Nearly six decades after its first broadcast, “The City on the Edge of Forever” remains one of Star Trek’s most influential episodes. Its time-travel story is not built around complicated paradoxes, but around an impossible personal decision.
That legacy is being revisited on October 13, when IDW Publishing releases Star Trek: The Edges of the Final Frontier: IDW Classic Collection. The book includes a reprint of a 2015 comic adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s original screenplay, which differed substantially from the television episode that was ultimately produced.
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A time-travel story with a deeply human cost
The episode begins after Dr McCoy is accidentally drugged. He runs through the mysterious Guardian of Forever and alters Earth’s history. Captain Kirk and Spock follow him into Depression-era New York, trying to identify the change and restore the future they know.
While investigating, Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler, played by Joan Collins. Spock discovers that Edith is meant to die in a traffic accident. If she survives, the timeline changes and the future of the Enterprise crew disappears.
Fixing history therefore demands something more painful than defeating an enemy. Kirk must allow Edith to die.
Kirk’s reputation misses the point
Popular culture often reduces Captain Kirk to a constantly flirting space adventurer. The original series presents a more complicated figure. His relationships could be serious, including the life he briefly shared with Miramanee in “The Paradise Syndrome” and the feelings revived by Ruth in “Shore Leave”.
Edith Keeler is the clearest example of Kirk’s capacity for genuine love. He never tells Edith how he feels. Instead, he confides in Spock after learning that her death is necessary.
When Edith walks into the path of an approaching truck, McCoy instinctively tries to rescue her. Kirk physically restrains him. A captain known for finding unconventional solutions is forced to accept that there is no alternative.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Kirk’s final line is unusually blunt and wounded. Edith’s death is not merely an unfortunate side effect of repairing history; it is the act that repairs history. That emotional contradiction is why the episode’s romance remains so powerful.
Joan Collins before Alexis Carrington
Collins was already an established performer when she appeared in Star Trek. During the 1950s, she worked as a contract player at 20th Century Fox and appeared opposite actors including Richard Burton, Gregory Peck and Paul Newman. Fox also considered her for Cleopatra, a role eventually played by Elizabeth Taylor.
By the 1960s, Collins was moving increasingly into television. Her credits included Mission: Impossible, Batman, in which she played the villainous Siren, and Star Trek. Edith Keeler became one of her most memorable performances from that period.
Her biggest television success was still ahead. Collins gained renewed attention through The Stud and The Bitch, films adapted from novels by her younger sister Jackie Collins. She later joined Dynasty in its second season as Alexis Carrington, turning the character into one of the defining television schemers of the 1980s.
Seen today, her performance as Edith offers a striking contrast: instead of a ruthless operator, Collins plays an earnest idealist whose faith in a better future arrives at exactly the wrong moment.
The blueprint for Star Trek time travel
Star Trek had already experimented with time travel in “The Naked Time” and “Tomorrow Is Yesterday”. “The City on the Edge of Forever” changed the emphasis. Rather than treating time travel mainly as a technical science-fiction puzzle, it made the consequences intimate and painful.
Kirk and Spock eventually understand what has changed and what must be done. The real conflict is Kirk’s refusal to accept the cost.
The franchise returned to variations of this structure repeatedly. The Voyage Home sent the original crew to 1986. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” presented Picard with an altered present. Deep Space Nine’s “Past Tense” placed Sisko, Bashir and Dax at a critical point in Earth’s history, while First Contact sent the Enterprise crew into humanity’s past to protect its future among the stars.
These stories approach temporal disruption in different ways, but they share an idea that “The City on the Edge of Forever” helped define: the strongest time-travel stakes are about people rather than timelines.
Edith makes that idea especially cruel. She believes in a better future for humanity, and Kirk lives in the world she imagines. Preserving that future means ensuring she never reaches it.
Star Trek: The Original Series is available to stream on Paramount Plus and free on YouTube with advertisements.
If this episode inspires thoughts of building a dedicated home entertainment setup, RETROCADE’s arcade machine buying guide can help with planning, while arcade machines and virtual pinball machines offer options for a retro-focused games room.
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