The City on the Edge of Forever (Paperback)

As Harlan Ellison wants everyone in the world to know, his original screenplay for "City" differed significantly from the final product -- and he is REALLY BURNED UP over the whole affair. This book contains both the original script in its entirety, and a very angry introduction by Ellison, containing all the gory details.

The script is definitely a must-read for any serious trekker, or any serious science-fiction enthusiast. The STAR TREK COMPENDIUM calls it television writing at its finest, and even if you don't care much for STAR TREK, you might be interested in seeing what was in the script before it was turned into a committee effort and forced to conform to the STAR TREK format.

Regarding Ellison's anger and bitterness over the affair, I have mixed feelings.

On the one hand, I once had a similar experience, albeit on a much, much, much smaller scale*, so I know how infuriating it is to have your creative efforts messed with purely to serve someone's personal concerns -- especially when the people doing the messing treat your objections with contempt. Furthermore, Ellison is an established, respected, and acclaimed science fiction writer, who certainly deserved better. Among other things, Ellison was allegedly lied to and lied about by Gene Roddenberry, who kept claiming that Ellison's original script had Scotty dealing drugs, at the same time he kept promising Ellison that he was gonna quit saying that. And as Ellison points out, he had written for television before, so it was unfair to dismiss him as someone who didn't know how the business worked.

I also feel Ellison makes some good points regarding two major script alterations. Regarding the drug addict/dealer crewman Beckwith, Ellison maintains that there would have to be a few "bad apples" in a crew of 430 members. Regarding Kirk's freezing up because he JUST COULDN'T kill the woman he loved, Ellison claims this would have made Kirk a three-dimensional human being instead of a one-dimensional macho man.

On the other hand, if Ellison had written for television before, he should have expected at least part of what happened. He should have known that NO television script is purely the work of a single author. For better or worse, scripts get passed from hand to hand, and everyone makes changes to suit all sorts of different agendas. Furthermore, there's one additional, firm rule when writing for a series where all the episodes use the same characters and the same scenario. Each episode must present the characters and scenario in a manner consistent with every other episode, and no episode may permanently change either, unless it's part of a preconceived plan to change the series format. I confess that I wonder how familiar Ellison was with this rule, since his earlier television scripts were for THE OUTER LIMITS, an anthology series, where each episode contained its own characters and scenario.

So if the drug addict/dealer Beckwith was inconsistent with the STAR TREK universe, he had to go. Furthermore, Roddenberry had the network to answer to, and according to the STAR TREK COMPENDIUM, NBC wasn't wild about the whole drug thing either. And if Kirk's inability to kill the woman he loved changed him too much in the eyes of the viewers, that had to go as well.

Regarding those two points I mentioned earlier, I said they were GOOD points, but I didn't;t say I completely agreed with them. I concede the possibility that Beckwith might have slipped through and made it onto a star ship, but I also feel it's debatable. After all, Star Fleet is essentially a military outfit, and the military tends to have a zero-tolerance attitude to such things. Regarding Kirk being more believable and sympathetic if he's fallible, I think we;re walking a fine line here. Yes, someone who is too perfect and too impervious to pain will give you a cramp, nut someone who is too flawed and too sensitive to do what has to be done at a pivotal moment will fill you with contempt. Ellison's original ending might have made Kirk more human and more sympathetic, but it might have made him appear weak, as Roddenberry feared. And IS it really more believable that Kirk could;t do it. After all, to save the woman he loved meant destroying the entire universe as we know it, and perhaps a person in his shoes might feel that the whole universe as we know it is just a tad more important.

As far as Roddenberry's lying about and to Ellison, Ellison may have rubbed him the wrong way -- which brings me to my final point. The tone of this book very much rubbed me the wrong way. If you;re going to complain about how badly you've been treated, you must be careful how you do so, lest you lose the sympathy of the audience. One way to lose that sympathy is to take a confrontational attitude that says, "If you don't agree that I was treated badly, you're as rotten as the people who did it to me." In general, IF people want to hear you complain AT ALL, they want to be given all the facts and allowed to form their own opinion. Furthermore, in this case, the majority of the readers will probably be trekkers who want to sympathize with Roddenberry. Ellison would have gotten more of my sympathy if he had practiced a little more diplomacy.

*My situation involved a skit I wrote for a high school variety show, which got sabotaged and nearly canceled because someone didn't want to look bad. The concern may have been legitimate, but the person went behind my back to deal with it.

The book begins with a lengthly "introductory essay", in which Ellison talks about his original script, his communications with Roddenberry and the studio, and what went wrong after the show aired. Promises were made and never kept, facts were misrepresented for years, and it all got mucked up in the end. The second part of the book is Harlan's original script-so that you can decide for yourself-if what the author asserts is true. I have to say, that after reading the script, both versions of the episodes are strong, but I think it's a lot like comparing apples and oranges. Having said that though, Ellison backs up a lot of what he states with documentation. For example, claims were made that, one of the reasons the original draft changed so much was that it had "Scotty", (James Doohan) selling drugs. At no time does the character do that very thing. Drug addiction is a part of the story, but, not in the way it was stated. Of course the final version was vastly different and yet, still remains a classic. The final part of the book is a series of Afterwords, written by folks with some authority on the subject. Each one of those essays gives a unique perspective on the events and the 2 versions of the same tale

The book is more than just which version is better. It's about a writer stating a case and letting the reader decide for themselves what they think. The book would never be sanctioned by the studio that produces TREK Ellison's outspoken manner makes for an interesting read This is a book that every "Trekker" should read. It's also a must for anyone who wants a career writing for t.v. and film. The recommended book has 275 pages. As the Spock character might say "facinating".

It would seem that "City" remains HE's favorite child; and if his new introduction occasionally has a touch of Ahab after the whale, the unrevised script has a rich, strange delicacy that the televised version only faintly suggests. The script is dramatically tight, where the film version is looser; and while Trek, in the Trek-mythos, took on 'tough' topics, the original has takes on drug use in the military, poverty in America, anti-Asian bigotry, feminism, and the real fate of war veterans, any one of which would have caused network executives to faint, much less all five in a single episode. And it's quite possible that all that was a little too close to the reality on the streets and too far from the starry idealism which, after all, was the show's primary appeal.