Star Trek: The City on the Edge of Forever

“City on the Edge of Forever” is almost universally considered one of the best, if not the best, STAR TREK episodes. Famously penned by Harlan Ellison, and nearly as famously changed quite a bit, IDW Comics has come out with a comic of Ellison original Hugo-winning teleplay. Done in five installments via collaboration between Ellison and Scot and David Tipton, and illustrated by J.K. Woodward, the end result makes for a fascinating read that stands on its own with the eventually produced episode.

The general plot is of course similar to the TV episode (warning, spoilers to follow, if one can spoiler a 40-year-old story). A crewmember from the Enterprise beams down to the planet below, travels through a time portal to 1930s America, and changes history (for the worse from the Enterprise’s perspective). Kirk and Spock, in order to set things right, go through the portal as well, where they meet Edith Keeler, whom Kirk falls in love with and then has to let die so history reverts back to its original course. Same basic story, but with significant differences in detail and tone.

For instance, you know you’re not in Kansas anymore (or in the bright utopian Star Fleet world of Gene Roddenberry), when the opening scene involves a drug deal between two of the Enterprise’s crewmembers. Roddenberry had his vision of the future, and a highly successful one it was, but Ellison is more interested in mining the darker crevices of human nature, the ones that even if Roddenberry might admit still existed amongst the Star Fleet cadre he mostly didn’t care to share with the public.

So while in the TV episode, it is Doctor McCoy who stumbles through the time portal thanks to being driven temporarily crazy by an accidental injection of medicine, here Ellison has his drug dealer, Beckwith, confronted by one of his buyers and turning violent before attempting to escape first by beaming down to the planet then by leaping through the time portal. This more grim, more “adult” tone lasts throughout the teleplay, with very little moderating humor or warmth.

Some of the differences, though, are less an issue of vision than of pragmatics. The artwork here is often beautiful, and far more expansive than what we see on TV—for instance, we see our characters, um, trekking through a red desert, we see the actual Guardians in a valley of crystal, we even see the City on the Edge of Forever in its entirety, rather than a cramped archway with a few rocks around it (the name makes much more sense in the visual context offered here). Beautiful and expansive as it all is, though, it’s easy to see why the show’s budget couldn’t have allowed for all that.

Nor could its time span of sixty minutes minus commercials have allowed for the pacing offered in the teleplay, certainly an improvement over the rushed nature of the show: we get a sense of the city’s isolation, the explanation by the Guardians is much more involved, and later characters and relationships are allowed time to develop more fully and realistically. These aren’t really criticisms of the TV show; it did what it could do within the constraints it had; it’s merely a recognition that a different medium offers up different opportunities.

Another way this comes into play is in the depiction of how history has changed. In the show, the Enterprise is simply no longer there (certainly easy and cheap to film). Here, when the away team beams up they find the Enterprise is now “The Condor,” crewed by a rough and tumble motley group clearly not part of any organization at all, let alone Star Fleet. After a quick scrum, the away team secures the transporter room and Kirk and Spock leave them behind to hold it while they beam back down to try and go through the portal and change things back.

This brings us to another refreshing change. The person Kirk tasks with holding the transporter room is Yeoman Rand, who takes on a much more pronounced and active role in the teleplay than she ever played on the series. It’s too bad this didn’t make it into the episode somehow, even if the backdrop of the Condor had to be dropped.

The darker tone continues with Kirk and Spock’s arrival in the 1930s. In the TV show, we get some humorous by-play with a cop regarding Spock’s ears and an unfortunate rick-picking machine accident. But in Ellison’s version, we see some truly ugly xenophobia, as when one man rails about “a country run by the foreigners. All the scum we let in to take the food from our mouths. All the alien filth that pollutes our fine country.” It is the mob inflamed by this man that chases after Spock, a far cry from the benignly confused policeman of the TV show. In fact, throughout the original teleplay, the politics are played in a harsher, edgier, and I’d say, more realistic light.

The latter half of the story focus on Kirk’s doomed relationship with Edith Keeler (literally the latter half—she first appears on page 50 of the 100 page text) and his relationship with Spock, who grows increasingly concerned the more Kirk becomes entwined with Keeler, telling Kirk at one point, “I have a theory, Captain, that the easiest place for a spaceman to ‘go native’ is his own world.” The artwork here does an especially nice job of conveying both relationships and their changes. In one scene, Spock and Kirk argue against a simple background that fades into gray then black, leaving the dialogue as a series of mostly floating faces, almost like black-clothed actors on a dark and bare stage. The starkness here is a perfect complement to the dialogue.

Toward the end, a new character is introduced, a legless veteran of Verdun, and I won’t say much about him so as not to spoil events that differ from the television version, but as with Rand’s more active characterization, I wish the episode had found a way to work this character in.

The story closes, as we know it does/must. That sense of inevitability, which was always one of the strengths of the TV episode, is here as well, even if it occurs in slightly different fashion. I have a small quibble with an even that happens upon their return through the time portal—it seemed unnecessarily distracting to me—but the end remains a devastating close to one of the more emotional STAR TREK episodes ever. Two versions of the same tale, equally effective. Highly recommended.

Kindle edition... Useless. Even with my glasses on I can hardly read the text. I hate to rate a product so low for these reasons but the store needs to correct the formatting issues with content like this.

For decades, Star Trek fans have heard about Harlan Ellison's original concept for City on the Edge of Forever, and heard his complaints about how the TV producers shortchanged and ruined it. This well done graphic novel finally offers the chance to see the Ellison version and compare it directly to the broadcasted version.

Verdict: the broadcast version is better in every way.

With rewriting by Gene Roddenberry himself, the broadcast version essentially crystallized, simplified, purified, and improved upon Ellison's ideas (many of which were brilliant). Most importantly, Roddenberry focused Ellison's meandering, clunky creation in way that remained truer to the Star Trek characters and the development of what would be the Star Trek canon. Roddenberry's was simpler, stronger, better storytelling, and better Star Trek. In fact, the end result was some of the very best Star Trek ever, delivered with heart; the essence of what made the show great. It did not take a big budget or elaborate effects to tell this story well, and better than Ellison. Roddenberry and his team recognized this.

There are many problems with the original Ellison. The clunkers include many extraneous and uninteresting characters, and an undue focus on them instead of the Kirk, Spock, Keeler, etc. There are extraneous scenes and settings, rambling dialogue, and details that are confusing and off kilter. It also suffers from a cynicism and darkness that, while interesting if it was a standalone non-Star Trek tale, was wrong for Kirk/Spock, etc. McCoy is not in Ellison's story at all. Instead of Kirk and Spock rescue McCoy (the rescue of their beloved friend a central motivation behind the decision to go back in time), they are in pursuit of a drug addled, drug dealing "evil" crewman. This character, who would have been a standalone villain for this one episode, is petty, two dimensional, and uninteresting, yet Ellison devotes a good deal of the story to him, including scenes in which he somehow eludes Kirk and Spock repeatedly and stupidly.

Edith Keeler is a bigger, more important, and more well rounded character in the TV version, whereas Ellison renders her somewhat of an airhead without much to say for herself. Compared to Roddenberry's rewrite, Ellison's does a poor job presenting Keeler's significance in time. Ellison has Spock identifying Keeler as the center of the time disturbance based on an illogical supposition, based on a fragment of a riddle told by the Guardian. Kirk and Spock then stalk Keeler, peeping into her apartment, followed by Kirk pursuing her in a creepy fashion. Keeler immediately falls for Kirk, which makes no sense. The TV version, by contrast, builds Keeler's relationship with Kirk and Spock (and later McCoy) in a way that is more dramatic, and makes more sense. Kirk and Spock uncover Keeler's importance in history only after Kirk has already fallen in love with her. This is yet another instance where the Roddenberry rewrite is superior to Ellison's, which explains Keeler in a long and weak flashback sequence.

In the Ellison, the relationship between Kirk and Spock is unnaturally testy and strange, argumentative, reflecting either a lack of understanding on Ellison's part, or an intentional attempt to infuse extra (and I believe unnecessary) tension and grittiness, and some extra politics. Both Kirk and Spock come off as less noble and peevish. Both say and do things that the "correct" Kirk and Spock would not.

Finally, there are elements in Ellison's that do not make sense at all. In Roddenberry's version, once time is disrupted, the Enterprise is gone, stranding the crew on the planet. Ellison, however, has the crew beaming back aboard the ship (somehow) (how?), finding it taken over by "renegades". Kirk and Spock alone beam back to the planet surface, with the others barricaded in the transporter room. This is nonsensical waste, a back and forth that would not have worked in a TV production. Ellison's Guardian of Forever is not, as Roddenberry left it, one simple portal, but a row of Guardians in an actual City of Forever atop a hill---a hill that the crew members must climb. Ellison's Guardian speaks to Kirk and Spock , at a key point resorting to riddles for clues, which also makes little sense. Whereas Roddenberry's Guardian is a neutral gatekeeper, forcing Kirk and Spock to solve the impossible problem on their own. This made for far better drama, step by step towards the central dilemma---to save time, Edith must die. Kirk as selfish and weak, nonsensically thinking he can bring Edith Keeler to the future with him. The evil crewman even has a sudden change of heart in the crucial Edith death scene that Ellison very poorly justifies.

Harlan Ellison is a respected science fiction writer, and this graphic novel is an interesting presentation. To study it in comparison with the televised version screenplay, we learn about storytelling, and different opinions about what works and what does not. Ellison's original has its fans. I am not one of them. For all of Ellison's complaints, I believe Gene Roddenberry and the producers of Star Trek did the right thing. The end result speaks for itself: City on the Edge of Forever won the 1967 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Give it a read, and see what you think.

This graphic novel is an adaptation of Harland Ellison's original teleplay for the classic Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever.

First of all, the art is gorgeous. It's on the same level as Alex Ross. It does a great job recreating the original Enterprise crew in glorious detail. At the same time, there are some just stunning artistic bits in that you couldn't have done on television.

The story is a very good story. Yet, I think that those who rewrote it for the TV show were mostly right. There were some parts that would have been budgetarily challenging such as the space pirates who'd taken over the Enterprise. In a book or comic, it's easy to show that, but it complicates a TV production. In addition, I don't think Ellison quite had the Kirk-Spock dynamic in this story and the aired version did a better job capturing that.

Again, that's not to say that this one is a bad story. It might even be a better story for a generic captain and an alien first officer but not quite fitting for Kirk and Spock. Still, the story is worth a read, particularly when paired with the compelling artwork.

In many ways, the story remains largely familiar to any Star Trek fan. A rogue crewman manages to get sent into the past by the Guardian of Forever and it's up to Kirk and Spock to pursue the individual and restore the proper timeline. The time travel portal created by the Guardian sends them back to 1930's New York where they encounter the noble Edith Keeler, who is strongly devoted to a cause but is also fated to die. Her death is a critical event that cannot be changed, but can our heroes stand idly by and just watch this death unfold?

But given this is a comic book, the story telling was no longer limited by the budget of a struggling science fiction TV series. Thus we don't just see one vague purple shape representing the portal and the Guardian of Forever. Instead we see a good number of almost spectral Guardians residing in a rather grand city that does appear to be situated at the edge of forever. We have a new rogue crewman who was already a criminal on the ship be the one to travel back in time instead of it being an accidentally drag-crazed Dr. McCoy as it was in the TV series. Naturally there are other shifts as you progress through the story, but I'll leave you with those quirks found in the first issue alone.

The art style used in the comic series had that nice blending of rather beautiful exotic vistas and character imagery that was clearly based on the still from the original episode. Thus Edith is unmistakably based on Joan Collins, which was a nice touch. There were still occasional panels where the level of detail / accuracy for faces wasn't quite as good, but you can't have all that on a comic book production schedule, I suppose.

The comic series clearly illustrates how a lot of Ellison's ideas were impossible to film at the time due to budget constraints. At the same time, other differences between this teleplay and the final TV episode were interesting, but also not perfectly in line with how we've come to understand how these characters behave. Some changes were pretty interesting though, like Yeoman Rand's role in holding the transporter room of the Condor, which I felt was a nicely fulfilling aspect to things.

It's a shame that this story was so heavily re-written for the TV release. In many ways, we are left with two distinct stories that have similar beats but still different tones and key moments. We have slightly different character arcs and moments of conflict but generally the same result. The comic gives one a better appreciation for what Ellison was trying to achieve with this story and probably what the TV folks were thinking when they modified the script prior to its final TV release.

The fact that the stories feel both different yet similar isn't good or bad in itself. This isn't an opportunity to compare one version to the other and somehow conclude that one is definitively "better". They're both great stories and perhaps the core structure of the narrative that Ellison created is really what shines through in both versions of this tale. At least that's what my takeaway was from reading this piece.

Thus Star Trek: Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever is a lovely little reading experience that shows us what might have been had things gone differently. There's a reason this teleplay won so many awards and citations and it's a solid Star Trek story.

I have read the original script but reading this graphic novel bring that script to life. It would have made for a great TV movie if such a thing were
readily available. The story and the script are quite excellent but yet, it is not quite Star Trek. In fact, it is a bad script for a Star Trek TV episode because it too long and too bitter in perception. Also, the characters are "unStar Trek" in nature. This script take away from the main characters and worst, contradict itself since the time line been wipe out, there can be no starship like the Enterprise but in this script, Kirk and the landing party actually got back to starship which is now full of pirates.

I can see why Gene Roddenberry rewrote this script. It simply is not a good TV script for Star Trek. There are too many minor characters, too many subplots and too many angles twisting off. The TV script was tighter, centered around the main characters of the show and avoid sideplots that really have nothing to do with general story. Its taut, tight and made for TV. Ellison's script was way too ambitious.

For literally half a century, Harlan Ellison has been bellyaching about the fact changes were made to his original teleplay. And he continues to do so in the forward of this book. But none of that can distract from the fact that is book is a magnificent work of art. Striking action and rich emotions are communicated using great artwork. Though I think all the changes in the teleplay were improvements, particularly replacing a one-off character with McCoy in the pivotal time changing role, the original tale stands on its own as powerful and compelling. In my opinion, this is a must have for Trek, as well as general Sci-fi and graphic novel fans.

With about ten squares on a page. Very difficult to keep enlarging each square so you can read it, and then scroll down to the next square then to the next column, then to the next page to start enlarging and scrolling again.... Forget it.

This is such a beautiful, wonderful, powerful story! It's great to see it presented here in graphic format. This is the classic Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock go back to 1930s Earth and there Jim meets and falls in love, for real like never before, but it is a doomed love, of course. This original version of the teleplay is much more dramatic and less campy than the TV episode that actually aired though. The episode starred Joan Collins and was always one of my favourites. But this version is even better than the one that aired!

I received this book as an advanced reader copy via Netgalley. Since I liked the episode so much and had never read a graphic novel before, I was not optimistic that I would enjoy this book. I was very, very wrong. I found the story quite different than the aired version and much better. The visualizations are very strong and I had a real sense of watching an actual episode. I strongly recommend this book for all diehard fans of Star Trek.

The famous episode's original screenplay by Harlan Ellison gets a comic adaptation by IDW. The artwork is very unique, but it was done in a style that think I enjoyed. Several aspects of the episode were apparently changed for the filmed script. This became the most interesting part of the comic.

I prefer the filmed version over the comic's storyline of a drug dealing, blackmailing Starfleet officer running into the portal after one of his addicted customers goes off the rails. The Guardians of Forever being several disembodied spirits who speak to the Enterprise crew is a change I liked. But I missed the rock ring portal of the time travel vortex. Yeoman Rand gets a bigger, more action oriented part in this story. The ending of the comic seems to be slightly different than the version in the episode, but the art was hard to follow in this regard and I didn't really understand what was going on that most important moment.

Another interesting aspect of the original screenplay was the little bits of universe building which were included but which ended up differing from the Star Trek canon later established. Most of the differences were about Spock, Vulcan, and the Vulcan people. It was odd to find these in this comic, but I understood that they were staying true to the screenplay as written before more was known about the Trek universe.

Worth a read since it was out there, but I would have never thought about making this book. 3 of 5 stars.

I have wanted to watch HE's original teleplay since hearing of the rewrites to this masterpiece by Gene Roddenberry because this story wasn't "Star Trek enough" to be filmed as written. Finally, decades later I am rewarded with this graphic novel, and it is Star Trek enough for me. Five stars for a visual adaptation worth every pencil stroke. Do I love any less the episode broadcast 50 years ago? No. I have a deeper appreciation for both versions. Even if you have read the teleplay and enjoyed it, you shouldn't miss watching the episode now that it exists.

This is a comic book rendering of the Harlan Ellison story for a Star Trek episode. It works quite well but I was not that impressed with the artwork which is always tricky when representing a television program or a film as accurately as possible.

The plot is intriguing and engaging as well as exploring the philosophies of life and the concept of time.

Recommended to true Star Trek fans and fans of Harlan Ellison

Overrated garbage. the episode is a classic because he was hired & paid to write an episode, the beautifully realised "Guardian of forever" is replaced by some bearded old farts in an ice block Just yuck ,as for the rest -the drug dealer on the Enterprise !!! goes to the "writers mindset" to ruin a uplifting concept by dragging it down to his boring depressed idea of creativity ...vile

This is a well done graphical presentation of Harlan Ellison's original version of City on the Edge of Forever. The artwork is great. However, Ellison's original tale doesn't come close to the brilliance of the final on-screen episode. The rewrites by the TV show producers made the story the classic that it is. Recommended if you are really curious for how the story might have turned out.