It's widely regarded as the best episode of 'Star Trek', and critically adored, but I don't really like it that much. It's the odd duck of the series, or at least an odder duck amongst the extremely erratic team. (Yes, the collective noun for ducks is 'team'. Who would have guessed it?)
'The City On The Edge Of Forever', or 'City' for short, is a time travel episode inspired by or adapted from the award winning teleplay submitted by science fiction legend Harlan Ellison. It's certainly a fine hour of television, but it's not exactly an hour of 'Star Trek'. There is no connecting to it in the same way you might connect to 'The Corbomite Manever', 'By Any Other Name' or even 'For The World Is Hollow, But I Have Touched The Sky'. It's different enough from every other episode to be a unique experience and slightly offputting. Sometimes it looks so much like a period drama as to be an entirely different show, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
In 'City', McCoy is accidentally dosed with an unpredictable medicine, prompting him to leap through a time portal on a newly discovered planet while paranoiacally escaping his pursuers, his friends from the Enterprise. The whole timeline of the galaxy away from the portal changes as a result, and so Kirk's landing party is stranded on the planet's surface, with no hope of rescue from the Enterprise or the Federation that no longer exist. Eventually, Kirk and Spock go back in time too, to counteract McCoy's accidental meddling, but the price they have to pay may be greater than anyone would have predicted.
It's a sumptuous episode, with oodles of spent money on production, extras, special effects and wardrobe. It couldn't possibly be better on any measurable visual standpoint. Some of the distance shots of the Guardian of Forever are spectacular even now. The writing, direction and photography are good too. It's a five star production, adored by the 'Star Trek' audience. Why don't I particularly like it? Ultimately, it's not quite a 'Star Trek' story. We spend lots of time with only Kirk and Spock from the regular characters, there is only five minutes of the Enterprise, and there's no sense of urgency in the past, as Kirk and Spock take days and days waiting for things to happen. All of these aspects pop up in other episodes too, but somehow here a distancing occurs. After a few moments of thought, the term 'harsh and unforgiving' pops into mind. Yes, that's what it is.
Correcting problems in time requires harsh and unforgiving sacrifices, and Kirk makes his with great nobility and great pain. The much more Trek-like 'Tomorrow Is Yesterday' functions as a far better episode, with levity galore. 'City' is drama in the grand and usually dour tradition of the time, from which 'Star Trek' usually worked to escape. Perhaps that's it. No, that is entirely it. That's the sticking point. In order to make 'The City On The Edge Of Forever', the series has to defeat itself and go back to the roots of the drama of the time. Poor Kirk, heartbroken in the space of a week that never happened. He really did need to get out of there.
Recommended but definitely atypical.
O.
No comments:
Post a Comment