I just got it and read it. Great ending to a fun trek interlude. I liked how Spock spoke about Vulcan and how Kirk would like it there. I wonder what an Ellison inspired Vulcan would've looked like..
Overall I enjoyed it, and it was nice to see the teleplay visualized like this, first draft warts and all. If I have any issue (pun intended) it's that Woodward's art rather falls down during moments of action. The poses in such moments are often awkward and his staging of the action leaves something to be desired. This is super apparent in the last panel of issue 4 and in Trooper's final two panels in issue 5.
Yeah, Woodward's art is beautiful but his depictions of action on the page were, at times, difficult to understand. The entire sequence in the finale with Kirk, Spock, and Edith's date with destiny left me scratching my head. I couldn't for the life of me figure out the chain of events in those panels and what exactly was being shown to us. Thankfully, later scenes had Spock and Kirk musing on the events in the past and they delivered some nice play-by-play and much needed clarification on the climax. This was my first experience with the original teleplay and it certainly lived up to my high expectations. A remarkable story and a wonderful adaptation.
It's kind of off topic, but the comic based on Harlan Ellison's unproduced Batman '66 script came out on Wednesday. Here's the Comixology page for the digital version.
^Actually it's based on Ellison's unsold story treatment. It never actually went to script. So all the dialogue in the comic is presumably Len Wein's, not Ellison's.
Re Ellison's Batman pitch, had they made a Two-Face show I'm sure they'd have come up with a non-gruesome makeup for him given the tone of the show, maybe just discolored half of him (like the acid discolored his skin or whatever), like Bele or Lokai.
I always heard they'd considered using Two-Face (maybe it was Ellison's treatment that brought it to mind for them?) but the gruesomeness was actually the reason they ended up ruling him out as a character.
As I've said before, my thought was that they could've used a Phantom of the Opera-style half-mask for Two-Face and just alluded to the horrific scarring underneath it. That way they could've both avoided the gruesomeness and saved on makeup costs. But appearance aside, Two-Face would've been a perfect villain for the '66 show, since he would've fit right into the themed gimmicks and clues that the villains used.
Perhaps this has been discussed already, however I can find no mention of it anywhere. How closely did the Comic's version of "The Guardian of Forever" match the televised version?
I don't think they would have dramatized Two-Face's origin story as they did in the comic, either. (It came out on Wednesday. Much as I love Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez's artwork, I feel that he was a poor fit for the tone of Batman '66.)
^Right -- if they'd mentioned the origin at all, it would've just been in a line or two of dialogue, as with the origins of Mr. Freeze and King Tut (pretty much the only Batman '66 villains who had origins), or the passing reference in the pilot to the murder of Bruce's parents by dastardly criminals.
Not. At. All. As per the 1st draft they are "The Guardians of Forever", a series of ancient beings who oversee the Time Vortex, which is not a device per se.
http://whatchareading.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/star-trek-city-edge-forever-ellison-idw-02.jpg Comic's version of Ellison's guardians. Sir Rhosis
So Ellison has no claim over the televised version of "The Guardian of Forever" device?. Hmm, seems that therefore there is no reason to tread lightly around its usage in the novels whatsoever.
Well, the lawsuit Ellison filed came over the quoting of episode dialogue in Crucible: McCoy and a Hallmark "talking" ornament. While any characters and concepts created for ST become the property of the studio, Ellison's case was that actual dialogue excerpts constituted the type of reuse that would entitle the writer to royalties. So yeah, in theory, the Guardian could be used freely as long as you don't quote directly from "City," I guess. Although I've still preferred to avoid it in my DTI books, both out of an excess of caution and just out of feeling that the Guardian is the most overused time-travel trope in Trek tie-in fiction.
The Guardian of Forever is a convenient time travel device in the STO missions City on the Edge of Never and Past Imperfect, helping Lieutenant Paris fulfill her destiny as the kuva'magh by Spoiler: STO mission ending spoiler having her mixed-blood be the cure for the Klingon Augment virus in the 23rd century. The Guardian's dialog is reminiscent of the episode but he also says different stuff as well (pertaining to Miral). The Guardian doesn't reappear afterwards, the two-parter is the finale to "The Klingon War" storyline. It's like cake - eat it once in a while and it's tasty but too much and you get stuffed.
The collected release of City on the Edge of Forever is now out. Here is my review of said release http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2015/...lan-ellisons-city-on-the-edge-of-forever.html