Can't watch City on the Edge of Forever any more

Let's get the hell out of here.

Depressing? How so?

Edith Keeler was fated to die. She had to die. Sad that Kirk had to fall in love with the wrong woman but that's life.

Great line: "He knows, doctor... he knows."

I tend to shrug my shoulders at it. The line of Kirk and Spock saying "peace was the way" but then qualifying it as being "the wrong time", to me speaks of what the author of the episode thinks of the United States and all the conflicts we've fought throughout the two and nearly one half centuries of our existence.

To me, the message I took from the episode is that establishing the nation way back in the late 1700s was a poorly conceived plan. Fighting to end slavery and keep the nation as a whole was a bad idea. Helping to bring about an end to the first World War was wrong. Confronting Soviet and communist expansion in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, and everywhere else, particularly in Europe, was just not a good idea.

And the personal story of Kirk falling for Keeler, to me ... how does one put it ... as touching as the drama is on screen, with a better perspective on the author's perspective, it seems almost contrived and apologetic.

Watching it as regular viewer or as a fan, without having any knowledge of Hollywood, the author of the episode, or anything else, yes, it can be and is depressing and heartbreaking all at once. But when you think about alternative actions that Kirk might have taken ... maybe keep her occupied with some other activity as opposed to starting a peace movement in the 30s, one wonders what the author really intended.

I think someone here said that originally Edith Keeler was supposed to be a Nazi spy or something. If true, then the story becomes less depressing. But it also sheds light on what the author thinks of the US.

Unforgettable episode with a lot of drama and action packed into its small time frame. And with a very haunting and tenderly scored love theme written particularly for the Kirk-Keeler relationship. As tragic as fate. Edith Keeler had to die and Kirk "had" to refrain from intervening in that sad eventuality. Depressing? Yes, a bit, of course. But with the saving graces that attend all good tragedies and all good dramas. A story worth telling, a story well-told, an agonizing experience for Kirk, a strange odyssey for McCoy, a Kirk-wise turn of compassion for Spock. And damn fine science fiction to boot.

Maybe the best TOS ep.

A suggestion for all fans of this episode, depressed or otherwise.
Read Harlan Ellison's book "The City on the Edge of Forever". After all these years we can certainly get past the tendency to canonize Saint Roddenberry and recognize that he did have failings and many of his statements about the original Ellison teleplay were simply false.
The teleplay is presented in this book with a history of how it was revised, who revised it and why.
The original does contain elements that are not a good fit for Rodenberry's utopian vision of Star Trek, but the revisions went far beyond changing these.
I'm happy with the disembodied Guardian. I like having McCoy instead of Beckwith. But I really like the original words of Edith Keeler and I now miss Trooper (who fought at Verdun).

^^ Is there a synopsis of the original Ellison story somewhere on line?

Oh boo-who, so Kirk had to watch someone he loved die, first world problems.