Villordsutch reviews Star Trek: Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever…
For the first time ever, a visual presentation of the much-discussed, unrevised, unadulterated version of Harlan Ellison’s award-winning Star Trek teleplay script, “The City on the Edge of Forever!” See the story as Mr. Ellison originally intended!
Harlan Ellison’s Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever is one of (if not the) greatest original Trek stories ever aired. A fantastic moment in Trek history in which Kirk – to save the day – must let the woman he loves die; morbidly depressing I’d agree but at the same time equally brilliant and making Star Trek that bit more special. The thing is however the original Harlan Ellison tale didn’t have an accidentally whacked out on a hypospray McCoy, it was something more darker and certainly not in the spirit of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek.
Taking over the reigns of this collection are Scott and David Tipton and it’s their job to bring the rather real world of Ellison’s view of long space travel and the 1930’s American Depression rife with mistrust and racism to comic book format, opening with Beckwith the Enterprise’s resident drug dealer. This may come as a bit instant shock to us straight-laced Trek fans that here stands a Federation peddler and not so long afterwards, when he’s threatened with being turned over to security, he becomes a murderer and this is where our story starts; Beckwith beams down to the Guardians’ planet and stumbles back in time forcing Kirk and Spock to go after him, to put their time back on the correct path.
The story expands much more than we watched upon the screen – we get to see the Guardians, the daily lives of Kirk and Spock and how they cope (including Spock’s delicate stomach), Kirks actual lack of historical knowledge; along with this we see the remaining crew of the Enterprise which beamed to the Guardians planet return to their ship, they quickly discover that it no long belongs to them and Yeoman Rand gets to show that she is more than a secretary for Kirk.
Along with this excellent translation of Ellison’s story from the Tipton Brothers you are also treated to the perfect artwork from J.K. Woodward who delivers some amazing art making it a sheer pleasure to look at each page. Each panel has been individually painted and you can see it; clearly care and attention has been given to this book to make it that bit more of a pleasure to the reader.
As this is the collected works of last year’s serial we’re also treated to the step-by-step on how J.K. Woodward achieved his outstanding artwork, along with the collected covers and finally the Easter Eggs littered throughout the entire series.
If you missed this comic book on its original run then now is the time to buy it. Harlan Ellison’s The City on the Edge of Forever is something that you should seriously own.
For those that missed it Flickering Myth recently caught up and interview J.K. Woodward and Scott Tipton about the City on the Edge of Forever comic book release and the interview can be found here.
Villordsutch likes his sci-fi and looks like a tubby Viking according to his children. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqtW2LRPtQY&list=PL18yMRIfoszFJHnpNzqHh6gswQ0Srpi5E
Originally published February 5, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
