Harlan Ellison's Acclaimed Star Trek Script Comes to Comics

From IDW today,

 

Nifty! Am really looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

 

Could be interesting. I wonder if they got the idea from Dark Horse doing the same thing with the original The Star Wars script.

 

According to IDW's Chris Ryall, it was something they wanted to do since originally getting the Star Trek license.

 

^^^
willing to bet that's a good guess. It'd be interesting to see IDW adapt some other un-aired Trek scripts also. The scripts that were written for the Phase II series in the late 1970's, for example.

 

So is this the version of the story where Kirk orders a firing squad for a guy dealing drugs on the Enterprise?

 

Whoa. Is Ellison finally mellowing in his stance on Star Trek? I think that may be one of the signs of the Apocalypse...

 

That, and he could be liking that he's making money off it again.

 

How different is it ?

 

Have they said this will definitely be set in the TOS universe? Cos it sounds right up IDW's alley in Star Trek Ongoing AU versions of classic episodes.

 

It's an adaptation of Ellison's original script, and of course Ellison was not writing for the Abramsverse, so I think it goes without saying that it will be set in (a variant of) the original 1960s continuity. Besides, Bad Robot and K/O only seem to want Mike Johnson writing Abramsverse comics, and they've stopped doing episode adaptations anyway.

 

I suppose this is something they utterly needed Ellison's blessing for, for PR reasons if nowt else.

 

Harlan's original storyline was that a member of the crew had taken an overdose of drugs and stepped back in time. Roddenberry was not too happy with that, and had Fontana and others perform rewrites, much to Ellison's dismay -- which he has told his version of many times over the decades since.

The thing one needs to remember is that Harlan is a writer and performance artist, and rewrites his lines a bit with every performance. Ellison is a very, very truthful man, who has tremendous respect for the truth; but he occasionally has a bit of trouble with the way he remembers things, because very slight changes can result in a much better story.

After he's told the story for two or three decades, he's practiced his lines so many times that they have replaced a very similar reality.

The script was rewritten at least a half-dozen times, by at least half a dozen people, finally turned in the better part of a year late, and then massively rewritten by Roddenberry at the last minute, in a bravura performance that showed what Roddenberry *could* have been capable of had he embraced the concepts of sobriety and good mental and physical health.

(The final version of the script, turned in only days before scheduled start of shooting, was unshootable, and needed that huge last-minute rewrite. Even after rewrite, it might very well have ended up the single most expensive episode of Old Trek ever shot; it went something like 25-30% over budget, and needed an extra day or two of shooting.)

 

I remember him praising the '09 Abrams movie pretty heavily when it came out -- he's definitely mellowed a bit, yeah.

 

That's not what happened even in Ellison's first draft. It was the drug dealer who leapt into the time vortex to escape.

As to what actually happened and what was in what draft, I'm waiting on Harvey to show me actual memos from the time before I wade into that bog. At this point the story of what happened has come one big game of telephone.

 

Neat!

 

You owe Ellison $3 for starting this thread.

 

I'd love to see that myself.

I have to say I'm pretty excited about this. I bought the book about this script many years ago. While I had a few issues with it, the script is excellent. I can't wait to read this.

 

Preview art: http://www.startrek.com/article/original-city-on-the-edge-of-forever-teleplay-set-for-miniseries

 

Very interesting. I would have been more likely to buy it if it had been factored into the ongoing reboot, especially as this is a story I was quite interested in them re-telling with a twist. Still, if the script features my beloved Yeoman Rand, who was in the earlier drafts of the script I think I might buy it anyway!