Yet, indisputably, Beckwith’s greatest crime is that he altered history. You can argue that he got what he deserved because he’s a total shit, but good lord, this guy’s reincarnating in the heart of a sun forever. An infinity of torture with no hope of parole—it is, by design, living hell. The enormity of his punishment must be matched by the enormity of the crime. By interfering in the grand, fatalistic cosmic scheme of things—by getting out a magic marker and drawing a mustache on God’s grand design—we presume that that is the reason that he receives the extreme punishment of literally and figuratively burning forever, unto eternity.

Except the deed that got him into this fix was the one selfless action we ever see him take. He was trying to save Edith Keeler. For a moment, the qualities that first made him an officer emerged, and that moment doomed him.

Even when the guy tried to do something that, in some way, redeemed him, it turned out to be the greatest sin yet. Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

But the aired version did away with moral grayness and cosmic injustice by pumping McCoy full of uppers and sending him through the portal to perform an action that was perfectly in character, with no shades of right or wrong.

Nor were the hero’s actions allowed to have any gray areas to them, and in that, we have an even greater loss of what “The City on the Edge of Forever” was really saying. Because it can always be argued that Beckwith wasn’t really that important; that he was merely the MacGuffin. That the real story was Kirk and Spock and Edith Keeler, and just changing the catalyst wasn’t as vital as maintaining the integrity of the original concept.

And that’s where the greatest injustice occurred. The thing that I, as the aforementioned snot-nosed kid, couldn’t understand.

In the aired version, Kirk sacrifices the woman he loves so that time can be restored.

In the words of Harry Anderson: “Well, we weren’t expecting that now, were we?”

It’s the predictable way. It’s the safe way. It’s the way that you can presume it’s going to go, because you know that Joan Collins isn’t going to be on next week, but Kirk and Spock and the rest of the Enterprise crew are.

That’s the one-dimensional portrayal of a hero. He always does what’s right. Because of course, Edith Keeler must die. The universe of the Federation cannot be sacrificed. Edith dying is right. Kirk is the hero. So Kirk must let her die. Q.E.D.