Star Trek - The Original Series, Vol. 14, Episodes 27 & 28: Errand of Mercy/ The City on the Edge of Forever
Of all theStar Trekoriginal series DVDs, Volume 14 will surely remain one of the most popular, for it offers the first-ever appearance of Klingons (in "Errand of Mercy") and the episode many fans consider the finest of all "classicTrek" adventures.In "Errand of Mercy," war between the Klingons and the Federation is imminent, and it's up to Captain  Kirk (William Shatner) to persuade the peaceful, agrarian planet Organia to sign on with the good guys before the Klingons overwhelm the place. Organia is in a strategically valuable position for whichever  warring side claims it first, but the Organians don't seem  to care. Kirk and First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) make an awfully good  pitch for Federation protection, but Organian leaders reject  the offer as a tacit invitation to violence, taking little heed of a Klingon invasion and earning the enmity of both Kirk and Klingon Commander Kor (John  Colicos). Essentially a Cold War satire disguised as a Federation-Klingon  showdown, "Errand of Mercy" is the brainchild  of producer-writer Gene L. Coon, who makes a wonderfully convincing case for  the absurdity of each side's claim to moral superiority. Highlights include the Butch-and-Sundance banter between Kirk and Spock as they form a two-man Resistance movement. The  episode is directed by John Newland, best known as the host of the  supernatural television series,One Step Beyond."The City on the Edge of Forever" begins with a medical accident that leaves Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) a  paranoid madman. Leaping through a time portal to Earth's Great Depression of  the 1930s, McCoy causes disastrous changes to history, forcing Kirk and Spock to follow him and undo whatever disruptive action he took  centuries before. There, Kirk meets a kindly social worker, Edith Keeler  (Joan Collins), with whom he falls in love before realizing her fate is the key to a restored future. A shattering drama, "City" brings out the best in the cast and production  teams, looking like a feature film that found its way onto television. The  background on this show is equally compelling and sometimes hysterically  funny, beginning with a highly fanciful script by Harlan Ellison (including a  scene with cast members riding a carousel that passes in and out the side of  a mountain) that was either rewritten by series creator Gene Roddenberry or producer Gene L. Coon, depending on who's telling the story. Ironically,  Ellison's original version won a Writer's Guild award while the revision  captured a Hugo, but the real prize is the episode itself.--Tom Keogh