But not the Kirk of Ellison’s script. Because this Kirk is real. This Kirk is frustrated. This Kirk agonizes over the cosmic unfairness of the situation. His pain goes beyond loving her: “She isn’t important here, the way she feels, the goodness, the things she believes for the world, they aren’t ready for it.” He sees her as significant to the spiritual welfare of humanity in whatever time she’s in, and cannot comprehend, cannot accept, that she is simply to be cast aside, crushed, lost.

And because it’s so wrong to him, this Kirk refuses to be a party to it. When the crunch comes down, Kirk reacts instinctively and cannot force himself to be Fate’s Triggerman. Kirk is willing to shoot craps with the cosmos because he cannot bring himself to accept the fatalistic situation into which he’s been thrust.

Out of character? Not at all. Perfectly in keeping with the Kirk we saw who played fast and loose with the rules time and time again because he had a strong moral center. And in this case, his moral center shouted, “No! I will not accept this predestination! I will not sacrifice this gentle, loving woman on the altar of inevitability! I won’t!”

Was it the right thing to do? Was it the wrong thing? It’s difficult to say. But this we can say beyond question: It was the human thing to do.

Which is why he needed Spock.

Because whereas Kirk fought for the moral center of the universe, Spock was the intellectual, logical center. And not only was Spock willing to be Fate’s Triggerman, he even produced a weapon to do the job should fate—or his captain—screw it up.

Whereas in the aired version, Spock primarily served as comedy relief and dispenser of information—with an occasional, stark “Edith Keeler must die!”—while making it very clear that the final decision was going to be on Kirk’s shoulders; in the original, Spock is the one with his priorities in order. Ellison anticipated Spock’s “The need of the many outweigh the need of the few, or the one” in Wrath of Khan by a good couple of decades.

Spock doesn’t have to worry about doing the human thing, because he’s not human. Rarely has his alien demeanor been quite so coldly, fully realized. This is the chilling, almost callous Spock of “Where No Man Has Gone Before”—a character who is much harder to like than the one we were subsequently given. And never has he been less likable than here, where he makes it clear that he’s going to do whatever it takes to restore his preferred time line. When have you ever seen a situation where one of the ostensible heroes is ready, willing and able to take a life that the “villain” wants to save?