The City on the Edge of Forever (30 page)

AFTERWORDS

Peter David
 
D.C. Fontana
 
David Gerrold
 
DeForest Kelley
 
Walter Koenig
 
Leonard Nimoy
 
Melinda Snodgrass
 
George Takei

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, AND WHY ARE THEY IN THIS BOOK,

AND WHAT PIVOTAL ROLES DID THEY PLAY

IN THIS CHAPTER OF THE BREATHTAKING
STAR TREK
SAGA?

PETER DAVID
is the author of more than two dozen novels (including
Star Trek: The Next Generation
titles such as
Q-In-Law, Strike Zone, Vendetta, Rock And A Hard Place
, and
Imzadi
). He was the writer on DC Comics’s
Star Trek
for years, but is now best known as the febrile intellect behind
The Incredible Hulk
and
Aquaman
and the weekly
But I Digress
column in
Comics Buyer’s Guide
.

D. C. FONTANA
started out as Gene Roddenberry’s secretary. When she began selling excellent scripts to such other shows as
Bonanza
, Roddenberry lured her back to pen such episodes of the original series as “Charlie X,” “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” and “Journey to Babel.” She became story editor on the original series, 1967 and 1968; Associate Producer of the
Star Trek
animated series, 1974; and Associate Producer of
Star Trek: The Next Generation
in its first year. She writes books, stories, essays, and award-winning teleplays. She is married to SFX wizard Dennis Skotack.

DAVID GERROLD
will be the first to tell you he got his start with Gene Roddenberry and the original
ST
series, and was both Gene’s and the show’s staunchest supporter for decades. He wrote two hooks about
ST…The World of Star Trek
and
The Trouble With Tribbles
. If the title of that latter volume sounds familiar, it is because the episode of the original series bearing it is the only neck-and-neck contender with “City” for Most Popular Episode. He has written movies, excellent novels, won a Hugo and a Nebula this year, and has been affiliated with virtually every incarnation of the
ST
concept. When you say
Trek
, you’re saying Gerrold.

DEFOREST KELLEY
was already an established feature film star when he was cast as Dr. “Bones” McCoy in the original series. He is a classically-trained actor, and among the films in which he appeared are
Warlock
and
Johnny Reno
. He is universally considered the nicest person of all the original cast members. Anyone who says less is automatically a jerk.

WALTER KOENIG
has been a novelist, screenwriter, noted acting coach, lecturer, and actor. His credits are extensive, but he appears here due to his assaying of the Chekov character on the original
Trek
. He appeared in all of the
ST
feature films and, most recently, created a mini-series for comics,
Raver
. He writes very well indeed.

LEONARD NIMOY
was Mr. Spock. Sometimes he says he was
not
Spock; and sometimes he says he
was
Spock. In either case, he has been a friend for thirty years, and the author of “City” owes him considerable weight of favors. He likes Indian cuisine.

MELINDA M. SNODGRASS
served as Executive Script Consultant on
ST: The Next Generation
. She adapted George R. R. Martin’s award-winning
Sandkings
for the new
Outer Limits
series. Screenwriter, novelist, short story expert, and asst. editor of the
Wild Cards
anthology series. She lived in the
ST
production cauldron.

GEORGE TAKEI
played Sulu on the original series. He has been a potent Los Angeles politico, having sat on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, having spearheaded numerous urban development programs, and having cleverly used his celebrity from
Trek
and many other series to better the condition of life for all Angelenos. He is held in much affection by other actors, by those who worked on the series, and by the rest of us who are privileged to know him.

Peter David

One grows up.

It’s inevitable (unless you’re Peter Pan, or Jeffty) and as the years pass, you discover that the world is not as black and white as you once thought. That many things are possible. And that just because something is different doesn’t make it bad.

I thought the original script for “City” sucked.

I thought this because, the first time I learned of it, I was a snot-nosed kid whose entire view of the creative process behind
Star Trek
was predicated on the concept that if it was on the air, it was good, and if it wasn’t, then it must be bad because it wasn’t good enough to get on the air.

So when I read about how “City” had undergone massive rewrites to make it good enough to ride the television waves, I thought, “Wow…it must really have sucked.” Furthermore, the publicized reasons as to what made it unacceptable were appalling. A Starfleet officer selling drugs? How ridiculous! Kirk ready to let the universe shift into an unfamiliar, parallel line, out of love for a woman? Preposterous!

Boy oh boy oh boy. What a sucky, sucky script. The fact that it had won the Writers Guild and Hugo Awards merely confirmed for me that the rest of the world was composed of purblind nitwits who didn’t understand that if it wasn’t good enough to air on
Star Trek
in its original form, then it wasn’t good, period.

And then, some years later, when I’d had a chance to grow up a bit, I happened to buy the Roger Elwood collection that featured the original script.

And I understood.

With a vengeance.

In the words of Yogi Berra, “You can observe a lot by watching.” Watch the story, the original story of Sister Edith Keeler, unfolding, and you will observe a master craftsman at work, producing a story of infinitely deeper meanings, shadings and complexities than what aired.

To a degree, we see a theme present in “City” that recurs in some of Ellison’s most renowned work, and yet it’s not exactly the happiest of themes: those who are the best, the brightest, the most vibrant and alive…they don’t survive. The perpetually unaging Jeffty—the embodiment of perpetual childhood—is battered, bruised and ultimately killed. The Harlequin, shouting defiance, is brainwashed into an obsequious supporter of The Way Things Are. Beth O’Neill, in order to survive life in the city, sacrifices her soul to become one of the grim, faceless beings who observe man’s inhumanity without lifting a finger to stop it.

And Sister Edith Keeler, well, jeez…this woman doesn’t just have society or the unspoken dark gods hiding in the city’s shadows arrayed against her. Fate itself, the cogs of time, crush her in their unyielding motions. It’s a somewhat fatalistic view of the universe—this woman must die, is meant to die, has
got
to die, or else matters cannot proceed. “City” presents a paradox of what’s right and what’s wrong, and the answer we get is that it just…is.

This is the core of the script, and it’s put forward far more forcefully in this version than in what aired. For example:

Beckwith, the drug-pushing, murderous Starfleet officer.

For all the claims that
Star Trek
is genuine, realistic science fiction, nowhere is this more brought into question than in the dismissal of the notion that a Starfleet officer would ever behave in the manner we see Beckwith engaging in.

If we parallel Starfleet to the modern-day navy, well, let’s see what we’ve got: Can you envision a modern-day navy officer reshaping a society into Nazism? Or ordering his officers to fight and die, one at a time, in a gladiatorial arena? Or battling,
mano a mano
, another officer to defend his place in a society built upon a corrupted version of the Constitution?

Suddenly Beckwith’s actions don’t seem too extraordinary at all. Not a whit, not a smidgen. But in a series which sought to explore infinite possibilities, Beckwith was just a tad
too
possible to make it on the air.

With the loss of Beckwith, we also lose one of the most morally complex and debatable aspects of the story. Here was a man who was a drug pusher and a murderer. Yet from Starfleet the worst he would have gotten was being tossed in the stockade, since the only thing you get executed for in the 23rd century is popping by Talos IV, the planet of the telepathic buttheads.

Yet, indisputably, Beckwith’s greatest crime is that he altered history. You can argue that he got what he deserved because he’s a total shit, but good lord, this guy’s reincarnating in the heart of a sun forever. An infinity of torture with no hope of parole—it is, by design, living hell. The enormity of his punishment must be matched by the enormity of the crime. By interfering in the grand, fatalistic cosmic scheme of things—by getting out a magic marker and drawing a mustache on God’s grand design—we presume that that is the reason that he receives the extreme punishment of literally and figuratively burning forever, unto eternity.

Except the deed that got him into this fix was
the one selfless action
we ever see him take. He was trying to save Edith Keeler. For a moment, the qualities that first made him an officer emerged, and that moment doomed him.

Even when the guy tried to do something that, in some way, redeemed him, it turned out to be the greatest sin yet. Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

But the aired version did away with moral grayness and cosmic injustice by pumping McCoy full of uppers and sending him through the portal to perform an action that was perfectly in character, with no shades of right or wrong.

Nor were the hero’s actions allowed to have any gray areas to them, and in that, we have an even greater loss of what “The City on the Edge of Forever” was really saying. Because it can always be argued that Beckwith wasn’t really that important; that he was merely the MacGuffin. That the real story was Kirk and Spock and Edith Keeler, and just changing the catalyst wasn’t as vital as maintaining the integrity of the original concept.

And that’s where the greatest injustice occurred. The thing that I, as the aforementioned snot-nosed kid, couldn’t understand.

In the aired version, Kirk sacrifices the woman he loves so that time can be restored.

In the words of Harry Anderson: “Well, we weren’t expecting that now, were we?”

It’s the predictable way. It’s the safe way. It’s the way that you can presume it’s going to go, because you know that Joan Collins isn’t going to be on next week, but Kirk and Spock and the rest of the
Enterprise
crew are.

That’s the one-dimensional portrayal of a hero. He always does what’s right. Because of course, Edith Keeler
must
die. The universe of the Federation
cannot
be sacrificed. Edith dying is right. Kirk is the hero. So Kirk must let her die. Q.E.D.

But not the Kirk of Ellison’s script. Because this Kirk is real. This Kirk is frustrated. This Kirk agonizes over the cosmic unfairness of the situation. His pain goes beyond loving her: “She isn’t important here, the way she feels, the goodness, the things she believes for the world, they aren’t ready for it.” He sees her as significant to the spiritual welfare of humanity in whatever time she’s in, and cannot comprehend, cannot accept, that she is simply to be cast aside, crushed, lost.

And because it’s so wrong to him, this Kirk refuses to be a party to it. When the crunch comes down, Kirk reacts instinctively and cannot force himself to be Fate’s Triggerman. Kirk is willing to shoot craps with the cosmos because he cannot bring himself to accept the fatalistic situation into which he’s been thrust.

Out of character? Not at all. Perfectly in keeping with the Kirk we saw who played fast and loose with the rules time and time again because he had a strong moral center. And in this case, his moral center shouted, “No! I will not accept this predestination! I will not sacrifice this gentle, loving woman on the altar of inevitability! I won’t!”

Was it the right thing to do? Was it the wrong thing? It’s difficult to say. But this we can say beyond question: It was the human thing to do.

Which is why he needed Spock.

Because whereas Kirk fought for the moral center of the universe, Spock was the intellectual, logical center. And not only was Spock willing to be Fate’s Triggerman, he even produced a weapon to do the job should fate—or his captain—screw it up.

Whereas in the aired version, Spock primarily served as comedy relief and dispenser of information—with an occasional, stark “Edith Keeler must die!”—while making it very clear that the final decision was going to be on Kirk’s shoulders; in the original, Spock is the one with his priorities in order. Ellison anticipated Spock’s “The need of the many outweigh the need of the few, or the one” in
Wrath of Khan
by a good couple of decades.

Spock doesn’t have to worry about doing the human thing, because he’s not human. Rarely has his alien demeanor been quite so coldly, fully realized. This is the chilling, almost callous Spock of “Where No Man Has Gone Before”—a character who is much harder to like than the one we were subsequently given. And never has he been less likable than here, where he makes it clear that he’s going to do whatever it takes to restore his preferred time line. When have you ever seen a situation where one of the ostensible heroes is ready, willing and able to take a life that the “villain” wants to save?