In this episode of Against the Mountains of Madness, Jason and John C. Wright dive deep into the legendary Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever. What begins as a recap of Harlan Ellison’s time-travel tale quickly becomes a spirited debate on moral dilemmas, alternate histories, and the paradoxes of time travel.

They wrestle with the haunting question: should Captain Kirk let Edith Keeler die to preserve the timeline, or is there always a “third way” that avoids choosing between love and cosmic disaster? Along the way, they connect the story to wider questions about morality, technology, war, utopias, and whether time travelers (or prophets) can ever act without playing God.

The conversation is part pop culture deep-dive, part philosophical sparring match—funny, provocative, and full of wild side-trips into history, theology, and classic sci-fi.