- In The City on the Edge of Forever, Kirk falls in love. Edith's sentence? Death.
In the original script, Spock has to hold Kirk in a homoerotic embrace to prevent him from saving Edith's life, clearly showing Spock as the the morally superior character (remember, much was made of Spock's many advantages over the merely human crewmembers), physically preventing Kirk from continuing to stray into heteronormativity, and bringing him back into the all-male fold of the triumvirate.
In addition to Spock "showing Kirk the light," as it were, there is also an element of Biblical jealousy, as Kirk was going to leave him and McCoy for an unnatural relationship with a woman. Now, Spock's Vulcan salute, in addition to being a cruel mockery of the heterosexual-exclusive "shocker," is derived from a traditional Jewish gesture. This rabbinical reference, along with Spock's above-mentioned superior strength and intellect was intended to cast him as the Old Testament "God" of the
Enterprise. Kirk (the name meaning "church") represents His Chosen People, and "City" is ultimately a story of God keeping His children from false idols by saving them from woman, who we will remember from Eve in the Garden, represents the Fall From Grace, as she is the gateway to the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (which, of course, represents heteronormative morality, which is the evil that destroys the pure, symmetrical love between two men).
After rewrites, of course, the filmed version of the episode concluded with Kirk himself restraining McCoy (who represents the traitorous duo of polyamory and bisexuality in this draft) from saving Edith, as Star Trek was a fundamentally optimistic and humanistic show, so it was necessary for Kirk (read: the Hebrews) to ultimately make the right choice without Spock (read: God's) guidance, showing that he has matured to adulthood and is capable of making morally correct choices, unswayed by the false, seductive morality of heteronormal women.
