Cast Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever

We all know the story behind the production of this episode and now the Ellison's original screenplay is being realized as a comic book. Along with just about everything, Ellison hated the casting of Joan Collins as Edith Keeler, so this got me thinking of had this episode been produced, as written, who do you think would have played the major guest parts: Lieutenant Beckwith, Lieutenant LeBeque, Edith Keeler, and Trooper. If you have ideas for the Guardians as well, feel free to share.

 

In my mind's eye, I always pictured Dennis Hopper as Beckwith. Never gave a lot of thought to the others. Always enjoyed Jacqueline Scott's many guest turns on television in the 60s, so perhaps her as Edith.

Sir Rhosis

 

You know, I'm generally happier with the final version than Ellison's, but I tend to agree that Collins was miscast. Edith was written as more of a tough, streetwise, no-nonsense type, not this rarefied upper-class Englishwoman. I can't think of a good candidate offhand, though.

 

For Edith I would go with Suzanne Pleshete or Anne Frances.

I also like the aired version better.

 

I thought I remembered Ellison suggesting casting in his book about the episode, so I pulled it off the shelf with the intention of thumbing through the introduction to see if I could find it.

A couple hours later, and I've pretty much read the entire 30,000 word introduction. Much disdain for Joan Collins (mostly for her badly written memoirs) but no suggestion who Harlan might have cast as Edith Keeler. Dammit!

 

So far liking the suggestions. I'm interested to see how Keeler will be portayed in the comic book, as she is supposed to based off of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson, an evangelist from the 1930's.

 

Bruce Dern as Beckwith

 

I've said on these forums before that I would have cast Robert Duvall as Beckwith. Duvall was still primarily a television actor at this time and had done VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA and TIME TUNNEL, so why not STAR TREK?

I've also said in the past that Lois Nettleton would have made a great Edith Keeler.

For Trooper, I'm almost thinking that you would have to cast a genuine amputee. I wonder if there were any in the SAG at the time?

 

I've never had a problem with Collins in the ep (she manages to handle the most excessively GR-esque speeches without inducing cringes, which counts for something in my book.), but given when the show was done, and how much they liked using her in subsequent seasons, I wonder if they read Diana Muldaur for the role?

Ellen Burstyn was doing TV at the time (did TIME TUNNEL that same year), she could have really brought it, too.

Michael Pataki from TRIBBLES would have been a good Beckwith. Trooper is the real trick; he has to work wonders with almost no material at all. If it were 20 years later I'd say Tracey Walter from REPO MAN. If he were reined in heavily (and would have taken such a small part) I'd say William Windom, just guessing out loud.

 

Trooper would've been a tricky bit of casting, cause you'd need an actor who can sell it with only a few lines and some body language. He's basically the antithesis of Beckwith, someone who will throw himself in to help a stranger if they've treated him with a little dignity.

 

^^^Although too young at the time, perhaps Roberts Blossom as he appeared in the late 80s is the image I would go for -- gaunt, unshaven, etc.

Sir Rhosis

 

City takes place only 15 years after the start of The Great War, so Trooper would really only be about 35ish.

 

You're right.

Ya know, I first read Ellison's City around 1985 or so, and by damn, I've always pictured Trooper as old. Sometimes the obvious just doesn't register!

 

You know, I never understood why Ellison was so critical of this episode (other than he felt he didn't get credit).

This is a classic star trek episode and is one of two (that I know of) episodes to get a hugo award.

 

He got full and exclusive credit. He was the only billed scriptwriter on the episode even though Fontana and Roddenberry shaped much of the final draft. So credit was never the problem. He just didn't like having his words and ideas altered. Some authors thrive on collaboration, while others can't stand making compromises. I've always found it strange that an author so unwilling to compromise his ideas spent so much of his career in a collaborative field like screenwriting.

Also, he just likes having stuff to complain about. He built a career-long reputation on being an angry rabblerouser and curmudgeon. Basically he was a shock jock before there was such a term.

 

Is it really fair to say that Ellison spent "so much of his career...in screenwriting?" He has a few credits throughout the decades, but other than the 1960s, when he was very active in the five years leading up to his teleplay for Star Trek, he doesn't really have that many credits to his name.

Speaking of those pre-Trek credits, I got the sense from Ellison at a pair of retrospectives of his television career at the Cinefamily here in Los Angeles that he genuinely enjoyed most of those assignments (his brief stint on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea excluded) and had an experience on those shows that was quite unlike his time on Star Trek in terms of being dramatically re-written.

 

Having read the script Ellison wrote, I can see why Roddenberry was certain the network would have demanded that Beckwith be played by James Doohan *(this being why he always took the next step and said Ellison had Scotty dealing drugs).

That said, I've looked over the first issue online, and will not be reading/collecting this adaptation. Firstly because to me, it isn't a Star Trek story. It's fine science fiction, and amazingly well written, but so much of it is the antithesis if what Star Trek is meant to represent, and since they're presenting it with all the Trek trappings intact, including cast likenesses, I don't find it appealing. And then there's the fat slob they have as Beckwith. He's nothing like the description in the script. I half expected the guy to be wearing pimp shades and a feather boa while filing the engineering paperwork in his quarters. He's supposed to be hiding in plain sight, dressed properly and following the letter of orders, while being a cunning rat bastard alone in his quarters. Once again, I don't find it appealing.



*With the requisite name-change to Scotty, of course.

 

Why would the network insist that they use a semi-regular to play a villian of the week? Did they insist on James Doohan playing Kor?

 

True, but he got paid to write a lot of scripts that didn't get produced for many years after the 60s. The best stuff he ever wrote (FLINTLOCK, which is almost Derek Flint meets THE PRISONER) is unproduced, as well as interesting nearly-there stuff that could have been best plussed up with excellent direction (I ROBOT.)

That's not to say it is all good; there's a script called TIGERS ARE LOOSE that I paid to read and would like to have the money back, but he has gone on record as considering himself primarily as a scenarist, more than a fantasist (I think of him primarily as an essayist, but that is mainly my preference showing.)

Personally I'd like to see the timeline in which his adaptation of NACKLES for the 1985 TWILIGHT ZONE didn't fall prey to network thinking ... he was going to make his directorial debut with that, and I would love to have seen him expand in that direction (sort of like the universe we never saw in David Gerrold's THE KENNEDY ENTERPRISE, which tosses out the notion of Shatner becoming a pretty good director after he and Nimoy are fired off STAR TREK by studio head RFK and replaced by JFK and Donald Pleasance.)

 

Well, given how much he seemed to object to the rewriting that's simply a fact of life in television, I'm surprised he even tried it as often as he did.

That's puzzling, since, as I said, that kind of heavy rewriting by the showrunners is pretty much par for the course. I mean, if you're asked to write a story in a universe someone else created, it's just common sense to expect the creator to want to revise your story to keep it consistent with the series' characterizations and continuity and voice. Every Trek freelancer got rewritten the same way, as have countless freelancers on countless other shows, but Ellison's the only one I know who spent four decades afterward publicly condemning it as the worst thing ever. And it doesn't seem to me that he was treated worse than any other writer. If anything, he was treated better -- the producers delayed the episode for months while waiting for Ellison to rewrite it into a filmable form, waiting far longer than usual before taking the necessary step of rewriting it themselves, because of the prestige attached to Ellison's name. And even when they did rewrite it, they still gave him 100 percent of the credit and payment for the episode rather than trying to split the credit.

I don't know, maybe this is another case of Roddenberry's attitude alienating his collaborators, making Ellison feel slighted or mistreated. Beyond that, I can't see any reason why Ellison would think he was treated so badly in this case aside from pure egotism. I've always felt that it was simply a matter of Ellison's imagination as a writer being too grand to be confined within a television budget.