Edith Keeler

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Character
Name: Edith Keeler
Occupation: Social Worker
Relationships:
Fandom: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Other: The Official Website of Dame Joan Collins
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from Star Trek Today #7 (1976), Burt Libe is the artist: "Jim, we can't go on meeting this way; if Harlan ever finds out, he'll KILL me!"

Edith Keeler is a character on Star Trek: The Original Series who appears in the fan fave episode The City on the Edge of Forever .

Fandom

Common Pairings

Edith Keeler/James T. Kirk:

Mirror Edith Keeler/Mirror James T. Kirk
tag on AO3

Fanon and Common Tropes in Fanworks

Edith Keeler is often used as a topic in K/S fanworks. She is the catalyst Jim Kirk feels over her death combined with the intensity he feels for her personally, which leads to a more intimate relationship with Spock.

Harlan Ellison wrote the script for, and had a love/hate relationship with, the Star Trek: TOS episode "The City on the Edge of Forever." Ellison's original submission is much altered from the viewed episode, one that Ellison calls "absolute bullshit" and railed against for years: In 2016, Ellison said:

... all I was concerned about was telling a love story. I made the point that there are some loves that are so great that you would sacrifice your ship, your crew, your friends, your mother, all of time, and everything in defense of this great love. That's what the story was all about. All of the additional stuff that Gene Roddenberry kept trying to get me to put in, kept taking away from that. The script does not end the way the episode does. Kirk goes for her to save her. At the final moment, by his actions, he says, "Fuck it. I don't care what happens to the ship, the future, and everything else. I can't let her die. I love her," and he starts for her. Spock, who is cold and logical, grabs him, holds him back and she's hit by the truck. The TV ending, where he closes his eyes and lets her get hit by the truck, is absolutely bullshit. It destroyed the core of what I tried to do. It destroyed the art; it destroyed the drama; it destroyed the extra human tragedy of it.[1]

A fan in 1999 wrote:

The original script isn't *nearly* as good as Ellison thinks it is. In this book, D.C. Fontana reveals that she did the re-write to produce the filmed version, which was a forehead-slap revelation for me: "Duh! Strong female character! Who else would have written it?" In Ellison's version, Edith Keeler shows that she's the woman of Kirk's dreams by baking him a cake. [2]

Example Fanworks

Fanfic

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Other Fanworks

Archives and Communities

Links and Resources


References

  1. ^ from "The Fifty Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History" by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, published in 2016 by St. Martin's Press
  2. ^ from alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated, Mary Ellen Curtin at Newbie Questions; archive link (Nov 7, 1999)