be the start of an invasion. It’s worse than that, Jim. It’s so much worse than that.

The bearded man, Lazarus to his bearded friends, helpfully explains that his race was killed by a ‘thing’, a monster that looks like a man. However, Kirk seems suspicious. Another party beam down to the planet in search of the monster. Things get all ‘effecty’ again, and we are ‘treated’ to a negative image fight sequence. Things wobble.

Lazarus says “The ‘thing’ is all white / black!”.  Must be a penguin.

In sickbay, McCoy observes that Lazarus has healed ludicrously quickly. We see him convulse and the effect happens again. Lazarus’ scar returns. How strange. I certainly don’t expect that Lazarus and the ‘thing’ are the same person. Nope, I don’t expect that at all. Anyway, let’s see how this plays out…

A source of radiation is detected on the planet. I wonder what it is. Oh look! It’s a rip in the universe. Does anyone have a stapler?

Lazarus learns that dilithium crystals can be used to trap the enemy and sneaks into Engineering to pilfer a couple of them.

Lazarus’s beard is sometimes thick and sometimes thin. His scar is sometimes there and sometimes not. The effect keeps showing up with irritating regularity.  Let’s hope it’s all part of the plot or it’s likely the production team have a continuity guy with a drink problem.

Eventually, Lazarus tells Kirk everything that’s going on. The radiation comes from a parallel universe, which in turn causes the effect. We also discover that Lazarus is really two men! Hence the changing scar and beard. Didn’t see that coming. One version of Lazarus is made of matter. The other is made of anti-matter and if the two ever exist in the same universe, it will result in the annihilation of everything, everywhere.  That’s bad.  The universe is where I keep my stuff.

So we have two Lazarus’s. One good. One bad. The bad one wants to destroy everything in existence. Think about that for a second. Everything in existence. Kirk asks the Good Lazarus why. It’s a fair question. The answer? Because Evil Lazarus is mad. Really? That’s the best you can come up with? He’s mad?!

Anyway, it ends up with both Lazarus’s (Lazari?) being dragged into corridor between universes. Trapped together in a fight forever and ever.

The end.

It is the fact that Lazarus is not a particularly likable character that makes this episode difficult to invest in. Although the concept of matter and anti-matter is a new spin on the Good Twin / Evil Twin storyline, this concept has been realised in Star Trek many times over using characters we actually care about. Compare this to The Enemy Within and the overall story is not too dissimilar, but the Enemy Within is an exciting and absorbing plot where the characters are shown to be in peril. In this story, they are effectively in greater peril but the threat is over the top to the point of nonsense (the entirety of existence is under threat?) We never really see the crew showing any worry about this fact.  I normally love Star Trek and look for the best in all stories, but even I struggled to find the merit in this one. Perhaps, in a parallel universe, this is the most celebrated episode ever made. Sorry, that’s my evil twin talking.

Cast & Creative Staff

Cast:
William Shatner as James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard H. McCoy
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura

Guest Cast:
Robert Brown as Lazarus A and B
Janet MacLachien as Lt. Charlene Master
Richard Derr as Commodore Barstow

Creative Staff:
Director:  Gerd Oswald
Written By: Don Ingalls

Official Episode Guide