@Steven P Bastien
Nope.
WASHBURN: Try it now, Captain.
KIRK: Yes, I think... What the devil's going on?
Nope.
WASHBURN: Try it now, Captain.
KIRK: Yes, I think... What the devil's going on?
'The City on the Edge of Forever'....51 years ago today
- Thread starter TrickyDickie
- Start date
Sorry to disagree, but yes I was correct. I've always heard it as him saying "hell". So, I checked my DVD and turned on captioning and it verified that he says "hell". I took a picture of it. Since I'm new to the forum, I decided to use that picture as my avatar.
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Of course that's true. I listened again and I will now say that it's ambiguous. He kind of mumbles (perhaps deliberately) and it is hard to be sure what he is saying. To me it is clearly one-syllable, but at the same time I do kind of hear a "D" sound in there. I think he is actually saying "Dell".
Anyway, it does not matter. But, out of curiosity, I wonder if anyone has access to an original final script. It would be interesting to know what the decision was. My opinion is that whatever the decision was, Shatner chose to slur the word to skirt the line.
He's done everything else too.
Ptwaw. I can do it. But I have to adopt a Shatner accent and it sounds like MsSpoaaa but its still valid.Saying "Mister Spock" as one syllable violates the laws of physics. Can't be done.
As valid as Shatner's "devil" sounding like "
AHA!
Sorry for the bump, but AH! Here is the clip I was looking for: A very curse-y use of "hell" from the 1960 episode of Route 66 entitled "Legacy For Lucia", where Jay C. Flippen's character says, "Just get her the hell out of my life."
So there, a "the hell out of" 6 years before "City" on a US network TV series.
Sorry for the bump, but AH! Here is the clip I was looking for: A very curse-y use of "hell" from the 1960 episode of Route 66 entitled "Legacy For Lucia", where Jay C. Flippen's character says, "Just get her the hell out of my life."
So there, a "the hell out of" 6 years before "City" on a US network TV series.
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CotEoF generated no controversy. "Hell" as a curse was discouraged, not banned. Science fiction was considered for children and so the word might have been more discouraged with ST than with other shows.
Star Trek was not intended as a children’s show and NBC’s broadcast standards department did not treat it as such.
(The great irony is that the show really did appeal to kids; the TVQ scores I’ve seen from the period indicate that the show was most liked by its youngest audiences).
TOS appeals to the imagination, an arena in which kids swim in. Also, the series wants, very much, to entertain. It's colourful and weird and it's really no wonder they've always been so fond of the show. I was and still am ... probably always will be, too. City on the Edge of Forever isn't overrated, it's a very solid, interesting, entertaining episode. I'm just not sure that I believe in Edith Keeler's destiny as the Great Diverter of World War II. We see her preaching to bums, she has some whimsy about what the future's going to be like, but take that tricorder revelation away and she's got nothing pointing her in that direction. Nothing. I play along with the episode, because it's not a deal breaker, but not a flawless story, by any means.
That’s an interesting, er, "take."
City is either just outside of or barely makes my personal top 10, but I suspect that’s because so little of it takes place aboard the ship, or maybe it's something else. I don't know. I do recognize it as a masterpiece, though, which is not the same as a personal favorite. The ambience is fantastic and the whole thing feels like it's two hours long, in a good way.
I think that a script already so packed with information did the best it could to establish Edith's destiny and Collins sold it well. Maybe one more line of dialogue about her drawing national attention?
Yes I know. It was a general attitude of society that science fiction was for children, that was the default position for most people. So that would sometimes affect individual judgments whatever company policy was.
'City' has emotional punch (not Kool-Aid) 
but the ending of the story seems like it was done more for that exact reason....to play upon our emotions....than to stay in keeping with Kirk's character and his pursuit of solutions to 'no-win' scenarios.
See my story in Fan Fiction
@shamelessplug
but the ending of the story seems like it was done more for that exact reason....to play upon our emotions....than to stay in keeping with Kirk's character and his pursuit of solutions to 'no-win' scenarios.See my story in Fan Fiction
@shamelessplug
The death of Edith Keeler is the reason Kirk no longer believes in the no-win scenario. Not because he doesn't think there is one, but because he'll do anything to keep from having to face it. Before that, he cheated, because he didn't want to bother with the repercussions.
Maybe when McCoy got well, he could've looked around the room and saw by the bed (conveniently placed) letters from Eleanor Roosevelt, indicating some sort of correspondence. He could've axed her about it, briefly as she beamed with pride and gotten on with the show. I agree, completely, that the episode does feel like it's much bigger in scope than what's actually there, onscreen. They made excellent use of rented locations and whatnot and it just seemed to harken the era a bit better than expected. A lot of that having to do with the cinematography and the score has some very nice cues in it. Joan Collins was everything the show wanted of her and that really helped elevate the script even further, it seems like.That’s an interesting, er, "take."
City is either just outside of or barely makes my personal top 10, but I suspect that’s because so little of it takes place aboard the ship, or maybe it's something else. I don't know. I do recognize it as a masterpiece, though, which is not the same as a personal favorite. The ambience is fantastic and the whole thing feels like it's two hours long, in a good way.
I think that a script already so packed with information did the best it could to establish Edith's destiny and Collins sold it well. Maybe one more line of dialogue about her drawing national attention?
