Star Trek – The Original Series, Vol. 14, Episodes 27 & 28: Errand of Mercy/ The City on the Edge of Forever
Nov/095
Amazon.com
Of all the Star Trek original series DVDs, Volume 14 will surely remain one of the most popular, for it offers the first-ever appearance of Klingons (in “Errand of Mercy”) and the episode many fans consider the finest of all “classic Trek” adventures.
In “Errand of Mercy,” war between the Klingons and the Federation is imminent, and it’s up to Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to persuade the peaceful, agrarian planet Organia to sign on with the good guys before the Klingons overwhelm the place. Organia is in a strategically valuable position for whichever warring side claims it first, but the Organians don’t seem to care. Kirk and First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) make an awfully good pitch for Federation protection, but Organian leaders reject the offer as a tacit invitation to violence, taking little heed of a Klingon invasion and earning the enmity of both Kirk and Klingon Commander Kor (John Colicos). Essentially a Cold War satire disguised as a Federation-Klingon showdown, “Errand of Mercy” is the brainchild of producer-writer Gene L. Coon, who makes a wonderfully convincing case for the absurdity of each side’s claim to moral superiority. Highlights include the Butch-and-Sundance banter between Kirk and Spock as they form a two-man Resistance movement. The episode is directed by John Newland, best known as the host of the supernatural television series, One Step Beyond.
“The City on the Edge of Forever” begins with a medical accident that leaves Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) a paranoid madman. Leaping through a time portal to Earth’s Great Depression of the 1930s, McCoy causes disastrous changes to history, forcing Kirk and Spock to follow him and undo whatever disruptive action he took centuries before. There, Kirk meets a kindly social worker, Edith Keeler (Joan Collins), with whom he falls in love before realizing her fate is the key to a restored future. A shattering drama, “City” brings out the best in the cast and production teams, looking like a feature film that found its way onto television. The background on this show is equally compelling and sometimes hysterically funny, beginning with a highly fanciful script by Harlan Ellison (including a scene with cast members riding a carousel that passes in and out the side of a mountain) that was either rewritten by series creator Gene Roddenberry or producer Gene L. Coon, depending on who’s telling the story. Ironically, Ellison’s original version won a Writer’s Guild award while the revision captured a Hugo, but the real prize is the episode itself. –Tom Keogh
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11:12 pm on November 7th, 2009
it’s a rotten script written by a manipulative novelist.
There are several flaws in the episode. For example, why didn’t Kirk try to take Edith Keeler to the 23rd century like he took Gillian (Star Trek IV)not to mention he almost brought the pilot John Christopher until he learned his offspring is important to the future?
Rating: 1 / 5
12:55 am on November 8th, 2009
On the way to Starbase 10, the U.S.S. Enterprise stops todeliver supplies to the colonists of Gamma Hydra IV. A landing party,consisting of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Lt. Galway and Chekov beam to the planet’s surface. They find that accelerated aging has taken place, killing most of the colonists. Chekov is terrified when he discovers the first body. The only survivors, an elderly couple who claim to be in their twenties, die shortly after meeting the U.S.S. Enterprise crew. When the landing party returns to the U.S.S. Enterprise, the aging acceleration begins to affect the entire crew… except Chekov, who remains unaffected. While Kirk wants to remain in orbit around Gamma Hydra IV until a cure can be affected, one of his passengers, Commodore Stocker, wants to proceed to Starbase 10 where he feels the best medical aid can be found.
Each person on the U.S.S. Enterprise begins to show the effects of old age and soon Kirk is unable to command, as are Scotty and Spock. Command falls to Commodore Stocker, who, while an efficient desk officer, has no deep space training. Thinking he will save time, Stocker plots a course through the Romulan/Federation neutral zone on his way to Starbase 10. The Romulans are waiting and begin an attack.
Stocker, panicked and inexperienced, has no idea what to do.
So why not add this DVD to your Star Trek Collection?
Rating: 5 / 5
12:56 am on November 8th, 2009
“Errand of Mercy”
Lawrence M. Bernabo’s review of Star Trek #27, “Errand of Mercy,” which aired on 3-27-1967, threw me at first, because he is an Amazon Top 10 reviewer. So I read it and went with it. But then I got to thinking about the episode and how wrong it was in so many ways. This was rather a weak episode, and I don’t care if Harlan Ellison did write it.
In brief, the plot, such as it is, is this: the Federation contacts a strategically important planet, Orgonia, to warn it of a coming Klingon invasion and beg it to ally itself with the Federation, but the Orgonians aren’t interested, and Kirk and Spock are stranded there because Kirk has sharply ordered Sulu to take the Enterprise away. The Klingons then come to conquer the planet, and though Kirk is dressed as an Orgonian the Klingon leader recognizes Kirk as different, more like himself. When he finds that it is the famed Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, he can barely control his glee and plans to put Kirk under his mind-scanner to learn Federation secrets. The seemingly powerless Orgonians then free Kirk and Spock, who, uncharacteristically, don’t stop to consider how it could be possible, and the two stage a little rebellion that promises to be very bloody. But before the blood really begins to gush, the Orgonians come to tell them that they cannot allow the barbarian war to continue, and that they have made all of their weapons everywhere in the universe inoperable. Kirk and the Klingon both start babbling about their right to make war. But no one anywhere can touch weapons of war because the Orgonians have made them too hot to handle. So they are forced to quit fighting. Oh–and the Orgonians also tell them that they find contact with the lot of them disgusting because it is so far beneath them and their peace-loving ways. Then, while the lowly humanoids stand with mouths agape, the Orgonians metamorphose into shiny spheres of pure energy and disappear. Fin.
This episode (…) in so many ways. First, it takes Kirk and Spock way too long to realize that the people they are dealing with are not what they appear to be. It’s actually clear from the beginning when they approach them about the coming Klingon invasion and they are so superbly certain that they are not in any danger. They are obviously accustomed to interstellar visitors, yet they aren’t a bit frazzled by Kirk’s horror stories. And it’s not till the end of the show that Kirk and Spock get it, which doesn’t ring true. The crew of the Enterprise have seen a Q-like entity become a little boy to his far-out parents; they have seen their own crewmen turn into psycho-kinetic super beings, they have seen all sorts of beings who are not what they seem–yet here they take what they see at face value. It doesn’t compute. What really seems un-Kirk-like is his easy evaluation of the Orgonians as being cowardly, sheep. He even goes so far as to tell them to their faces that he despises them, which is so out of character. Kirk and Spock are made out to be BIGOTS in this episode, which denies their spirit, from all of the prior episodes, let alone the rest of the series. Their characters are sacrificed in order to dramatize the political enthusiasms of the writer: USA and USSR are equally stupid and evil; the Cold War is dumb; etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum. It (…) that an episode of this visionary series was sacrificed to suit the writer’s dumb politics.
Furthermore, what I really find objectionable about this episode is that Kirk, Spock and the Federation are equated with the Klingons, as if democracy, individuality, human rights are nothing, interchangeable even, with the crushing values of military dictatorship. What (…). It’s grating to see Kirk and Spock denigrate the Orgonians, when in any other show they would not have. This undercuts the meaning of the whole series. All of the episodes prior to this show the valiant crew of the Enterprise as being earnestly in search of new life to appreciate and contact. What about the Prime Directive? If they had really taken this Orgonia for what it seemed, an arrested archaic civilization, they would never have just beamed down and laid it all out in plain language. This show just doesn’t hang together! You see Kirk acting like a war-maniac so he can be equal with the Klingon military governor. It doesn’t fit!
This show strikes me as one in which they had a big gun writer on board and the producers didn’t have the courage to demand that the integrity of the show be maintained.
Rating: 3 / 5
1:05 am on November 8th, 2009
Has anyone noticed that the overlay picture on the back, for “City…”, shows McCoy in his distressed state, however the inset shows a totally diffrent episode? Anyone?
Rating: 4 / 5
2:10 am on November 8th, 2009
Let the Nazis have the world, it’s a small price to pay to bag Joan Collins.
Rating: 5 / 5