Star Trek: Top 10 Original Series Episodes
1. The City on the Edge of Forever
While this list of the best episodes from Star Treks original run can be debated until the cows come home, The City on the Edge of Forever is almost universally hailed as the best of the original episodes. Despite years of contentious and often exaggerated back-and-forth about who was responsible for the shooting script (Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana both contributed to the final draft), credited screenwriter Harlan Ellison won Hugo award and Writers Guild awards for this episode. McCoy accidentally injects himself with an overdose of cordazine and in a fit of madness flees to the planet below. Kirk and Spock go after him, discovering an entity called the Guardian of Forever, a gateway to any place and any time. McCoy has traveled into Earths past and somehow changed history. The Guardian tells Kirk, All that you knew is gone. Kirk and Spock follow McCoy to 1930s New York. They are trapped in time, and must not only find McCoy, but must set right the historical string of events changed by McCoy in the past in order to restore the future as it had been. The Guardian represents Star Treks first reference to a wormhole in space and time, a plot device now commonplace in the science fiction genre. The City on the Edge of Forever also deals with the butterfly effect, the theory that one tiny event can snowball into a catastrophe that impacts the lives of many. By going back in time and saving the life of a woman named Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) destined to die in a traffic accident, McCoy changes the entire history of the planet Earth from that point forward. The layered, character-driven story is perhaps the primary reason this episode is so beloved. For one, Kirk and Spocks fish out of water story, space travelers from the 23rd century trying to survive on Earth of the 1930s, provides some of the series finest comic moments. The episode also questions the necessity of war, and reflects the If you could go back in time and kill Hitler would you do it? paradox. The episode delves deep into the close relationship shared by Kirk and Spock. Even Keeler recognizes this, telling Spock that he belongs at Kirks side, as if you've always been there and always will.
Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler, and when he realizes that she is the focus of the time paradox, he is unsure whether or not he can let her die and allow history to take its course. There is a romantic tenderness about Kirks relationship with Keeler not seen in his other galactic loves, and the pain on his face when he allows her to be killed is among Shatners most memorable moments in the series. Memorable line: "My friend is obviously Chinese. I see you've noticed the ears. They're actually easy to explain. He caught his head in a mechanical...rice picker." - Kirk, to a policeman