This episode is often said to be one of the best episodes in the franchise. I certainly think the concept is excellent but is it the best? Lets find out.
The beginning of the episode is the weakest part. It relies on an accident coupled with incompetence. I think they could have come up with a better way to get us to the story.
The Enterprise is at red alert. They are passing through ripples in time. These ripples shake the ship. They come to an unknown world that is the focus of the time ripples.
After Sulu’s console explodes, McCoy is called to the bridge. He injects Sulu with Cordrazine – a potentially dangerous medicine administered by the drop.
When the ship is rocked again McCoy accidentally injects himself. This part doesn’t really work for me. If cordrazine is measured by the drop why was there so much in the hypospray? That little nitpick out of the way Deforest Kelly does portray this very well.
Subjects failed to recognise acquaintances, became hysterically convinced that they were in mortal danger, and were seeking escape at any cost. Extremely dangerous to himself or to anyone else… Spock, on the effects of Cortrozine (TOS: The City on the Edge of Forever)
Given this description McCoy wants to get off the ship. That makes sense. Even a barren planet might seem appealing in those circumstances.
What makes less sense is how easily McCoy does this. The Enterprise is already at red alert. Despite this there is no extra security in the transporter room. Without any real effort McCoy knocks out the transporter chief and beams down.
Kirk leads a landing party to search for McCoy. For no particular reason, except the plot needs it, this seems to be a literal search – they can’t just pick McCoy’s life signs on the tricorder – or from orbit for that matter.
They discover extensive ruins. Spock calculates that they are 10,000 centuries old. His, and Kirk’s, attention is quickly drawn to a pulsating doughnut shaped object. I suppose I should call it a torus.
The doughnut introduces itself as the guardian of forever. It is a portal to the past. When asked if it is ‘machine or a being’ it states it is ‘both and neither’. Clearly the guardian attended the Royal Vorlon Collage of Not Giving a Straight Answer. Spock is irritated. I agree. I don’t like riddles either. (With the exception of the Voyager episode with that name.)
Kirk wonders if they can use the guardian to prevent McCoy’s accident. This feels like using a laser to remove a hangnail.
Unfortunately the doughnut doesn’t have an iris or a Walter Harriman. McCoy runs past and dives into the past. This is where the episode loses me a little. It is a pretty serious design flaw to allow any one, especially a drug-addled man, to get through.
Suddenly the landing party is all alone. McCoy has changed history. The Enterprise no longer exists. They are people out of time.
Time travel stories are always liable to create paradoxes. If McCoy changed history then the landing party shouldn’t exist either, but also McCoy would never have been born, and so on. (Wibbly Wobbly timey wimey)
Also none of the landing party manages to stop McCoy! You do have a stun setting!
Kirk and Spock head into the past. The doughnut cannot send them to the exact same point. It can only show the passing centuries at one speed. So it is less user friendly than a VCR!
Kirk and Spock arrive in 1930. They are there less than a minute before they commit a crime – stealing clothes off a fire escape. Literal seconds later they are caught by a police officer. Spock nerve pinches him but not before Kirk explains Spock’s ears: ‘He caught his head in a mechanical rice picker.’
Why didn’t Kirk bring Scotty? Surly having Spock along could create unnecessary complications. To show that there is no nitpicking depth I will not plunge – it was very lucky that the stolen clothes included a hat to cover Spock’s ears!
All kidding aside the episode is efficient at getting the characters where they need to be. After making a run for it they end up at the 21st Street Mission.
The first priority is to discover what McCoy did. Spock was monitoring the doughnut when he jumped through. Unfortunately, for reasons the episode doesn’t explain, he can’t access the data on his tricorder.
They are interrupted by Edith Keeler. She offers them work for $0.15 an hour. They start by cleaning the basement.
Keeler gets up on stage and talks about her, for want of a better word, philosophy. For all intents and purposes she is talking about the world Kirk and Spock know. I have to agree with Sfdebris. If I was homeless and hungry I don’t think that knowing that there would be a bright future would help me much.
The reason this is here is because the story depends on Kirk falling in love. Edith, therefore, has to be an intelligent and forward thinking woman. Despite the reputation Kirk is not the womaniser he is often said to be. That applies far more to Riker. (Look no further than his favourite planet.)
I think Edith is a little too on the nose. Talk of space craft and atomic power isn’t much good when you don’t know when, or if, you will eat tomorrow. I think the episode would have been better if she was a progressive thinker – not a seer. She is not literally a seer but that is how it comes across.
Some time later Spock has managed to build a computer. I don’t see how, but Spock is a genius.
Spock is also logical to a fault. He states, in a matter of fact way, that he needs platinum. I tried to look up the value of 5 lbs of platinum in 1930. I couldn’t find a result. However it is safe to say it would be beyond their means.
Kirk walks Edith home. (Spock works and Kirk gets a date. Now that does sound typical) They take a moment to look at the stars. Kirk talks about a writer who lived on a faraway planet. It is things like this that make Temporal Investigations label him a menace.
By the time Kirk returns Spock he has discovered that Edith Keeler is the focal point in time. (Apparently the platinum wasn’t important)
Meanwhile McCoy arrives and is yelling at the sky. He spots a homeless man stealing milk. He yells that he won’t kill him, grabs the man’s head, and passes out. The man checks McCoy’s clothes and finds his phaser. He accidentally kills himself.
The episode spends no time on this man. McCoy probably wasn’t even aware that he died. And I wasn’t aware he had a name. (Rodent according to Memory Alpha) His death, apparently, had no effect on the timeline one way or the other. This leads me to a tangent.
I don’t want to get into the behind the scenes stuff, at least not in depth, but I would be remiss if I didn’t say something. I am given to understand that the original version of this script was very different. If I am understanding correctly that draft did have a homeless character who would have been more important to the story. The script as written has the man’s death not matter at all. I suppose that is true of most of us.
McCoy finds his way to the mission. The cynic in me wants to say it was very convenient. Edith helps get out of sight into a back room. For her the only important thing is that he is in need.
Spock discovers what happened. Edith Keeler became the leader of a peace movement. This delayed the US’s entry into the second world war – which Germany then won. Edith had the right idea – but at the wrong time. To preserve the timeline Edith Keeler must die.
At the top of the stairs Edith stumbles. Kirk catches her saying it is not yet time – it is also not the way that history reported that she died.
McCoy seems to have a hard time believing he is in the past. This seems odd given the events of ‘Tomorrow is Yesterday.’
Quickly everything comes together. Kirk and Spock are reunited with McCoy. Edith crosses the street and is hit by a van. The horrible tragedy is that not only can Kirk not save her he also has to prevent McCoy from doing so.
The presentation of the ending never quite worked for me. It looks like the van had plenty of time to stop and chose not to. However that is getting into some real nitpicking territory.
The trio return to the present, which is the future, and for Scotty no time has passed. The final line of the episode: ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’, was a big deal at the time. It is hard to imagine that now.
This is an excellent episode. It is one of the best of TOS. Kirk having to weigh personal feelings against larger considerations is very well done. The death of Edith Keeler allowed for the future to happen.
Star Trek is about a positive future. In order for that to happen an innocent woman had to die – not to mention millions of others in the three world wars. This story is very well told and I recommend it if you have not seen it.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
This is one of my favourite episodes of TOS. There is something so engaging about a war fought in this way. The story shows the inherent stupidity of war. I am not going to say there are no just wars. However humans seem to manage to find reasons to kill each other all too easily. The people of this planet are technically not human – but this is 1960s science fiction – there was no budget for anything else.
I have recently been watching the early Doctor Who. That show had a very different approach to the alien characters. In episodes like The Web Planet (1965) the aliens were people in costumes. TOS, the Gorn notwithstanding, tended just to go with different clothes. This is not a judgement of better or worse it is just different. Although I have strong suspicions as to why they did this. It would be difficult to make a man in an ant costume look sexy. I suppose it boils down to two options. You can either have an obvious man in a costume or an alien who looks human.
At the start we are introduced to Ambassador Robert Fox. Fox is listed on TV Tropes in their ‘ass in Ambassador’ page and it is easy to see why.
Fox seems incompetent, bordering on dangerously incompetent. The Enterprise receives a signal warning them off. Not only does Fox not know what the code means but he also orders Kirk to proceed to the planet anyway. Fox’s reasoning is making contact will save lives – Kirk says it could start a war. And, by the end of the episode, had it not been for Scotty, everyone on the Enterprise would be dead.
Fox wants to establish diplomatic relations at all costs. What is the point of diplomatic relations if everybody’s dead, Dave? (I so wish there was a Dave here but I am making that joke anyway.)
Kirk refuses to let Fox beam down until the situation has been evaluated. This is a nice little character moment. The whole reason they are here is because Fox has the authority to order it. Kirk also has his orders. One of those is to keep the ambassador safe. This means that Fox can’t insist on coming along without undermining the whole reason they are here.
The landing party beams down. We have Kirk, Spock, a Yeoman, and two nervous looking security guards – well no, but if I were them I would be.
Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com
An interesting thing, that is not directly referenced, is that the people on this planet have numbers. The landing party is met by Mea 3 who introduces them to Anan 7. My Googling has come up empty on why this is. It might be the equivalent of a regnal number. I don’t know if this is explained in Beta canon – nevertheless I really appreciate this shot at making the people seem more alien.
Anan 7 says that establishing diplomatic relations is impossible because of the war. Of course there is no war. At least none as far as Spock can determine. What is going on? The war is fought with computers. The attacks are calculated and then the “casualties” are required to step into disintegration chambers. It’s like playing a game of… here’s where I pretend to know computer games… Halo and the losing team has to off themselves.
Anan 7 reports that the crew of the Enterprise have been declared dead and orders Kirk and his party to be detained till the crew report. Yeah. Good luck with that.
The war has been going on for 500 years. This is the only part of the story that I don’t like. It feels to me a little too long. On the other hand that might be the point. Without the damage to infrastructure that a war causes perhaps it could last that much longer. Nevertheless can you imagine a war started in 1524 that we are still fighting today?
The people die, but our culture goes on.
Anan 7 (Star Trek: the Original Series – A Taste of Armageddon)
Then we get a scene that never made any sense to me. When Mea 3 takes the landing party to a holding room she says she has been declared a casualty. (And she isn’t allowed to take the rest of the day off?) However she was standing right next to Kirk when the “attack” happened – so why is only she “dead”. The question isn’t answered but it is interesting – at least it is interesting to me.
Meanwhile Anan 7 thinks that Scotty is an idiot. He calls the Enterprise, with a voice modulator, and orders all personnel to beam down. Scotty checks with the computer and it confirms this is not the captain.
One of the best things about this episode is it gives Scotty time to shine. TOS is mostly about the big three so I appreciate the times when the other characters have their moment.
All the Star Trek series (at least from 1966-2005) have the special character. The character who is unaffected by whatever mess they have got themselves into this week. This was Spock for TOS. Here Spock is still calling himself a Vulcanian. He is able to influence the mind of a guard, through a wall, and the landing party makes their escape.
After escaping Kirk destroys one of the disintegration chambers. I originally wrote this as an ‘F’ the prime directive moment. Now I am not so sure. Given these devices were going to be used to kill the crew it seems more reasonable.
Discussion of the prime directive could be an entire post in itself. It is interesting how the different captains deal with it. Kirk sees it as “guidelines”. Picard follows it most of the time. In DS9 it rarely comes up. Although when Sisko does break it he can live with it. Janeway will follow the PD to the point of stupidity. And Archer, whose existence predates the PD, will still follow the same idea because genocide is more fun.
Yep. We are going to have a lot of fun if I ever make it to Enterprise – at the current rate that is going to be a long time in the future.
This episode has a number of technobabble issues. I say technobabble as a blanket, and perhaps disingenuous, term for real science and Star Trek science.
The Enterprise is attacked using sonic weapons. I am no scientist but surely that should not work in space. However I am not willing to completely dismiss this. If two people in spacesuits put their heads together, literally, they can talk to each other. So if the sonic weapon was contained in something else then maybe it could work. It would be like throwing a grappling rope and using that to slide something down to your target.
When dealing with science fiction technology there is a fair amount of leeway. Having said that if they wanted to destroy the Enterprise with sound playing awful music would almost be more believable. Then the crew either cover their ears, so no one is at the controls, or they crash into the nearest star.
Then we get a Star Trek technobabble issue. Scotty says that they can’t fire ‘full phasers’ with the screens up. I do not recall that ever being an issue before. (Or since, but that is less important.)
Fox thinks this has all been a misunderstanding. I would tend not to give the benefit of the doubt to someone whose woopsy could get me killed. And that is with ignoring the faked message – as McCoy points out.
On the planet the landing party returns to the room they escaped from. Kirk reasons that it is the last place anyone would look.
Mea 3 is still anxious that she needs to die. Kirk is able to talk her round – it is kind of this shtick – To be more accurate he at least convinces her that he is trying to help.
Meanwhile Anan 7 is having a bad day. I get the impression that, despite presiding over a war, this is the first day in his administration where things have not gone according to plan. Interestingly he says that the loss of one disintegration machine has caused them to fall far behind on quotas. I would have thought the loss of only one would not have had that kind of effect.
Ambassador Fox calls for an explanation of the attack. Anan claims the attack on the Enterprise was accidental. Fox, because he is an idiot, buys this completely. After the channel is closed he orders Scotty to lower the screens. Scotty refuses the order. Fox threatens him but he stands firm and Fox leaves the bridge.
Well, Scotty, now you’ve done it. Aye. The haggis is in the fire for sure, but I’ll not lower my defences on the word of that mealy-mouthed gentleman down below. Not until I know what happened to the Captain.
McCoy and Scotty (Star Trek: TOS: A Taste of Armageddon)
Apparently this is not a common Scottish phrase but I love it. Like I said at the top it is rare for the supporting characters to get their moment to shine so when they do it is marvellous. Incidentally this refusal to obey orders was based off a real event in James Doohan’s military career.
Kirk makes his way to Anan’s quarters. He is armed but Anan seems unconcerned and we get an interesting discussion about the similarities between humans and Eminians. Anan calls us ‘barbarians.’
The guards get the drop on Kirk and he is taken to the council chambers.
There is a bit of a continuity snafu here in that Fox and his aid make it down to the planet. How they got down without Scotty lowering the shields is not explained. I will now cobble together an explanation… even though it doesn’t make a lick of sense.
In TOS they were still working out the universe. In this episode alone the Enterprise is said to be part of the UFP and to be a ship from Earth. Technically these two things do not contradict. However it is like calling a British Royal Navy ship a Portsmouth ship. Equally they were still working out how the technology worked. It is possible that they were toying with the shields being one way. So you could beam people down but couldn’t bring them back. That still doesn’t explain why Scotty would let Fox and his aid beam down. The lack of effective security would!
Beaming down is a very bad idea. Anan quickly informs them that they are to be killed. I feel so sorry for the Ambassador’s aid. He is forced to work with this nincompoop.
Fortunately our heroes are there to save the day. The Eminians use the standard one-size-fits all uniforms. The Enterprise security guards put them on. (Yes. They are still alive.)
Spock and the two guards save the ambassador and his aid. (So the Ambassador lives to screw up another day.)
Nearly being killed convinces Fox that this is indeed a deadly situation. He agrees to help Spock.
Anan once again tries to convince Scotty to start to beam down the crew for execution. However since the alternative is that the landing party being killed this doesn’t really work well as any kind of incentive.
The open channel allows for Kirk to give Scotty an order. He is to initiate General Order 24 in 2 hours.
When I first saw this episode I thought Kirk was bluffing. I assumed that GO24 was something else. I thought that Kirk’s statement that the Enterprise would destroy the surface of the planet was just his way of ‘negotiating’ for the release of his people. I was wrong…
All cities and installations on Eminiar Seven have been located, identified, and fed into our fire-control system. In one hour and forty five minutes the entire inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed. You have that long to surrender your hostages.
Scotty (Star Trek: TOS: A Taste of Armageddon.)
The idea that Starfleet has a general order to commit this kind of act seems antithetical to what they stand for – especially as we have the prime directive.
With trident we could obliterate all of Eastern Europe.
Sir Sir Humphrey Appleby (Yes, Prime Minister: The Grand Design)
Incidentally that quote isn’t as dark as it seems. Go watch the show for context. You should anyway. I make no apology about recommending it. My reason for using it, tenuous I know, is to highlight the era of MAD in regard to nuclear war.
Kirk destroys the war computers. This means that Vendikar, the enemy, will assume the agreement has been broken so that now both planets face a real war.
Kirk gives the Kirk speech. It is a good speech but, and sorry to dog on this, but Shatner has a rather odd delivery. I am not going to try to replicate it in text. I am sure it is on YouTube.
We’re human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands, but we can stop it. We can admit that we’re killers, but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes. Knowing that we won’t kill today.
Kirk (Star Trek: TOS: A Taste of Armageddon.)
And with that we are done. Thankfully Kirk remembers to cancel the implementation of General Order 24 – wouldn’t that have been embarrassing? Fox stays on the planet to assist in the negotiations.
The episode, unfortunately, ends with a joke. Star Trek (TOS) does this a lot. Usually it is at Spock’s expense because only a fool would actually be respectful to the ship’s executive officer(!) Spock observes that Kirk took a big risk. Kirk isn’t so sure. He points out that a real war would not have killed any more people than the fake war. However it would have led to real destruction. So, one way or another, the war would have come to an end.
Captain, you almost make me believe in luck. Why, Mister Spock, you almost make me believe in miracles
Kirk & Spock (Star Trek: TOS: A Taste of Armageddon.)
Small criticisms aside this is an excellent episode. Kirk’s point that we all have the capacity for violence is well made. (Although he makes it sound like not killing someone is a daily struggle.) I think it is an important point. It is very easy to think, especially in the Star Trek universe, that we are above such things. Kirk has already faced this in Arena where he decides not to kill the Gorn captain.
I experienced something interesting a little while back. I received a picture message from a friend showing me a graze on her face. My immediate assumption was that someone had hurt her. I wanted to hurt them. As it turned out she was fine. It was just make up for a play. I find it interesting, especially in light of this episode, that my first assumption was that she had been attacked – and that I wanted to retaliate. Even though this was all in my head it is, for me, a good reminder that the instincts of our ancestors are still inside us.
I hope you have enjoyed my look at this episode and I will see you in the next one.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
Unstable Orbit 