Harlan Ellison: Star Trek Was Just "A Cop Show"
- Thread starter cooleddie74
- Start date
It's like the Godwin. This is always gonna happen in threads about Harlan Ellison.
Even though he usually had a good case which he won or was settled. Even though his name is rolling in the credits of The Terminator for good reason. Etc.
Yeah, I remember a story about Roddenberry being a cop when he decided he wanted to become a writer. There was a bar that a well known Hollywood producer was known to frequent, so Roddenberry went there on his police motorcycle with sirens blaring. He entered the bar looking completely tough and intimidating and called the producer by name. As everyone pointed to the guy, Roddenberry marched up to him and slammed his script on the table and said "you will read this and get back to me."
I like this story because you know damn well if a cop tried this today he'd be fired by the police and sued by the producer. And any dreams of becoming a writer would just melt away.
I like this story because you know damn well if a cop tried this today he'd be fired by the police and sued by the producer. And any dreams of becoming a writer would just melt away.
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From a train!!!!The Wild Wild West was both.Secret Service agents enforcing the law and fighting criminal activity and villainous plots out on the 19th century frontier.
As pigeonholes go, that's pretty broad.
It's pleasant coincidences that Ross Martin(Artemus Gordon) had a passing resemblance to both DeForest Kelley and Karl Urban and Alexander from "Plato's Stepchildren(TOS)" played the lead villain on that series.
Absolutely. Even more so, Roddenberry worked on several "cop shows" before Star Trek, including pitching at least two unproduced pilots, Footbeat in 1960 and Police Story in 1964, that were both centered around cops. While still a cop in the early 1950s, Roddenberry wrote his first TV script (as "Robert Wesley") for the show Highway Patrol. So Roddenberry is no stranger to cop shows. He was developing Police Story alongside Star Trek, so the two shows no doubt influenced each other.
But almost everything else he pitched and developed was either a frontier western (head writer on Have Gun - Will Travel) or a military drama (creator of The Lieutenant), which appear to be the main influence on Star Trek.
It also brings to mind that line in the Star Trek series bible about believability in science fiction, imploring writers not to use "as you know already," type dialogue at the expense of the crew of the starship not appearing believable. Roddenberry uses the analogy of (paraphrasing) a officer in a cop show not stopping to explain how his gun works before he fires it, so neither would one of our crew use such clunky dialogue just because it's science fiction.
This was also the view of The New Internationalist, which published a scathing critique of foreign aid or intervention given out by the (IIRC) USA as an episode of Star Trek sometime in the mid-'70's.
Starve Trek
Wasn't Footbeat actually called Night Stick? I seem to remember it being called that by Joel Engel in the book Gene Roddenberry: The Man And The Myth Behind Star Trek.
Also, that script was made into a pilot by Screen Gems, but was not aired.
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It's a bit like the real history of empire building like the UK and US have been doing in the last five hundred years! Telling countries that their way of doing things is wrong and they should adapt to ours, which is the right way of course! But then again what would you do if it was all real and you found a civilization that was annihilating it's people in a computerised war or had taken away their minds to serve a long dead scientist who in reality was only a machine? Or how do you tell an alien who believes he is a God that he actually isn't or that warriors trained to fight each other for the amusement of three brains in a box is a wrong way to live your life? Should the Enterprise have not defended the galaxy against the Berserker or the Giant Amoeba? The only thing is I hope that senior Federation officials are not making a packet out of Kirk's hard won mining treaties like the politicians of today?
JB
JB
That was my first Trek convention, too. I was 17. I also was at Ellison’s lecture. My take was more positive than yours.
I’ve only been to a couple Star Trek conventions since then. I’m not a fan of queuing up for stuff, so conventions leave me cold.
My headcanon tells me that Jim West was Kirk's several times maternal great grandfather.
So The Wild Wild West and Here Come the Brides are somehow connected? I like where this is headed.
[*THE GREENEST GREEN YOU'VE EVER SEEN INTENSIFIES*]
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Here Come the Brides = Mudd's Women. Done.So The Wild Wild West and Here Come the Brides are somehow connected? I like where this is headed.
[*THE GREENEST GREEN YOU'VE EVER SEEN INTENSIFIES*]
So The Wild Wild West and Here Come the Brides are somehow connected? I like where this is headed.
[*THE GREENEST GREEN YOU'VE EVER SEEN INTENSIFIES*]
I point you to the TOS novel Ishmael. Literally Here Come the Brides meets Star Trek. Cameos by Hoss and Little Joe, Paladin, and Kain.
Exactly. I'm a little surprised this is being taken so literally. Ellison was saying he would have preferred a more "literate science fiction" show, but instead it was basically a formulaic TV show transplanted into space. He was talking in the late '70s, when cop shows had become prevalent on US TV (Kojak, The Streets of San Francisco, Hawaii Five-O, Starsky and Hutch, Baretta, The Rookies, Police Woman, SWAT, CHiPs etc.). If it had been the '60s, he might have used Westerns as shorthand for a formulaic TV show.
Personally, I think over 79 episodes Ellison was sometimes right, maybe mostly right, but it doesn't bother me. I don't think that makes TOS a less-worthwhile show. It was good for what it was, I don't need it to be world-changing as well.
Ellison was abrasive and cocky to be sure, but he was "good copy," as they used to say. You could tell Snyder loved having him on, and understandably so.
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Featuring Lazarus.
Also starring Sarek and Makora; with special guest stars Lokai and Apollo.
TrekCon 1899: Catch the Excitement!*
*But not too much because public decency laws.
*But not too much because public decency laws.
Star Trek aspired to be literate science-fiction for the masses in the form of an action-adventure. But it turned format into formula pretty quickly. For me, the original Trek , and to an extent TNG, was 80-90% there for me.
Certainly, it was better than most shows. But other dramas at the time were tackling harder issues, such as abortion and drug addiction. It's just that Trek gets remember most whereas those other shows vanished out of the social consciousness.
