25 Best Episodes Of Star Trek EVER
5. The City On The Edge Of Forever - The Original Series
This episode has problems. It is one of the lasting hours of Star Trek history. Kirk's struggle to do what must be done is evident and Edith Keeler is one of the franchise's great unfortunates. There is no question that it deserves its place on a list of best ofs.
However, the scene when Kirk and Spock arrive in the past and Kirk tries to pass off Spock as a Chinaman? Oh dear.
But the rest of the episode is one of the strongest that The Original Series has to offer. It is pure science-fiction fantasy, where men from the future must disappear into their own past to stop a calamity of the future's making. They struggle to fit in and must do what they can for work while they wait for a drug-maddened McCoy to arrive, so they can stop him from altering the future.
It is a heavy episode with the looming threat of a great depression hanging over them all. While today's audiences might struggle with the idea that Kirk falls in love every other week on Star Trek, here it is played as a great tragedy. He grows closer and closer to Keeler as the episode unfolds, spending time with her, listening to her, falling for her. And then, he has to stand by and stop McCoy from saving her. The episode concludes with one of the very few allowances of any religious acknowledgment in Roddenberry's tenure.
'Let's get the hell out of here' he says to the Enterprise, leaving the place that has broken him. Heart-wrenching early Trek.