'The City on the Edge of Forever'....51 years ago today

What if Edith only existed in the past because of a previous time incursion? We're never told anything of her parentage or history. So another one of those "Kirk and crew are destined to go back in time to correct someone else's mistake" paradoxes.

 

Well, a "double dumb-ass" on you!

 

I agree that Edith's fate and Kirk's choice were required for drama and the tragic ending is precisely why this episode is many fans' favourite.

If anything, Gillian's incursion into the future is more troubling since presumably she wasn't destined to die. Is the timeline from STIV an alternate timeline where all the butterfly effects from Gillian's absence have taken effect? Is that why Mr Leslie doesn't appear in the movies? Has he ceased to exist? :-O

 

Unbeknownst to us, but knownst to Yogurt....because he is a Transuniversalist wise-acre....Gillian was gonna die if she didn't escape with Kirk. Originally, she was visiting Plasti-Corp for some supplies for a project she was working on and a giant slab of that six-inch-thick plexiglas fell and crushed her....and she had no heirs to sue the shit out of the company.

 

And to think she had just one day left to (forced) retirement. No whales, no job.

 

If they had been eliminating her job entirely, she would have known about the whales getting shipped out because they would have given her....

....two weeks notice.

 

Two whole weeks leaves a lot of room for those butterflies. Take her down Kirk!

 

Ah. A colorful metaphor.

I would rather see a Clark Gable movie with Edith anyway.

 

Keeler keeled over. She survives in the JJverse though unfortunately.

 

No she doesn't. McCoy doesn't go back in time to save her, and she gets killed. We'll never know the original reason she stepped off the curb.

 

To get to the other side. Oh, wait, that was the chicken.

 

She would have insisted on dying for the greater good - what she always dreamed about.

 

If she knew what the problem was, she wouldn't need to die, just not influence the US's entry into the war.

 

Over the course of time, would you believe such a story? Similar to 'Yesterday's Enterprise' that.

 

It was much clearer in Ellison's original that certain people were focal points and others were not...

1ST GUARDIAN​

But in each time period there is a focal point.
An object, a person, something that is
indispensable to the normal flow of time.
Unimportant otherwise, but as a catalyst...

SPOCK​

And if Beckwith tampers with it, time is changed
permanently. Will Beckwith know what this focal
point is?

1ST GUARDIAN​

No. But the stresses of the time flow will draw
him to it. If he influences it, nothing can restore
the shape of the past.​

Basically, Edith is a focal point whose fate must be as it was or else the river of time is diverted. Later, Spock hypothesizes that they, too, were drawn to her as the focal point, and one can assume that they also could "influence" her and permanently alter the time flow.

Trooper's death, on the other hand, affects nothing. He "mattered", but not to the steamroller of time.

Also, in the original they're never sure what Edith might do in her life that would change history. Spock merely states that her philosophy could do something like delay the US entry into the war as but an example of how her living might alter things. If the episode had stuck with this approach then there'd be no "what if" here. If you "influence" the focal point, especially when the sum is life or death. then goodbye time-flow as you knew it.

 

So you could go back in time, mess with whatever you wanted to mess with, and if you didn't mess with a focal point, then your time line is intact?

You could presume the existence of deity(ies) that choose people to be focal points, but if you want to stick to science, then I wonder how some people get to be focal points.

 

By visiting an optometrist.

 

Science? The show that neatly splits a man into functional good and evil copies without them apparently losing any mass? heh