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301: Star Trek "The City on the Edge of Forever" [S1E28] | Star Trek TOS Metal Rewatch
16 Plays5 months ago
Rewatching Star Trek The Original Series "The City on the Edge of Forever" [S1E28] and deciding how metal it is.
#startrek #sttos #thecityontheedgeofforever #sttosrewatch #tosrewatch #metalpodcast #kirk #spock
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Transcript
Excitement for Star Trek Rewatch Finale
00:00:00
Speaker
Tonight on Piecast Am Down we learn an important lesson about the proper handling and storage of dangerous medicines. Pie. Cast. Them. Down.
00:00:13
Speaker
Hail, Metal Nation, and as I, Tim, that's Matt, and that's Duck, and we are finally continuing our rewatch of the entire Star Trek series. We are on Star Trek, the original series of season one episode.
00:00:32
Speaker
I don't know, like 38. 28. I mean, Tim, you should be very excited because after this episode, we have only one more episode to go. And then we have done the entire first season.
00:00:48
Speaker
And it only took like three years. Yeah. I mean, we're saving up, you know, coming up soon.
Reflecting on Star Trek's Legacy and Upcoming Milestones
00:00:55
Speaker
I don't know if you know this, but 1965 was when the first episode of Star Trek came out. Or was it 1964? I forget. But anyway, it's like almost 75th anniversary time. Or is it 60th? One of those. Anyway, pretty...
00:01:10
Speaker
Pretty soon, we're going to have to do every like by daily episodes to catch up because we need to finish all of these original series episodes to get the animated series before 2025. Yeah. We're only maybe two years away from the game stirs of Trix. All right. Well, I've been to 20 quite lose on the newcomer. It's
00:01:38
Speaker
It's been a while, so I'm going to remind our longtime listeners and inform our new listeners that you two have seen the episode.
The Hosts' Viewing Process and Spontaneous Reactions
00:01:52
Speaker
I am watching it as we record.
00:01:56
Speaker
I have not seen these episodes. They have. We are going to take each part of the episode and rate it for quality and metalness. And yeah, at the end, we'll have the most metal. We will have metal ratings and quality ratings for every single Star Trek episode ever.
00:02:19
Speaker
We will. Yeah. That is, that is the end game here. We might, uh, we might skip discovery though, especially after season three. Uh, but you know, well that's, that's a bridge we'll cross when we get there. Yeah. Whenever, whenever that happens in 20, 70.
00:02:37
Speaker
And, uh, we do all our ratings in the deliberation chamber, which, um, I had to, I had to dig something up for that. All right. Hopefully it's still not covered in crumbs. All right. Go ahead. I'm going to go ahead and hit play and you're going to start talking. All right.
Debates on Canon and Remastered Versions
00:02:55
Speaker
Oh, and, uh, again, I am watching the HD remastered three master Blu-ray version. So, uh, I will be seeing things that, um,
00:03:06
Speaker
that people have argued are not canon. And other people have argued that it is canon, like Leonard Newmore's makeup. This episode is not such a big deal. I can't remember. Do they do any... Well, we'll probably get into the metal behavior of two individuals and how it relates to things like runes. Oh, well, we'll get...
00:03:30
Speaker
Yes, Doug. We will get into the very mental behavior of at least two individuals. All right, so when does Symphoniac show up since they have the, you know, they wrote that song The Edge of Forever on the damnation game? Oh, they're coming. They're coming? All right, I can't wait.
00:03:47
Speaker
Now, Tim, I would like you to notice that there's some things in this episode that don't make a lot of sense, especially in the beginning. Well, that's different than usual. But just go with it. We'll talk about why that is when we get to the end of the episode.
Episode Conflict: Time Distortions and McCoy's Overdose
00:04:01
Speaker
So we begin, as we often begin, with the enterprise violently shaking and out of control because of some kind of time distortions or something.
00:04:14
Speaker
The helm is sluggish, there's turbulence in space, and then all of a sudden, for no good reason, Sulu's console just explodes in his face.
00:04:32
Speaker
Well, the other console appears to be covered in juju bees. Yeah, there's all kinds of nonsense going on. Spock reports that this is some kind of time ripple or something. They're not quite sure.
00:04:52
Speaker
They're upset that Sulu is unconscious on the floor. So they call good old Bones Leonard McCoy, or is it the other way around? I believe you mean Bones. I jump his bones. I jump his bones.
00:05:08
Speaker
That's the guy. So he's a doctor and someone has been critically injured and he diagnoses him with a heart flutter rather than having a console blow up in his face. But I guess they're all connected.
00:05:25
Speaker
McCoy speculates that because of the injury, he should probably give Sulu a few drops of the drug cordrazine, a strong chemical stimulant used in emergency medical treatment. It's a red liquid injected in a hypospray, but it's tricky stuff. So,
00:05:52
Speaker
The doctor administers two drops, just two drops, to Sulu, who gets better. He immediately starts smiling, like, hey, I'm having a great day. No problem that my heart stopped. But then another one of them time ripples happens. And Tim, have you gotten this point yet?
00:06:19
Speaker
Oh, so, okay, so Tim knows what's going on, but you and whom don't. So McCoy stumbles and injects the whole fucking vial into himself after he, after which he becomes, I believe the technical medical term, is Jack fucking crazy? And just starts running around, raving and screaming about killers and assassins, like,
00:06:46
Speaker
Knocks someone over and runs to the elevator. And Captain Kirk declares a red alert. And that's the teaser. Are you ready? Let's do this. Let's do this. Accidental drug overdose. Explosion for no reason. Something about time ripples pretty good so far.
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah. And, uh, Scotty's just standing there. Yeah. Scotty does Jack shit. Yeah. And, uh, right. The medical misdiagnosis and then, well, uh, the application of powerful narcotics for no reason. Yeah. Just, just the basic,
00:07:42
Speaker
mishandling of a dangerous drug. He just takes it and is just holding it against his belly when he knows that there's space turbulence. That's the whole reason he's there to begin with. Right. It all comes about as he's putting it away. This isn't in the application of it, you know, life-saving means this is just mishandling. Yeah, it's just clear
00:08:12
Speaker
Malpractice is a lack of a better term. Yes, I think the whole situation is very metal and interesting. I'm ready for my scores already. This is an eight and an eight. This is Nate and an eight and I totally agree with you, Tim. What's more metal than handling a dangerous substance carelessly and then screaming about assassins.
00:08:39
Speaker
Right. Yeah, it's very metal. It's a metal disease, it won't accept.
Chasing McCoy: Chaos on the Planet
00:08:51
Speaker
So is that eights and eights all around? I think so. All right, man, we're really moving. Wow, that's so fast.
00:09:04
Speaker
All right, so we get a captain's log. Captain's log, supplemental entry. Two drops of corticine can save a man's life. A hundred times that amount has just been accidentally pumped into Dr. McCoy's body. Dude, it was incompetent and a wild frenzy. He has fled the ship's bridge. All connecting docks have been placed on a word. We have no way of knowing if the madness is permanent or temporary or what direction it would drive McCoy.
00:09:34
Speaker
I like there's no other doctors. Where's Dr. Mbenga? Where's there's chapel? They're just like, oh, no. Yeah. And you'd think there'd be some precedent for this. The space madness caused by cortisol injections. Anyway, so I think we open with them red shirts patrolling the hallway.
00:10:01
Speaker
So not only is he crazy, but he's crafty. So he's crafty enough to avoid all the guards. So he's on some kind of like mission to do something. We're not quite sure what. We don't even know that he's sure he knows what he's doing.
00:10:22
Speaker
But you see him sort of crazed out of his mind. And then he believe karate chops, uh, transporter guy, our buddy chief Kyle. Oh yeah. Two blows. There's one in the hip and then one on the shoulder. Well, you need to pass it, take someone. Yeah. Takes the Velcroed phaser. You're forgetting that he has a very good medical knowledge.
00:10:54
Speaker
Oh yeah, maybe that guy needed an artificial hip. I know how to take him out. That's where his biggest nerve is or something. Yeah. Fair. So yeah, he beams down to this planet, which, uh, have they named the planet Matt? I don't think they've named, I think it's an, I think its name is unknown planet.
00:11:18
Speaker
So they go down to the planet.
Discovery of the Guardian of Forever
00:11:20
Speaker
It's Kirksbach, Ahura, a security officer, and Galloway, who's apparently a named character. I guess not for long, right? Well, it probably appeared in one other episode. Yeah. Anyway, or the novels. And they come down and there's like ruins. Roman ruin way.
00:11:44
Speaker
Uh, yeah, there's all kinds of ruins, uh, possibly, uh, they're not supposed to be there. Uh, but we'll, we'll talk about that later. Um, yeah. So there's ruins and there's this, uh, portally thing.
00:11:58
Speaker
which is strange, and so they're looking at it, they're trying to figure out where McCoy went, but Spock, because he's always scanning, discovers that the Portally thing is actually the source of all these time disruptions.
00:12:21
Speaker
Um, and that, that seems a bit strange. Um, so they're trying to figure out what's going on. And then all of a sudden, um, there's a loud booming voice coming from the portal. Uh, and it says, I am the guardian of forever. Cause that's what it is. I am Vigo, the scourge of Carpathia. The sorrow of Moldavia.
00:12:48
Speaker
In a palace of blood, he sat on a mountain of skull or whatever. By the way, the Stargate lit up right when you started quoting him. Yeah, because it controls time. It's very aware of what's going on when and where. Since before your son burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question. So Spock deduces that this might be some kind of time portal.
00:13:25
Speaker
So they're just kind of looking at the, um, guardian and trying to figure out what's going on.
Kirk and Spock in 1930s New York: Humorous Adjustments
00:13:34
Speaker
Uh, when all of a sudden crazy old McCoy pops out, right? It was hiding in plain sight. He's behind behind some column or something. Uh, and Spock tries to get him with the old, uh, neck pinch.
00:13:44
Speaker
you know, based on all the context clues.
00:13:52
Speaker
Uh, and, uh, so, so he's temporarily restrained. Um, but, uh, Kirk, Kirk, who, who really needs to learn to leave well enough alone says this is a, this is a big mess. If only there was some way we could use this time portal to take McCoy back a day in order to make sure that he does his fucking job and covers up the syringe before he sticks in his belly.
00:14:20
Speaker
That's what you do with a time portal. Yeah. The time portal has told them that it's been helps. It's a personified time portal that you could talk to at a waiver away to both of them. But I mean, like it literally just told them it's been waiting for someone to ask a question for billions of years. And they're like, can we go back two days? It's like, I'm a time portal, man. Um, so.
00:14:49
Speaker
Oh, what happens? Well, we we were in the mechanism in which I'm progress like the Guardian can't control time itself, only the like, like they have to guess. I recall the Guardian apparently also got rights to a bunch of like old MG. Oh, yeah.
00:15:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like inside the portal, it's kind of like watching like a movie on fast forward. So I guess like you can kind of get there, but there's not a lot of precision in this time portal. So Spock is kind of like fascinated and recording all the time stuff they're seeing, all the MGM stock footage.
00:15:34
Speaker
uh apparently he didn't do the Vulcan neck pinch correctly because McCoy wakes up all of a sudden and just jumps his crazy ass into the portal and I think he has advanced syphilis too oh yeah oh yeah he's all like he's all like blotchy um
00:15:55
Speaker
And as McCoy jumps in, they try to stop him, but they can't. The portal shuts down, and they try to call up to the ship. But there's no answer. Like a Kirk's aggressive type A-ness. Well, I think a hero like
00:16:18
Speaker
I can't, she, she shows him the communicator. Yeah, she tries to call. Like he can do something different. Yeah. Yeah. Very patient. I like, I know you're the communications officer, but you clearly don't know shit about this communicator.
00:16:34
Speaker
And Mr. Scott looks at it too, and the Guardian helpfully informs them that your vessel is gone, all that you knew is gone, and Kirk, sharp number he is, figures out that McCoy must have done something to change the past, leaving them stranded here.
00:16:56
Speaker
And Kirk jumps to some decisive assumptions and conclusions when he states that Earth isn't there. Yeah. Totally alone. Earth is gone. With no real evidence. Yeah. The space donut said so. Yeah. Sort of. And that's the end of the act. All right.
00:17:26
Speaker
I like syphilitic Dr. McCoy. He's a, he's a flukey number, man. He's hiding in plain sight and the, you know, these military officers, I'm sorry, Starfleet officers can't find him lazily hiding behind some bricks. I mean, they just kind of like all gave up. They're all gazing at the portal. Right. Yeah. And, uh, more yelling about assassins. You won't get me. I'll kill you first. It's all very metal.
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah. The, the, the portal also seems to think that, uh, people really want to travel to, uh, Roman times or, uh, Waterloo or the age of steam. Yeah. Uh, the guardians really metal too. First of all, it is the guardian of forever. Yeah. Like fuck. Yeah.
00:18:22
Speaker
And then it talks like, Matt, you can promise me that they never do anything that would ruin the guardian of forever, right? Yeah, Doug, they sure don't.
00:18:39
Speaker
And they don't like reduce it to a person or anything at any point that would never happen. They definitely, they definitely never make it a fat guy in a bowler hat. If that's what you're worried about. Well, this is not as good as the intro, not as metal as the intro, but still not so bad. So what did I give the intro eight and eight? This is six and a half and six and a half.
00:19:09
Speaker
Uh, okay. Okay. Uh, yeah, I'm generally, uh, there too. I will give this, I mean, it is pretty, you're, you, you seem to me forgetting the part where he karate chopped someone in the hip and totally knocked him out. Um,
00:19:25
Speaker
And their overwrought plan. They have the doctor, presumably you can reverse the effects of the drug, but instead they want to use a time portal that just introduced itself to them to go back in time two days. Yeah, that doesn't make any damps. I'm going to add a half point to each of my scores.
00:19:50
Speaker
Then you got the ruins. I mean, the ruins. It's like metal, Romanesque ruins. Actually, it looks like the Symphony X album, Divine Wings of Tragedy. It's a very Prague, like the whole thing. And then the Guardian right there, like you just see that on an album cover, like take them off and you see the Guardian and then you see Victorian times. And then maybe like a little girl holding a doll. Yeah, I mean, Prague metal.
00:20:19
Speaker
And I would like to point out that it's a light and sound experience whenever he talks, and that's pretty metal. I grew with Tim. It's not quite as metal as the intro, but it's still strong. It's a seven and a seven. And you know what, Tim? I could kill for a seven and seven right now. Doug, did you give scores? He did. Seven and seven.
00:20:47
Speaker
I think there's another captain's log, right?
Moral Dilemmas: Edith Keeler's Fate
00:20:52
Speaker
Yes, but with no starting. Right, because time stops if Earth stops. But time no longer exists. Luckily in the Star Trek universe humans are the only civilization and therefore the measure of all time.
00:21:11
Speaker
And then even though this is not like a supplemental entry at the point in which this is being made, they know that all earth history has changed. There's no enterprise that they only have one chance and that it's up to the Guardian to show them earth's history and enable them to go back in time and set things right. Why do they only have one chance again?
00:21:36
Speaker
Uh, they, I'm guessing, I'm guessing they're assuming it's a one way portal, but it's clearly all, I mean, it's not, but, uh, maybe, yeah, I guess maybe they're assuming so. Um, so, uh, the tricorder scan. So luckily we made all of human history is just Egypt and a bunch of European history.
00:21:59
Speaker
That sounds right to me. I'm a historian. The rivers of time, Tim. It's all explained.
00:22:13
Speaker
So we may have glossed over it, but Spock was recording history as it was up on the portal for some reason. And so luckily, because Spock was recording history, they can determine the precise kind of moment
00:22:31
Speaker
that McCoy jumped into the time stream, which is the early 20th century. And they could get close enough where they can put them into the portal roughly a month, maybe a couple of weeks before McCoy's arrival. They're worried about where on earth they'll land. Right.
00:22:57
Speaker
Like, yeah, could you even meet yourself if you're just put in, you know, on the other side of the world? We'll find out. We'll find out. But the Guardian tells them that if they fix time, again, somehow it will create a predestination paradox where they wouldn't have gone in or something like this. So they'll be fine coming out as long as they fix it.
00:23:26
Speaker
But if they don't fix it, then they're stuck in the past forever. Uh, Uhura and Scott are rightfully concerned. I think this is a dumb plan, but Kirk isn't listening to them because that's not what captains do.
00:23:45
Speaker
So he tells Scotty and Uhura to wait, and if it doesn't work, they'll have to try on their own. At least you'll be alive in some past world somewhere. They haven't even checked to make sure they can't live on this world. I don't know. Just jump into the past if it doesn't work.
00:24:08
Speaker
And this is the premise to a third season episode, isn't it? So now they're fast forwarding the tape.
00:24:20
Speaker
like World War I comes up, Spock says it's almost time, and then, you know, we see something and they jump, Kirk and Spock, of course, jump into the Guardian and emerge in New York City, 1930-something. For some reason. For some reason. We get that crisp, crisp Brooklyn sunshine. Yep, you know, it's like that darkness.
00:24:50
Speaker
Those beautiful spotless streets of New York City in the 1930s, not a piece of trash anywhere. So Spock tells Earth Man Kirk that this is the Depression. They notice that they're wearing funky clothes. And Kirk says, we have to find some clothes so they can
00:25:24
Speaker
They go and find some clothes. But then Kirk, a clever man that he has, remembers that there's an opportunity here to do a racism.
00:25:39
Speaker
and says, we have to do something about these ears of yours. So they go to steal some clothes that are on a fire escape, but they're caught by, you can't hear him, Tim, but he's a very stereotypical Irish cop. He's like, what do you think you're doing there? Me potatoes. And so they're standing there.
00:26:08
Speaker
And it's a very famous and unfortunate line in Star Trek. But Kirk is trying to explain that they're wearing funny clothes. And then he says, well, you're probably looking at my friend. He's obviously Chinese.
00:26:28
Speaker
That came from nowhere. That is so stupid. I see you've noticed the ears. They're actually easy to explain. And Spock proffers that it was an unfortunate accident he has as a child. And he said, yes, the unfortunate accident he had as a child, he caught his head in a mechanical rice picker. Wow.
00:26:54
Speaker
I remember first watching this episode when I was eight years old and thinking, that's not right. And in our end of episode breakdown, we'll talk very depth dug about who added that line because spoiler alert, not in the script, or at least as written originally.
00:27:18
Speaker
Uh, so I guess the policeman says like, drop the clothes and get the hell out of here. You missed the, the, but fortunately there was an American missionary living close by who is actually a skilled plastic surgeon and civilian life. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So, so I guess that his mangled ears are, are, are the result of trying to fix the rice picker accident.
00:27:43
Speaker
Well, and it's like there could be an element of satire, but there's some humor here, right? They're off by 40 years or whatever in the plastic surgery. Yeah, they synthesize rice. They don't actually know how it's produced. But yeah, if that's the point, it gets lost under the racism.
00:28:05
Speaker
So the police officer gets ready to arrest them. Luckily Spock Vulcan neck pinches him and they steal the clothes and escape to the basement of some building. Whereas as happens many times, Kirk and Spock undress in front of each other and then put new clothes on.
00:28:33
Speaker
Uh, no, we got a little, we got a little more to go. Uh, they have to meet, they have to meet Joan Collins.
00:28:41
Speaker
Some lady comes down in the basement and Kirk's immediately like, I can probably fuck this lady. Yeah. Well, it's beautiful Joan Collins and she has her, her English voice. Uh, and we discovered that her name is Edith Keeler. Um, and that she runs this, this mission for poor destitute men like Kirk and Spock clearly are. Cause it's the depression called the 21st street mission. Uh,
00:29:07
Speaker
So she says that they can work there, she offers to help them out, but they have a problem because the tricorder that they brought is locked.
00:29:24
Speaker
And so they can't exactly figure out what is going on. So they need to get supplies for Spock to build a tricorder out of 1930s material, or as they repeatedly say, stone knives and bear skins. If you like the phrase stone knives and bear skins, they say it 50 fucking times throughout the rest of this episode.
00:29:55
Speaker
This is also where they set up the whole, how any of this works explanation, where Spock somehow supposes that there are about a week out from when McCoy arrives and then Kirk's like arrives where? Honolulu, Boise, San Diego, why not outer Mongolia for that matter? And then Spock, actually he doesn't even take credit for it. There is a theory. Yeah.
00:30:25
Speaker
There could be some logic to the belief that time is fluid, like a river with currents, eddies, backwash. And Kirk's like, the same currents that swept a coin to a certain time and place might have sweep us there too. And that he's like, if that has, you know, we have no hope if that's not true. Yeah. Then the, uh, uh, uh, whole, uh, tricorder and this is zinc plated vacuum tube culture. Yeah. Spock anti-zinc.
00:30:55
Speaker
So, you know, they need to get a job, eat a killer, offers to give them work, 15 cents an hour for 10 hours a day. Seems pretty exploitative, but who knows?
00:31:10
Speaker
Kirk immediately tells Eda Keeler that his name is Jim Kirk and Spock's name is Spock. So I guess he's hoping to find no one who speaks Chinese in New York City. Okay, fine. And then they just go about to work eating soup out of bowls, living that mission life. Spock tries to build a computer and this episode,
00:31:38
Speaker
You know, damn, act goes on forever. But eventually, Spock gets the computer working. Wait, is this where there's the bomb that's sitting next to Kirk?
00:31:55
Speaker
Kirk acts a little weird in a lot of these episodes, but particularly this one. Kirk is very clearly falling in love with beautiful Edith Keeler. They go on dates.
00:32:08
Speaker
for some reason, the killer is confused why Spock keeps calling Kirk captain
Kirk's Emotional Conflict and McCoy's Arrival
00:32:15
Speaker
and they were like, I have to do that guy. Yep. And they're like, oh, yeah, we were in the war or something together. And the he reads her a love poetry from a person who won't live for 100 years and creepily says that and just acts like a general insane person.
00:32:38
Speaker
but back at the boarding house they get a flop oh they do they do get a flop at the boarding house the back of the boarding house Spock has discovered
00:32:53
Speaker
Again, I'm not quite sure how he's discovered this because I didn't know that. Oh, I guess because he recorded it, right? That must be why. They discover an obituary for Edith Keeler in the flow of time. And in fact, she dies in 1930.
00:33:11
Speaker
But as they attempt to replay it, another image appears in which they see Edith Keeler in 1936 meeting Franklin Roosevelt. That doesn't make any sense, but before they can forget it. He's my favorite sitting president.
00:33:29
Speaker
Oh, because he's a cripple. So, he was. So, they... Got the YouTube short for this episode. So, they don't really... Lock him home with groceries. Yeah, they don't really understand what's going on. But...
00:33:55
Speaker
They do discover that something happened where Edith Keeler was supposed to die, probably something Dr. McCoy did. And for what a reason, she doesn't die, and history has changed. Captain, suppose we discover that in order to fix these things, to set things straight again, Edith Keeler must die. That's the end of the act.
00:34:26
Speaker
This act is so long, you're like way far ahead. This is the question Edith Keeler must die. Right. Right. May be some repetition. Right. I don't know. You know, I don't like so much exposition. There's a lot. Well, there hasn't been exposition that for all the explanations about the time portal.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, but it's just like, it's so tedious. I mean, there's a racism. Yeah. Unfortunately, that awkwardness at least, if not the act, but the exchange is very metal.
00:35:13
Speaker
I don't want to throw out a score yet, because I'm still watching it. So go on. Oh, and while I admit to look up Matt, I'm sure it's the...
00:35:21
Speaker
Do they name the author at 100 years? That must be in memory beta. That is a good question. I don't think they do. I'm sure they do in memory beta, but it is not mentioned here.
00:35:47
Speaker
That'll be a Patreon. Yeah, that'll be a Patreon. There's no way they mentioned that in the show's most famous episode and then have not written like seven novels. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure there's like a compendium of all the author's poems published by Pocket Books in 1988. I think it's a pretty, it's a high quality act.
00:36:15
Speaker
It sets up everyone's favorite movie where they just redo it all again. Yeah, there are so many bits that are just redone in that movie. Yeah, no, it's good. Do you have a numerical score or do you want to push that off to some future date? It's an eight quality and a six medal.
00:36:45
Speaker
I am with you there. I'm gonna give it a seven quality and a mechanical rice picker though. I'm gonna give it a seven quality and a 7.5 metal score. Tedious and boring, five qualities, six metal. All right, that's pretty brutal. All right, okay.
00:37:14
Speaker
Let's I'm still, I'm, I'm still four minutes away from the next four minutes away. It's so fucking long and unnecessary. They got to chop this episode in half. I'm just going to jump ahead.
00:37:30
Speaker
Oh, you have to hit 50 minutes, Tim. You didn't tell me his amp fried. I did. I did it all smoked before. Oh, maybe maybe I was distracted by a bunch of boring, stupid bullshit. All right. I jumped ahead and it starts with a horse's ass. So. OK, well, you'll like this because Dr. McCoy is about to assault somebody. So it's all about men's tools, Doug.
00:37:58
Speaker
So in a back alley, in a back alley, good old Leonard bones McCoy hops out, uh, all flustered and crazy. Um, and so, um,
00:38:17
Speaker
how to put this, he's still screaming assassins and murderers. And he begins to look at this homeless man who is kind of just looking at him. And stealing milk. And stealing milk.
00:38:42
Speaker
Uh, and, and McCoy runs after him. By the way, he, he frolicked out of the shadows. Don't drop the milk, you idiot. Well, he's scared. What a waste. So although McCoy has just been yelling about assassins and murderers, he promises not to hurt the homeless man. Um, and says, I'm glad you got away. Um, and,
00:39:10
Speaker
Again, McCoy, who's not usually like this, I guess it's all the cordrazine, starts to analyze him anthropologically. Biped. Small. Good cranial development. No doubt, considerable human ancestry. Is that how you're able to fake all this? Very good. Modern museum perfection.
00:39:31
Speaker
right down to cement beams. Very, very good. Oh, I'd like to see the hospital. Probably needles and sutures. All the pain. They used to hand cut and sew people like garments, needles and sutures. Oh, the terrible pain. It's a great unhinged rant. And it is more metal than the Star Trek IV equivalent. Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker
It's a goddamn middle aged kidney dialysis, but that's for another rewatch. So then he passes out and all of his syphilis spots have gone away, but the homeless man starts to frisk him and finds his phaser, which again,
00:40:26
Speaker
This is kind of a mean-spirited scene for this show. But I have a fundamental question. This implies that McCoy was armed the whole time?
00:40:38
Speaker
No, he took it off of Kyle. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, all right, okay, good. So, yeah, the homeless guy picks up the phaser, looks at it, even though it's very clearly a gun, he obviously, he points it at himself, breaths the button, and just vaporizes himself. They were vaporized. I wonder why it didn't set off the alarm. But yeah, so that guy's dead.
00:41:09
Speaker
But luckily, apparently, it didn't matter in history because nothing has changed. Well, or the phaser apparently doesn't matter in history either. It just falls into the river. Maybe that's where the Matt Walsh character got it in that timescape one. Yeah. Okay.
00:41:38
Speaker
We go back to the morning and Kirk and Spock are still talking. They need to get a better answer. Spock needs to work. He needs more vacuum tubes. Figure out what's going on.
00:41:55
Speaker
And McCoy wakes up and spots a bunch of homeless drifters like himself going into the mission. So he also goes into the mission and he gets some coffee and meets Edith Keeler and is also sort of awestrucking, but not quite as awestrucking as Kirk is.
00:42:16
Speaker
But Edith offers him a cot and says, why don't you come in? And just as she ushers McCoy out, Spock comes in and starts helping out at the mission. And then he goes back into the room to tell Kirk more of his findings. Excuse me.
00:42:46
Speaker
So basically, he's been able to fix the computer, and he has discovered what change Dr. McCoy made. In the late 30s, a growing pacifist movement influenced the United States entry into the Second World War, and basically they sued for peace.
00:43:06
Speaker
And while peace negotiations dragged on, Germany had time to complete the atomic bomb. Or, as Kirk ably puts it in complete sentences, Germany, fascism, Hitler, they won the second world war.
00:43:23
Speaker
So the Nazis have the A-bomb because of Edith Keeler and with the A-bomb and their VT rockets, Germany captured the world all because McCoy came back and somehow kept her from dying in a street accident as she was meant to. A very strange predestination argument from Spock, not as it happened, but as she was meant to.
00:43:53
Speaker
She's supposed to die. And he says, I don't know when she's supposed to die. But now statement rather than question, Jim Edith Keeler must die. I think it was a common t-shirt you used to see. Oh, yeah, you'd wear it all the time. And that's the end of act three.
00:44:19
Speaker
So what I got from that was Edith Keeler is worse than Hitler. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Edith Keeler is a wonderful saintly person, the uniquely great set of gifts. And she has these amazing values and she'd be right.
00:44:40
Speaker
999 times out of 1,000. It's just in the grand scope of history, we know this one time, peace wasn't the answer. And she can't know that. There's no faulting her. It's just this one time, however many million people have to die. That's just how it is. And they know that. They have the whole scope of history that she can't possibly have.
00:45:06
Speaker
She's like all this moorling at me and all this. This is slow too. You're, you're remembering it. I'm watching slow and boring tracks. Have your cake and eat it too. Yeah.
00:45:21
Speaker
She's a good person with a good heart. It's not like she ends up being a Nazi, which is another way this could have gone. But no, she's just, she's a pacifist, which in a way, Tim is right, pacifists are worse than Nazis because they allow Nazis to flourish apparently, but she's doing it for the right reason. She cares, we know her. She's nice, she's sweet, she cares about people. But you know what, sometimes you just,
00:45:48
Speaker
have to resort to war and conflict to avoid worse outcomes.
00:45:54
Speaker
Um, yeah, she can't know that that's the, like the iron, like the, it hurts them so much because she's got so much potential and it can't be applied this one time. Right. I mean, and we should also point out that Kirk, uh, doesn't really care about all the millions of people who die in the Nazi atomic horror. Uh, he just cares the fact that he really likes Edith Giller and wants to smooch her. Wow.
00:46:23
Speaker
She's tangible. They're a, you know. Yeah, I bet she's tangible. I think it's brilliant. It's great. It's so, well, I imagine at some point it was so well written. The brutal phaser just coming out of nowhere. What the?
00:46:50
Speaker
What the hell was that about? McCoy's, McCoy treating people like animals and then talking about selling people up like garments, needles and sutures. This is a seven quality. This is an eight metal. If you hate me tonight, you can hate me. But that's the goddamn truth. Just like the truth that Edith Keeler must die.
00:47:13
Speaker
Well, I think all the, the, the, the not contrivances, contrivances are very metal. I mean, operation mind, this is prog album twist nonsense. Yeah.
00:47:31
Speaker
You can't see John Shafer or someone not verboten writing a concept album exactly along these lines, Tim, and thinking it's brilliant. This is a different podcast, but John Shafer doesn't know how to write a concept album just like he doesn't know what to do once he's inside a Capitol building. Oh, shit. Well, I guess we have two YouTube shorts now.
00:47:56
Speaker
Think about the end of the Gettysburg trilogy. He punted the end. Think about the end of something wicked part two. He didn't write an ending. And you know what?
00:48:10
Speaker
Those are just as boring as this act. Now there were metal moments just like in John Chafers work. But again, once he got there, he didn't know what the fuck to do. And now he's paying the price and I will make them pay the price with a five quality score and an eight metal score. Tim, would you say, would you say there might be too many chefs in the kitchen? Sure.
00:48:37
Speaker
It's going to be awkward looking back at this with the full scope of history. We have thousands more episodes under our belt. Tim, you want to answer that five? Quick question. What did I give the last act? Act two, you gave five qualities, six metal.
00:49:00
Speaker
Oh, all is better than the last act, so I'll give six qualities. Six and eight? Okay. But Doug, just like Edith Keeler, Tim doesn't have the... We are Kirk and Spock. We have the benefit of knowing future history. Tim is just a poor person stuck in his own time. I'm one of those bums in the soup line.
00:49:24
Speaker
Yeah, Tim doesn't know about the future. Tim doesn't know that this has all been written by the temporal Cold War like six or seven times. Tim's just living his damn life. He's the guy Kirk tells to shut up like way too loud. No, dude, I scored a sweet electric razor off some guy when I was trying to figure out how to use it. I got vaporized.
00:49:53
Speaker
The best part is the, and this is intentional sort of, but you can see the Velcro. Yeah. Like that was space age. There's no like, like when they have the field coats and the pilots all Velcro. And like when you have their phasers, it's meant to just, it's meant to look very impressive. It doesn't connect to anything. Like amazing. Incredible.
00:50:15
Speaker
All right. Doug needs to give his scores. Whatever your scores, Matt. I gave an eight and seven. Tim gave an eight and a six. Eight and eight. Eight and eight. I would kill for an eight and eight. Wait, no, hold on.
00:50:35
Speaker
All right, now is the time you've all been waiting for. So McCoy regains consciousness now. I guess the real answer to what do you do when you ingest 100 times the recommended dose of cordial zine is just wait four days and you're fine.
00:50:55
Speaker
weird, but he's fine.
The Heartbreaking Decision and Restoration of Timeline
00:50:58
Speaker
He's trying to explain to either killer that he's the chief medical officer aboard the ship called the USS Enterprise. She thinks she's talking about the Navy.
00:51:08
Speaker
She asks McCoy if she wants to meet her friends who talk in a similar peculiar way. McCoy says, I'm a surgeon, not a psychiatrist, despite the fact that at some point I believe we've already established that he is, in fact, a psychiatrist, but I don't know. Anyway, back at their flophouse, Kirk,
00:51:32
Speaker
and Spock are trying to figure out what to do. Kirk is about to go out on a date with Edith. She clumsily stumbles down the steps and Kirk catches her demonstrating. She's trying to die.
00:51:55
Speaker
demonstrating that he, you know, Spock has a look on his face that's like shit, because he was like, she could, if she had fallen down the stairs, you know, maybe that weakens her up to get hit by that car. And Spock is pissed.
00:52:12
Speaker
Spock has pissed at Kirk for not letting her fall down the stairs, basically, and reminds Kirk that millions will die who did not die before if they don't let Edith Keeler meet her appointed fate with the old motor car. So they smooch. And, you know, facts are facts, Spock says. It's nighttime.
00:52:42
Speaker
McCoy is fully restored to health. He's drinking coffee just by the time that it's nighttime.
00:52:50
Speaker
But you know, I don't know, maybe he needs a cup of coffee. Edith says that she will have to talk to McCoy about his thanks for her saving his life later, because she's going to go see a Clark Gable movie with her date. And so McCoy doesn't know who Clark Gable is, but he knows what a movie is. So he's like, all right, whatever. See you later.
00:53:19
Speaker
They all leave at the same time as they cross the street. Kirk and Edith, hand in hand, Edith mentions the idea of seeing the Clark Gable movie. Kirk doesn't know who that is. And she says, that's funny. Dr. McCoy doesn't know who Clark Gable is either.
00:53:38
Speaker
And he says, Dr. McCoy, Leonard McCoy, and oh shit, it's happening. Yeah, he's right over there. And then he yells to Spock. He says, Spock, he's inside. And then McCoy comes out, and as they do, a truck is back.
00:53:59
Speaker
comically barreling down the street as Edith just starts the boopity-boopity across the street. Spock screams, no Jim. Kirk says, Edith.
00:54:13
Speaker
McCoy dashes and tries to run and save her, but Kirk basically tackles him and prevents him just as Edith and the truck meet in a squeal of breaks. And McCoy's like,
00:54:33
Speaker
You deliberately stopped me, Jim. I could have saved her. Do you know what you just did? And Kirk is all like upset and weepy-eyed and Spock says, he knows, Doctor. He knows. Then there's a star wipe and everyone is back on the planet.
00:54:52
Speaker
It's like, do you remember how Russell always used to go like, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh? And that's basically that. And so now Scott is very confused. You just left a moment ago. What happened? And Spock says, we were successful. And the Guardian says some bullshit about time being fixed. And he says, Resumed its shape.
00:55:17
Speaker
He's kind of like, uh, knowingly he says, you know, there's all kinds of places we could go in the wacky time machine thing. Time portal. Uh, Kirk says, let's get the hell out of here. End of episode. I like how they punted the ending. Just like,
00:55:46
Speaker
Oh, and then they hop back out. It's like, boop, boop, boop. The Guardian even really set up their return. No, he vaguely mentioned that if the timeline was restored, they would have never gone. It would be like they had never gone if the timeline was restored.
00:56:10
Speaker
But it's unclear, because wouldn't it have been like McCoy never left? But they know that Scott, I mean Kirk and Spock went in. So time progressed, I'm very, I don't know, time. Time is confusing. Go ask- That's fluid, it's like a river. Go ask Doctor Who, I don't give a shit. Anyway, that's the end of the episode. And now, Tim, before you score this last act, you know what? You know what?
00:56:41
Speaker
We're going to have to add a category. Tim, please score the last act and then we're going to have to just do something unprecedented here because I'm going to add a background category because we have not even begun to talk about this episode. Oh my God.
00:57:04
Speaker
And especially the metal components. Yeah. I mean, prepare to be amazed. All right. I'll throw out the score. I'm glad they killed the lady who was worse than Hitler. Yep. I like how they just, they're like, Oh shit, I'm running out of paper. You know, like when you're writing a sentence that's too long and you start to go down, like write thinner and start to go down the side of the page. That's what they did with the script.
00:57:35
Speaker
I mean, I do agree with you that there are some functional structural issues. Um, but maybe you're looking for the wrong place for blame. All right. Well, um, yeah, we'll just, uh,
00:57:54
Speaker
It was fine. How about a seven and seven? All right, seven and seven. I'm sorry, Tim. This is a 10 medal, 10 quality. Absolutely perfect. I don't think you know what those numbers mean. Tim, do you know who Harlan Ellison is? Yes. Who is Harlan Ellison?
00:58:22
Speaker
The Scientology guy? No, no, no. That's L. Ron Hubbard. Yeah. Fun fact, Harlan Ellison friends with L. Ron Hubbard. Harlan Ellison was that guy who he was in down periscope. No, no, no, no. That's that guy's name. That guy's name is Harlan. Who's the sonar guy? Harlan. I know who it is. I'm not going to tell you.
00:58:52
Speaker
No, no one's coming up with six-minute abs. Seven. Seven's the key number, baby. Seven little hop the totes. It's like you're eating gorgonzola when it's clearly pre-time, baby. Okay. Is that Harlan Ellison is probably, possibly one of the best science fiction writers of the 20th century.
00:59:15
Speaker
He was one of the new wave guys. He had the hard science fiction, golden age, hard Asimov, all that. Then you get, I'm one to some degree, but especially Ellison, who are more social issues focused in a sense, softer, more psychology. Exactly. Yeah. Talking about the human condition in more...
00:59:38
Speaker
Kind of, he's basically created science fiction as we know it versus like the amazing stories type thing, right? It's such immense smoking and then, yeah. You know where he's from? Where is he from? Cleveland.
00:59:59
Speaker
Okay, Harlan Ellison was a well-renowned science fiction writer. He wrote comic books. He wrote teleplays. He wrote some amazing episodes of The Outer Limits. And one of the premises Gene Roddenberry had for Star Trek was to get these sci-fi greats to write television, to do what they do the best. And so there's a reason that
01:00:27
Speaker
Harlan Ellison is the only sci-fi great to ever write a Star Trek episode. And there's also a reason that this is the only Star Trek episode Harlan Ellison has ever written. And the problem is Gene Roddenberry fucking sucks. All right. So, Tim, let me give you some plot points of the real original City on the Edge of Forever.
Behind-the-Scenes Drama: Ellison vs. Roddenberry
01:00:52
Speaker
You know how they get down to the planet and it doesn't make a lot of damn sense?
01:00:58
Speaker
Well, you know how they really get down to the planet? I forgot we're on an audio medium. Yes, I know. So basically, in Harlan's script, they go down to the planet to execute a crew member who has murdered another crew member because they've discovered he's selling illegal drugs.
01:01:22
Speaker
I understand your name now, by the way. Go on. Kirk goes down to shoot this guy and he runs away and runs into the Guardian of Forever. And basically much of the plot remains the same. But it's just it's better. There's a great I'm sure Doug has it. I have it. There's like a comic book adaptation of Harlan Ellison's script. Everything that like doesn't quite work
01:01:48
Speaker
The mechanical rice picker nowhere to be seen in that script. It's a very serious script Now there are some Star Trek related problems Kirk and Spock act very strange. They're very snippy at each other But the basic elements the what's great about this story is in Ellison's script the love the tragic choice It's great
01:02:12
Speaker
Unfortunately, you know, who doesn't know, uh, about great things is Gene Roddenberry. So why is it that these, I mean, like him and, uh, and, um, uh, George Lucas, you know, they have like great ideas that they need teams of people to, uh, make good, you know, uh, same with Futurama. Well, all the neck networking executives, uh,
01:02:43
Speaker
They interfered. Mac Groening took all of their comments for one episode. And he said, I'm never doing that again. And then he never listened to him again, which is why they got crappy time slots and canceled repeatedly. Anyway, I think it's got to be ego or something. It's definitely something. And so basically just
01:03:13
Speaker
He turned in the script and they just kept fighting about the script and Gene Roddenberry being Gene Roddenberry Just kept lying so like he said like this script had had Scotty dealing drugs And so this is the most this is the only episode of the original series of Star Trek to win a Hugo Award but
01:03:41
Speaker
But the way the Hugo Awards work, it's credited to Ellison because he was the writer. There were all these rewrites. There are so many rewrites. And because of the rewrites, Harlan wanted to take his name off the script. So he wanted to put his suit on him, Core Winder Bird.
01:04:07
Speaker
which was very famously what Ellison put on scripts that had been fucked around with, and was a clue that he wasn't satisfied with the way the script was being edited. And then Bradbury said, oh, no, you don't. I know what that's about. And if you do that, I'll blackball you and make sure you never get a writing job in television ever again. It's just so amazing.
01:04:39
Speaker
I'm back. So you went into when Harlan Ellison was like just blasting hard rock music all hours at night. I'd save that for you, Doug. So like basically they insisted that Harlan write on the set because Gene didn't trust him. He's like, I'm paying you all this money. I want to see you working. So what happened? Like they gave him an office or something right, Doug?
01:05:11
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds right. And he'd just be there all day and night and play loud music and irritate everyone. And I think something about interfering with production. Someone claimed that he kept walking around the set while they were shooting. He played the loud music in part where people would leave him alone and there were several times
01:05:33
Speaker
where someone went to talk to him and the loud music is playing and they opened the door and he had like left out of the window. So he had just gone somewhere. It's just amazing. It's amazing. This was the first script that Dorothy Fontana, DC Fontana worked on. And some people blame her for the changes, but it's pretty clear that the two culprits of fucking everything out is Gene Kuhn and Gene Roddenberry, the two evil genes.
01:06:02
Speaker
We're pretty sure Gene Kuhn put the mechanical rice picker joke in there. We're pretty sure that the person who wrote the poem on the little planet on Orion's belt is one of the many Gene Roddenberry references to himself for some reason. The Great Bird of the Galaxy. This is like, fuck off. It's great.
01:06:27
Speaker
It was tampered with how much greater would it be? I don't know, but it's still a pretty goddamn amazing episode. Hey. Well, and then there's the whole, um, so the, all the pettiness that came later, because this was nominated, I think for an Emmy, all my windows closed. Uh,
01:06:54
Speaker
and in the Emmys or the Writers Guild or whatever, the writer actually submits the script. And Ellison submitted what he wrote, not what aired and everyone what. There's all this crap and I think all this happened with the Hugo's or the... I think it was the Hugo's. Is it the Hugo's? Yeah. It's probably all in the Wikipedia article.
01:07:22
Speaker
And all this pettiness between people sitting at tables and Roddenberry and Ellison. It's just so broken.
01:07:33
Speaker
And it continues into the 2000s. They hated each other for their entire lives. And, and, and Harlan would never miss a moment to talk shit about Gene Roddenberry. Gene Roddenberry never missed an opportunity to say that Harlan Ellison was insane. It's just, it's just great. Oh, and he made Scotty, Scotty was doing drugs.
01:08:05
Speaker
And I think it was Roddenberry, someone, the whole, because she's not a Nazi, Edith Keeler, not in the episode, not in Ellison's script. And she would presumably in history be on the peace ship, unfortunately with Henry Ford and all that. But there's no like Nazi simplicizing implications
01:08:31
Speaker
Yeah. Until someone introduced that. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know how we account for these things, but they needed to have been said for sure. Well, I happen to have a time donut right here and I'm going to pass through it real quick.
01:08:54
Speaker
All right. It's very fast. And I'm going to make sure my scores are the 10 and 10 that they, that they were meant to be. All right. I'm going to correct the timeline. Okay. All right. I'm back. What are those scores that I gave this?
01:09:10
Speaker
Hey, I think you gave it a 10 and 10. That's what I remember. All right. Well, that's the end of the episode. Um, this, this is very close. So our most metal episode right now is errand of mercy with an 80% absolute score followed, followed very closely by court martial with a 78.89.
01:09:40
Speaker
This is just a little less metal than court martial, making it currently our third most metal episode with a respectable 78.17 metal score.
01:09:56
Speaker
However, this has a very high, actually I mean very even metal to quality ratio. It's almost a perfect one to one correspondence. So right now we have 1.0215 metal points
01:10:16
Speaker
for every quality point, which means I don't know what you're doing. If you haven't watched this episode, you should watch it. If you have watched this episode, watch it again and then buy that fucking comic book and read how it should really be. God bless you, Harlan Ellison. God damn you, Gene Roddenberry. Luckily, you're both right now burning in hell. Good night, everybody. Let's get the hell out of here.
01:10:54
Speaker
I was the only one who felt like that flew by. I was going to say, you know, until next, until next time, before you go to bed, make sure you have a nice, calming cup of coffee. That's pretty good, too. Yeah, edit that in.
01:11:15
Speaker
And maybe this is bonus content, but it's interesting. So if you were to ask people in 1993 what the best Star Trek episode ever is, the original series people would all unanimously say, City on the Edge of Forever, and even the next-gen people weaned that way.
01:11:38
Speaker
I'm curious how that's changed, if at all. This episode meant so much to so many people, but has so many transparent holes in it and was literally remade for a movie, basically.
01:11:56
Speaker
But when it doesn't have the emotional resonance, it's that the movie, I guess, kind of does. The original pitch for Star Trek or Tim was that they basically do this episode, but they go back and stop Kennedy from being shot. Well, Roddenberry, that was the original pitch for Star Trek I. Like, stopping Kennedy was a recurrent movie idea.
01:12:23
Speaker
Oh, phase two. I've got the great, I've got a great story to kick that off. We already did that one. Remember? He's like, no, no, no, it's Kennedy.