By far the best episode of the first season of the original series. If you rate an episode poorly based on one explicit word, you clearly don't understand what art is nor have you ever experienced death.
Not quite the classic episode I'd been led to believe, still I really enjoyed it. The slightly sloppy storytelling and campy performances detracted from what should have been an emotional ending, but Kirk's final line was great.
Exploration, mysteries, phenomena beyond comprehension, references to religion, vibrant cinematography, manipulation of space and time, philosphical choices between death and life, time travel, a social commentary about the contemporary American society, lessons in world history, comradery, action, a great and rationale Spock in full science mode, a great McCoy in berserk mode. First time, they were able to create a believable historical stage. Even Kirk using his mojo and being brash doesn't seem out of place. You can't blame him, I mean, Joan Collins (and her British accent) is gorgeous isn't she? It's not perfect though: the score is too melodramatic. The way the Good Doctor initiates the "time paradox" feels incredibly constructed: he drugged himself? Fled from the bridge? Escaped his fellow crew mates? And escaped through a portal (is that the original Stargate)? Really? As much as I like wasted McCoy, couldn't there have been a more believable reason why someone traveled accidentally back to the past? Couldn't there be a member of the crew who accidentally falls through the portal? Why do you need this strange self-injection and escape story?
It's the essence of Star Trek. It's great. Perhaps the best episode in season one.
A true classic. This is one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek. A simple story with deep, personal ramifications.
Not much more to say about this episode. Maybe it’s the music, but Shatner and Collins feel like they have real chemistry.
I have a confession to make: this is not among my favorite Star Trek episodes. It is among the better ones of this series but there are many I like more.
I'm not saying its bad. I actually like the general idea of a changed history and that we need to find a way to restore it. There are many good scenes and dialogues. So why don't I like it ?
I can't see past the fact that everthing hinges on a romance involving a guy who has one in every forth episode (rough estimate). It doesn't feel natural in any way. Therefore the emotional weight to carry this decission just isn't there.
It's great to see a Trek episode written by sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison, and one that stars the late Joan Collins. Unfortunately, this episode also seriously plods, and the finale is rather depressing. Add a profanity right at the end (albeit a mild one,) and this is probably the worst episode in the original series I've seen so far.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-02-23T20:41:44Z— updated 2024-03-14T19:43:46Z
[5.0/10] Far be it from me to cast aspersions on what is, by acclimation, one of the best episode of Star Trek ever produced. Far be it from me to turn my nose up at something penned by the great (if prickly) Harlan Ellison. Far be it from me to offer no quarter to the crown jewel of this show’s first season. But call me a Philistine, because “City on the Edge of Forever” did nothing for me.
It’s not a bad episode exactly. There’s no blatantly wrong turns (so to speak) or outrageous missteps. It’s just not especially compelling, and doesn’t achieve what it sets out to do.
First and foremost, the central conflict of “Forever” falls flat because the central relationship it hinges on falls flat. There is a compelling, ethically complex issue in the decision of whether to allow an innocent person to die in order to defeat the Nazis and, by extension, allow all of humanity’s accomplishments from the 1930s to the 23rd century to occur. There’s even a tragic irony in the individual who must perish being the one who envisions a day when mankind ends war and hunger and want. Keeler imagines a world she will never get to see.
But rather than anchoring “Forever” on the difficulty of that choice, the conflict between utilitarian morality versus proscriptions on allowing harm to come to innocent people, Star Trek anchors it in the romance between Kirk and Keeler, and there’s just nothing there. I can appreciate that the episode is trying to ground the abstract and headily moral question at play in the personal, but the romance isn’t as successful or developed enough for that to work.
Maybe the relationship between Kirk and Keeler would have more oomph if it didn’t take place in little more than a week. Maybe it would have been better if William Shatner and guest star Joan Collins could manage to have more chemistry in forty minutes than Collins and DeForest Kelley do in five. Maybe it’d be easier to invest in if Kirk didn’t fall in love with someone every third episode.
Or maybe it’s just changing mores about how love is depicted in the 1960s versus how it’s depicted in the 2010s. Kirk’s gazes at Keeler seem more like creepy leers than admiration. Keeler’s preternatural ability to sense that Kirk is a great man feels, at best, convenient, and at worst, pernicious in the “some men just have greatness in them” themes the show has trafficked in previously.
Whatever the reason, the cornerstone of this episode, the thing that’s supposed to make us feel the pain and pathos of its ending, is Kirk’s emotional arc through his attachment to Keeler, and when that fails, everything built on it fails too. In this sort of depiction, I don’t feel the connection; I don’t feel the romance; and I don’t feel the loss of anything when it’s ended, even in tragic terms. That essentially sinks everything else “Forever” is trying to accomplish.
That’s unfortunate, because there is, as I often find with Star Trek, a great deal I like about the episode in conception, if not in its execution. Again, the moral dilemma of whether to sacrifice one blameless life for a better future is an inherently compelling one (and one picked up by Futurama, a series that I always knew was indebted to Trek, but where I did not realize the extent of the influence). Kirk and Spock, as usual, make for an amusing odd couple. And as weird as the premise is, it fits the sci-fi flair of the series.
Also, for better and worse, “Forever” doesn’t really feel like other episodes of Star Trek. This isn’t the first time our heroes have gone back in time, or confronted difficult moral choices, or had to make due without their usual tools and technology. But there’s a different tone here, one that seems more grounded and even melancholy despite the genre trappings. It could just be the depression-era setting, but there’s a certain mood throughout the episode that distinguishes “Forever” from its predecessors.
And as silly as it is, I kind of love the Guardian of Forever. There’s just something so essentially sci-fi about a giant stony circle that speaks in a booming, stilted voice and emits, smoke, light, and black-and-white historical footage. (To that end, it’s also clear to anyone who’s read/played Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream that he enjoys this type of thing.) This giant alien thing that can send our heroes across time is appropriately and enjoyably out there.
The impetus for the whole episode, on the other hand, is less so. Dr. McCoy accidentally injecting himself with some future substance that makes him paranoid and crazy is a weird story-motivator. Kelley is up to the challenge, with his frantic declarations of “killers” and “assassins” seeming appropriately unhinged, but it’s a thin and (given the turbulence-related cause of it) convenient excuse for Kirk and Spock to have to chase him through time.
Still, there’s a certain amount of charm to the pair landing in 1930s New York City and trying to fit in and save Bones (and the future) at the same time. Kirk using reverse psychology on Spock to build a computer is amusing, particularly in Nimoy’s restrained but clearly affronted reactions. The Sesame Street-like environs have a well-worn allure. And again, the premise of the episode is, at worst, solid.
But the whole thing just comes down to Kirk and Keeler, and that’s not enough to sustain “Forever.” It’s hard, to say the least, to be invested in Kirk mourning this woman he barely knew for a week, where we’ve seen far more googly eyes being made than any real depth to their relationship. Binding a fantastical story with the personal loss of a star-crossed romance can add a human dimension to an otherwise outsized tale, but if you make that romance the centerpiece of your story, and it falters rather than flourishes, it can take the entire story down with it. “Forever” has its merits, but by centering the episode around Kirk and Keeler, it’s as doomed as she is.