City on the Edge of Forever

Real world article

(written from a production point of view)

Star Trek: City on the Edge of Forever was an adaptation of stills taken from the Star Trek: The Original Series first season episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" into a photonovel. Apart from being the first release in the series, it was also the very first of its kind, as far as Star Trek was concerned. It predated the first home video release of any Star Trek episodes by several years, allowing fans to relive the story without having to wait for it to be rebroadcast on TV.

Aside from an episode cast list and a glossary, the book also contained a mini-interview with Harlan Ellison, the writer of the episode.

Summary[]

From the back cover: A gateway back through time threatens the future of Earth!!! Spock and Captain Kirk to the rescue!

The authentic re-creation of a fateful voyage of the starship Enterprise... Over 300 action photographs from the episode The City on the Edge of Forever in the television series created by Gene Roddenberry.

Excerpts of copyrighted sources are included for review purposes only, without any intention of infringement.

Background information[]

A German fotonovel version predated the Bantam release by four years, when it was serialized in the television magazine Gong (issues 40, 1973 - 7, 1974) as the 21-page Gefangen in der Vergangenheit. The publication was contemporary with the first time airing of Star Trek: The Original Series on West-German television, even though the episode itself was not aired at that point in time by public broadcaster ZDF, as the series was only partially aired. [1] While very similar, it differed from the Bantam version in editing as a German original.
A remarkable feature of the German photonovel production was, that the face and character name of Joan Collins was swapped out for the face of an anonymous replacement photonovel actress – an actual bonafide European occupation at the time – , presumably for copyright reasons. Collins' character Edith Keeler became "Eva Light" in the German production. [2] Apart from this, the German editors also slightly changed the story with their editing, among others by Dr. Leonard McCoy not trying to save "Eva Light" at the end of the story. [3]
In 1978, with the release of the fourth outing of the series, this volume was included in a boxed set of the first four releases of the series.
The title has seen a reprint around 1979/80 at a higher price point with a new ISBN after the series had run its course with issue 12. It was this reprint, with the British price at £1.25 stamped on the back cover, that served as an UK import after the original 1978 Corgi Books edition had sold out.
This was the first of Bantam Books's Star Trek photonovel releases to see internationally translated editions. Translated into Dutch as De Stad aan de Rand van Altijd, the Dutch language edition saw a release in 1978, whereas a German language edition was released one year later as Die Stadt am Rande der Ewigkeit – this time faithfully adhering to the actual story. The episode itself was not aired on West-German television until 18 January 1988 when broadcaster SAT 1 aired it for the first time in the country. (Das Star Trek Universum, 1989, p. 340)
A Latin-American edition, translated by Ileana R. Gonzalez as La ciudad en el abismo eterno, was released in 1979 and distributed in, among others, the USA, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Panama. Each of these editions had a price imprint representing the local currency.
Notable was the 1980 Japanese-language edition 宇宙大作戦: 危険な過去への旅 (Uchūdaisakusen: Kiken'na kako e no tabi), which was published to accompany the 1980 release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the country – hence the cover illustrations from the film instead of those from the episode.
Conceivably unlicensed, [4] the 1980 Indonesian Gerbang ke masa silam edition was, contrary to all the other versions, executed in black-and-white. The Indonesian releases had their origins in the efforts Dutch comic publishers had undertaken in the late-1970s/early-1980s to introduce their former colony to the phenomenon of the European comic.