The Surprising Problem With Star Trek’s Most Celebrated Episode
By Noah Berlatsky
In January 2017, explored space will get another installment in the most optimistic high-profile sci-fi franchise of all time. For Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, CBS plans to launch a new television series — bringing bold exploration and inter-species amity to the world’s screens for a fifth decade.
Star Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry famously presented his Federation as more advanced — not just technologically, but socially. The original bridge of the Starship Enterprise included a multi-racial, multi-national cast unusual for its day, in an effort to foreshadow a more diverse, more tolerant future. And yet, this hope for peace and cross-cultural harmony is oddly contradicted by the show’s most lauded episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.”
Famously based on a script by sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison, the 1967 episode appeared in Star Trek’s first season. It won a Hugo award, and is regularly credited as the best Star Trek episode of the original series — or of any Star Trek series.
But after all the praise, it’s a bit of a let-down to return to “The City on the Edge of…
