I think you guys have been smokin' something with those Space Hippies. City On The Edge Of Forever is far and away the best TOS episode...heck, it might be the best hour of Star Trek period.

"Let's get the hell out of here." - best Shatner performance in three years of the show.

I have always loved that ending line. One of the few, or maybe only times that the show did not end on the bridge.

Remember, too, this was 1967. You just didn't hear the word "hell" on a tv show, ever.

Arena - Kirk is pitted against a lizard man in a contest of survival.

I think he looked more like a duck man than a lizard man.


City On The Edge Of Forever is an amazing story and still one of my favorites.

1968 WGA TV Award Winner: Harlan Ellison, "The City on the Edge of Forever" Best Written Dramatic Episode

I'm pretty sure that's actually the *original* script that was submitted, in a huff by Eliison himself, because the powers that be on Trek didn't want to use his version, both for practical and fundamental character structure reasons. In *his* version, the crewman who went back in time wasn't an accidentally deranged McCoy but a crewman who was a drug addict and, I think, pusher on the ship. Kirk, Spock and McCoy went back together to correct the damage he does and in the climax, McCoy stops Kirk from saving the woman. In the aired version Kirk is stoic and heartbroken at what he has to do but in Ellison's version, he's willing to give up his future, his ship and his crew to save the woman he loves.

As it is though, I think the shot version of the episode works well and it's definitely one of my favorites.

plato's steps/squire of gothos

I've read Ellison's treatment (it was, and maybe still is available in paperback) - with all due respect to Harlan, who is perhaps our greatest living writer, the TV version is better and more true to both the Kirk character and the Star Trek universe.

Greatest living writter in his own mind. He lost me after his tyriad on sci fi channel. But I will say he makes a pretty good psi-cop