Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [133]
The stage is set for the final scene. Kirk and Keeler are walking down the street hand in hand. She makes some mention of McCoy staying at the mission, which is the first signal to Kirk that the doctor has arrived. Kirk exhorts Keeler to stay put while he bolts across the street toward the mission in front of which Spock is standing. As he reaches the sidewalk McCoy exits the building and the three reunite in mutual delight of recognition amid this temporal nightmare. A curious Keeler begins her journey into destiny by stepping off the curb and crossing the street, oblivious to a truck approaching at high speed. Kirk turns and sees the immediate danger in time to leap out and save Keeler. Spock insists Kirk stop himself. He does, but McCoy, unaware of the impending consequences, starts toward the street to save the doomed social worker. Kirk grabs him, preventing his intervention. Keeler is killed. In shock, McCoy exclaims: “You deliberately stopped me, Jim. I could have saved her. Do you know what you just did?” Heartbroken and speechless, Kirk allows Spock the final line. “He knows, doctor. He knows.”
History was repaired, contingencies righted, necessities in place. Kirk and Spock suddenly appear out of the portal to the surprised landing crew who experienced almost no lapse of time. The Enterprise awaits their safe return, and the guardian concludes: “Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before.”
In Ellison’s original script, the World War I crippled veteran named Trooper leads Kirk and Spock to a different character named Beckwith (neither appeared in the final televised version) who is the random element in the time line who shows up to save Keeler. Kirk moves to stop him, but then hesitates. “He cannot sacrifice her, even for the safety of the universe,” Ellison writes. “But at that moment Spock, who has been out of sight, but nearby, fearing just such an eventuality, steps forward and freezes Beckwith in midstep. Edith keeps going and we QUICK CUT to Kirk as we HEAR the SOUND of a TRUCK SCREECHING TO A HALT. As Kirk’s face crumbles, we know what has happened. Destiny has resumed its normal course, the past has been set straight.” In an insightful epilogue that would have elevated the televised episode into literary enlightenment, Ellison allows the heroes to reflect on what has just unfolded. “We look at our race, this parade of men and women, and the unbelievable harm and cruelty they do,” Kirk opines. “And we sigh, and we say, ‘Perhaps our time is past, let the sharks or the cockroaches take over.’ And then, without knowing why, without even thinking of it, the worst among us does the great thing, the noble deed, that spark of impossible human godliness.” Spock continues the thought. “Evil can come from Good, and Good from Evil. But the little man . . . Trooper . . .” Kirk: “He was negligible. He fought at Verdun, and he was negligible. And she . . .” Spock finishes the sentence: “No, she was not negligible.” “But . . . I loved her . . .” Kirk anguishes. “No woman was ever loved as much, Jim. Because no woman was ever offered the universe for love.”
In his introductory remarks on “The City,” Harlan disparages the “heroification” of such characters as Roddenberry, citing the historian James W. Loewen (from Lies My Teacher Told Me): “Heroification . . . much like calcification . . . makes people over into heroes. The media turn flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect creatures without conflicts, pain, credibility, or human interest.” Indeed, this is a serious problem when our goal is an accurate portrayal of the way things really are. But when the goal is to envision a future of the way things could be, heroification is a virtue. We need heroes. We want heroes.
On January 30, 1993, NASA posthumously awarded Roddenberry the Distinguished Public Service Medal, with a citation that read: “For distinguished service to the Nation and the human race in presenting the exploration of space as an exciting