Subject: Review: THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER: THE ORIGINAL TELEPLAY, by Harlan Ellison

From: [email-masked] (Graystreak)
Date: 26 Sep 1996 15:08:27 -0400

[moderator's note: this review discusses a STAR TREK-related book; followups
might better be directed to groups on trek, though RASFR's charter doesn't
allow for that.  Please edit your headers appropriately.  --AW]

THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER: THE ORIGINAL TELEPLAY by Harlan Ellison
Review Copyright 1996 Kevin Lauderdale

"The City on the Edge of Forever" is consistently ranked by fans as the
single best episode of any of STAR TREK's incarnations.  It won its writer,
Harlan Ellison, the 1967 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, and the
Writers Guild of America award for Most Outstanding Teleplay.  Of course, as
is well known, those awards represent different teleplays and nearly
different stories.  STAR TREK's creator Gene Roddenberry didn't feel that
Ellison's script was STAR TREK enough, and had him rewrite it.  After those
changes were deemed insufficient, Ellison's script was rewritten by various
hands in the STAR TREK office.  The resulting episode, as aired, is
significantly different from the original material.  In contrast, it was
that original script which Ellison submitted to the WGA and which won him
the award -- one of four, I might note.

That experience started what can only be described as a "feud" between
Ellison, Roddenberry, and others.  During the next 30 years, a number of
legends have developed around the writing, re-writing, and filming of the
episode.  Ellison's latest book, THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER: THE
ORIGINAL TELEPLAY, tells you everything you always wanted to know about
"City," and his subsequent involvement with STAR TREK over the years.

Ellison's introductory 25,000-word essay covers everything from his idea
pitch to the writing and the rewriting by him, and then by practically
everybody else who ever set foot on the lot.  There are afterwards by
everyone from Peter David to D.C. Fontana to George Takai.  Sandwiched in
between, available for the first time since its appearance in a 1976 small
press teleplay collection, is the complete, original script to "City" as
well as both of the preliminary story treatments and the prologue and first
act that Ellison rewrote in an attempt to bring it more into line with
Roddenberry's vision.

The changes were many, but these are the most important: Instead of Dr.
McCoy changing the timeline, Ellison's script has a Starfleet Officer named
Beckwith (who deals drugs on the side) escaping into the past.  Kirk and
Spock have a less precise notion of Edith Keeler's role in the destruction
of America.  Another minor character, who Ellison says is one of his
greatest -- I disagree -- a World War I vet named Trooper, was also dropped.
In the end, it is not Kirk who willing lets Edith die, but rather Spock
assures her death.  Kirk would have let her live, destroying the universe he
knew for love.

The thrusts of Ellison's essay are these: 1) that his script was brilliant
and different, and that it was watered down and made banal by Roddenberry
and Co. and 2) that for the next couple of decades Roddenberry insisted that
he saved Ellison's script from the trash-pile by rewriting an otherwise
"unfilmable" script.  Ellison cites, frequently by reprinting magazine and
book pages, Roddenberry's inaccuracies and refutes them by providing the
facts in detail.  You cannot read this book without feeling that, at least
on questions of financial and technical matters, Roddenberry was not
entirely forthcoming.  Whether the story was artistically "filmable" is up
to the reader.

I feel that much of this "animosity" can be explained away by two factors.
Ellison doesn't mention the first, and only glances at the second.  First,
this was a first season script for a new television series.  At the time
Ellison was writing the first draft, only the first couple episodes of TREK
had been shot.  In consequence, short of the notes from the show's "bible,"
nobody really knew how the characters were supposed to act.  Roddenberry
later made a big deal about how Ellison had Starfleet members acting very
out of character -- "He had my Scotty dealing drugs" is the famous
Roddenberry quote on the Ellison's first draft of the script.  More about
that later.

But, at time, *nobody* really knew how the characters were supposed to act.
Witness Spock's behavior in "The Cage" when he and his landing party are
about to beam down to Talos IV, and the two female officers vanish, but not
the men.  "THE WOMEN!" Spock yells in a very emotional manner.  Spock hadn't
even been fully developed.  Indeed, Scotty didn't even have a name yet.  He
is referred to in Ellison's story treatments as "The Scottish Officer."  The
idea that Earth in the 24th century was a magnificent paradise free from the
bonds of money, religion, and television, and that all Starfleet officers
were crack professionals came much later.  Ellison's idea of a drug-dealing
officer is a good one if your show is BABYLON 5, but it isn't consistent
with STAR TREK.  At the time Ellison was developing the story, he couldn't
have known that.  So, Ellison didn't write a very STAR TREK script, but as
an outside writer, he couldn't have known what a STAR TREK script really
was, nor was he around the office to be in on the rewrites and development
of other scripts as the producers molded the concept of TREK and adjusted
scripts.  In the end, it was D.C. Fontana -- not only an "insider," but the
woman who had a significant hand in molding STAR TREK -- whose rewrite made
it a STAR TREK story.

Ellison's second point is that Roddenberry continually made factual errors
when he, Roddenberry, later recounted what happened during the writing of
"City."  Roddenberry later -- and this is duly noted in the book --
apologized for this, essentially saying that he produced so many episodes
that he couldn't be expected to get all his facts right.  But he then
continued to make the same errors or as Ellison would have it, "errors".

While there is no doubt that Roddenberry took some credit where none was
due, I chalk many of his misstatements up to simple errors.  For a long time
nobody bothered to check these errors, so they were repeated and repeated
until they became the "truth."  The sentence that sticks in Ellison's craw
the most is "He had my Scotty dealing drugs."  This was said by Roddenberry
in an interview several years after the end of STAR TREK.  As William
Shatner has pointed out so many times -- most notably in his SATURDAY NIGHT
LIVE sketch -- when the cast and crew were making the series, they were
working.  They weren't taking notes; fans were.

It is entirely logical (so to speak) that Roddenberry, looking back on a
script that had a minor character that was later cut, could confuse that
character with another minor character -- Scotty is not one of The Big Three
-- that had yet to be named.  Indeed, as Ellison shows us, even Joan Collins
misremebers the facts of the show.  In her memoirs, she has a paragraph
about "City" in which she describes her character as being "in love with
Adolph Hitler."

Anyone can make an honest mistake, as well as a few dishonest ones.  I cut
Roddenberry much more slack than does Ellison.  When one lectures over and
over and over again, the speeches and numbers become ingrained in your mind.
I can all too easily imagine Gene Roddenberry, after so many years of
misremembering the same set of facts, giving a talk at a convention and,
with no malice aforethought, simply forgetting to recall that these
ingrained facts had been corrected.  Ellison almost makes the same sort of
error; he asserts that nowhere in his script does Scotty even exist.  That
is true, however he does exist in the story treatments.

Ellison complains about being told "our character wouldn't act that way."
To which he responds, "who knows how someone would act when pushed far
enough?"  I say that this is Ellison playing tennis without a net.  STAR
TREK, while far from perfect, is series fiction with set characters.  Even
if they had not been completely molded, a starship captain is a starship
captain.  The final story, as aired, pushes the envelope as far it ever was
pushed in STAR TREK.  Ultimately, we have Ellison to thank for that.  But
his original script *tore* the envelope.  Would it have made, as D.C.
Fontana suggests, a great OUTER LIMITS?  You bet.  Imagine: U.S. Space Navy
officer in the 24th century dealing drugs?  Sure.  Captain risking the
future for the woman he loves?  Gripping.  But, it wouldn't be STAR TREK.

Peter David's comments are particularly worth noting.  He says that the
original script is more complex and unexpected.  Indeed it is, but it isn't
STAR TREK.  To carry this to the absurd, Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE is also
complex and unexpected, but it isn't STAR TREK either.  Of the aired
version, David says Kirk is a "one-dimensional portrait of a hero.  He
always does what's right."  Of course he does.  He's the captain of a
starship.  Self-sacrifice is the name of the game.  Protection of the
timeline and your universe are pre-eminent responsibilities.  Kirk letting
Edith die is much more noble and poignant exactly because he does love her.
Which is more unexpected, to sacrifice what you love most in order to save
the future, or to be selfish and damn everyone else for the sake of your
happiness?  And as for "doing the right thing," as we saw in "Mirror,
Mirror," the Federation *can* take whatever it wants, but it doesn't.  Part
of Starfleet's image of itself is that its members do the right thing.
Look at how many times its members agonized over the Prime Directive, when
it would so much easier to just do whatever best suited them.

In the end, like the movie QUIZ SHOW, Ellison's book is an epic tale of a
minor event.  Not minor to Ellison, of course, nor to many of his fans, but
nonetheless nothing that will shake Western Culture or even STAR TREK fans
to their roots.  I supposed that Ellison is right, and over 30 years, the
tale of the writing and editing of "City" has developed a life of its own.
And, in the interests of truth, it is nice to have the whole matter hashed
out here, examined from every side, and finally put to rest.  It is also
nice to be able to see Ellison's script in the original, if not for novelty,
then for posterity.  But, when all is read and done, I still think that the
version that was finally shot and aired -- by as diverse hands as it was --
is better than his script.  Ellison writes a great deal about his script's
heart, emotion, and complexity.  I really don't see that much more there
than was in the aired story.  If you want real heart and humanity, read
Ellison's "Paladin of the Lost Hour," available in ANGRY CANDY; the 1986
Hugo winner for Best Novelette and the teleplay of which won Ellison a WGA
award.  *That* is a masterpiece of relationships and responsibility.

%D 1996
%I 1-56504-964-0

Kevin Lauderdale
This and other reviews may be found at the Kevindex Web Page
http://camis.Stanford.EDU/people/kxl/Webazine.html
Available by e-mail:  [email-masked] (Subject:  Subscribe Kevindex)
Available free by post:  Kevin Lauderdale, MSOB x-215, Stanford, CA
94305-5479, USA