The episode starts out on the Enterprise bridge with lights flickering and the crew throwing themselves from side to side to simulate turbulence.\u00a0 Spock says some mumbo jumbo about the temporal fluctuations.\u00a0 Suddenly Sulu\u2019s control panel explodes and he is hurled to the deck.\u00a0 McCoy gives him an injection of cordrazine and Sulu immediately responds and recovers.\u00a0 But another bump of turbulence causes McCoy to accidentally inject himself with a massive overdose of the drug which turns him into a raving paranoid fleeing imaginary assassins.\u00a0 In this state he overpowers a transporter operator and beams himself down to a planet in the vicinity of the Enterprise.<\/p>\n
Kirk and Spock and a landing party beam down to the planet and discover a strange quadrilateral shaped stone aperture that talks and is the source of the time distortions.\u00a0 It says it is the Guardian of Forever and the aperture is a time portal through which it is possible to access the past.\u00a0 We see scenes that are supposed to represent ancient Egypt and Rome.\u00a0 But as the images begin to portray more modern times McCoy jumps out of the background where he is lurking and runs through the portal.<\/p>\n
Just then Uhuru who very unusually is on this landing party tells Kirk that her conversation with the Enterprise has been interrupted.\u00a0 The Guardian informs them that McCoy\u2019s entrance into the past has disrupted the time stream and the Enterprise and the whole Federation no longer exist.\u00a0 This puts a damper on the proceedings.<\/p>\n
Spock says that using his \u201ctricorder\u201d readings he can allow himself and Kirk to jump into the past slightly in advance of McCoy\u2019s entrance time and in that way, they can figure out how he disrupts history and hopefully prevent it.<\/p>\n
They end up in 1930 New York City and meet Edith Keeler (played by a young and attractive Joan Collins) who runs a Street Mission, sort of a homeless shelter for the indigent during the Great Depression.\u00a0 She gives Kirk and Spock odd jobs to allow them to earn money.\u00a0 Spock uses their earnings to build a computer interface to extract information from his tricorder from the portal recordings he made earlier.\u00a0 When Kirk badgers him about his progress he replies that the available resources are primitive.\u00a0 Later when Edith sees his electronics project and asks him what he is doing he replies, \u201c”I’m attempting to construct a mnemonic memory circuit, using stone knives and bearskins.\u201d\u00a0 And that line may have been the highlight of the episode.<\/p>\n
Right on schedule Kirk falls in love with Edith.\u00a0 And just then Spock discovers that the event that causes the alteration in time is McCoy preventing a car from running down and killing Edith Keeler.\u00a0 Surviving, she goes on to head a pacifist movement in the United States and thereby delays the United States entry into World War II long enough to allow the Nazis to invent the atom bomb and win the war.\u00a0 This puts another damper on the proceedings.<\/p>\n
Shortly afterwards McCoy appears in the vicinity of the Street Mission and unbeknownst to Kirk and Spock Edith takes him in and shelters him at the mission.\u00a0 That night when Edith and Kirk are going to a Clark Gable movie, she mentions McCoy\u2019s name.\u00a0 Kirk tells Edith to stay right where she is and runs back across the street toward the mission where, right on cue, McCoy and Spock are both standing on the street.\u00a0 The three shipmates joyfully meet but, just as any woman would, Edith disobeys Kirk and starts jaywalking across the wide street in the path of a speeding truck.\u00a0 Kirk looks up and is about to run to Edith when Spock warns him not to.\u00a0 Just then McCoy sees Edith\u2019s plight and would have jumped to her aid except that Kirk subdues him with his arms.\u00a0 Edith is struck and killed and McCoy tells Kirk that he could have saved her and exclaims, \u201cDo you know what you just did?”\u00a0 Spock speaks for the dazed Kirk saying in a subdued voice, “He knows, Doctor. He knows.”<\/p>\n
The time travelers return to the Guardian of Forever who announces that the time stream has been restored to its original course.\u00a0 When the landing party contacts the Enterprise and asks Kirk for orders he sullenly replies, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”<\/p>\n
This episode is known because the original script was written by a well-known science fiction author Harlan Ellison.\u00a0 And the episode won a Hugo Award which back then was still considered a distinction.<\/p>\n
Despite the sobering ending, the show includes a number of humorous exchanges between Spock and Kirk and in general strikes me as extremely well written.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t any Shatner mockery aspect worth mentioning so I \u2018ll give this an 8 \/\/ 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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