YMMV / Star Trek S1 E28 "The City on the Edge of Forever"

• Anvilicious: Pacifism is not inherently bad, but there are some periods in history in which military force is absolutely necessary.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Other Guardian stories have established that the regular timelines are not wiped from existence by a change in the past. They changed only for those who travelled in time and those who were on the planet at the time of the change. They were marooned from their proper time-lines, however, and their own time-lines simply continued on without them until they corrected the change and were able to return.
  • The Guardian of Forever has appeared in countless pieces of Star Trek fan fiction, and has sometimes even popped up in fanfics based on other franchises, usually as a way to facilitate crossover stories with Star Trek.
  • Many other fans have written Fix Fics based on this episode, usually depicting Kirk staging Edith Keeler's death so that he can bring her forward to the 23rd century while keeping history intact. Some depict the two living Happily Ever After, while others subvert the concept and have Edith causing the Federation to become overly pacifistic, resulting in it falling to the Klingons or some other invaders.
    • Others have tried to tie in the Nazi takeover with the rise of the Terran Empire from "Mirror Mirror".
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: While the episode is considered to be a masterpiece, Harlan Ellison's original script was good enough to win the Writer's Guild of America Award. Which version is superior depends on your personal preference.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Kirk is forced to watch someone else he loves die in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, something he has a breakdown himself about in the novel version of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
• Ho Yay: Kirk and Edith Keeler have a conversation:
  Edith: And you, um, don't want to talk about it? Why? Oh. Did you...did you do something wrong? Are you afraid of something? Whatever it is, let me help.
  Kirk: 'Let me help.' A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He'll recommend those three words even over 'I love you.'
  • In the very next episode, when the crew is in danger, Spock says to Kirk:
  Spock: I have my own will, Captain. ''Let me help.''
  • When Edith is asking Kirk and Spock who they are:
  Spock: Where would you estimate we belong, Miss Keeler?
  Edith: You? At his side. As if you've always been there and always will.
• My Real Daddy: To most people familiar with the episode's full development history, Harlan Ellison's original teleplay is an extremely good story that doesn't quite feel like a Star Trek episode, and D. C. Fontana's rewrite of Ellison's story is an absolute masterpiece. Unfortunately, studio politics relating to stopping Ellison from pulling an Alan Smithee, which Roddenberry feared would mislead viewers into thinking it would suck and discourage other sci-fi writers from contributing, resulted in Fontana being uncredited for her part in writing the episode.
• Once Original, Now Common: Much like with "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" from Gone with the Wind, Kirk's "let's get the hell out of here" is meant to be a shocking instance of Precision F-Strike. This will sail over the heads of most modern viewers.
• Retroactive Recognition: A young Joan Collins as the poor but kindhearted Edith.
• Sacred Cow: This is often regarded as the greatest episode of The Original Series, if not the entire Star Trek franchise.
• Spiritual Successor: In 2023, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds aired a well-received and thematically similar Time-Travel Romance episode called Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow which remixes some of the plot threads and ideas but has at its core a main character falling in love with a man who dies to make sure the Federation exists.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Guardian of Forever had so much story potential, but we only see it again twice in canon; of those two, one of those is in Star Trek: The Animated Series, and the other is a Star Trek: Discovery two-parter where, paranoid about being misused by malevolent entitled fanatics due to the Temporal Wars, it hides its true nature until near the end.
• Values Dissonance: Kirk's very lame attempt to explain Spock's ears to a police officer could possibly be explained in universe as Kirk attempting to fit in by imitating the racist values of 1930s America.
  Kirk: My friend is obviously Chinese. I see that you've noticed the ears. Well, they're quite easy to explain. He got his head caught in a mechanical. . .rice picker. Fortunately, there was an American missionary living nearby who was a skilled plastic surgeon in civilian life so...

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