The Final "City"

[RobertScorpio]

We have all seen CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER a zillion times. To me, it is TOS's greatest episode, if not all of TREK's greatest episode. And is cited by the principles involved with that show, Shatner-Nimoy-Roddenberry, as being one of their, if not their favorite episode too....I believe the version that was filmed is the superior version..I read Ellison's version when it came out and I totally believe it was wrong on multiple levels...I believe Roddenberry's second greatest script, next to The Menagerie, was City..he took Ellison's bloated story and cut it down to the core...and more important he makes it superior, IMO, by having Kirk grab McCoy and stopping the doctor from saving the woman Kirk loved...by far, leaps and bounds, more dramatic than Ellison's version, again, IMO...

And since Shatner, Nimoy, Roddenberry rarely, if ever, agreed, and since they agree on this episode, I think they got it right....

Great episode...a good story turned in by Ellison...but, GR, who I don't care for much of the time, did good....real good...and made it better.

Rob
Scorpio

 

[Mysterion]

...and more important he makes it superior, IMO, by having Kirk grab McCoy and stopping the doctor from saving the woman Kirk loved...by far, leaps and bounds, more dramatic than Ellison's version, again, IMO...

Disagree.

Having one of the others stopping Kirk from saving her would be dramitcally superior. It would show that Kirk is fallible, human, and not some kind of uber-captain.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Ellison's original script is vastly superior as a story.

That said, he's been unrealistic in claiming that it was not beyond the production budget and scheduling capabilities of the series.

There may have been three people who did rewrites on the episode, based on different accounts. One thing is for sure, whoever did the rewrites on Edith Keeler's speech to the soup kitchen crowd - and it sure has the dull thud of a Roddenberry rewrite, IMAO - just trashed it; it's the weakest and worst dialogue in the episode, just embarrassingly off-key.

A lot of excellent stuff got lost in the rewrite, most particuarly Kirk's encounters with the World War I veteran ("I was at Verdun!") Ellison had some feeling for the bleakness and disillusionment of that period in American history, which didn't come through particularly strongly in the finished episode.

The bottom line is that the producers did what they had to do, didn't do it terribly well, and diminished "City" in important ways. It was still strong enough in conception, and performed well enough by the actors, to be the best thing "Star Trek" ever did.

 

[RobertScorpio]

...and more important he makes it superior, IMO, by having Kirk grab McCoy and stopping the doctor from saving the woman Kirk loved...by far, leaps and bounds, more dramatic than Ellison's version, again, IMO...

Disagree.

Having one of the others stopping Kirk from saving her would be dramitcally superior. It would show that Kirk is fallible, human, and not some kind of uber-captain.

Sorry..I disagree..

It is far more dramatic the way it ended. Forcing your self to let someone you die so as to save the others you don't even know, is far more impacting than someone else doing it....and that look on Kirk's face is probably the greatest acting moment in his life as kirk...Ellison's script was bloated and had to much other stuff going on. That whole side story with scotty was just filler...the story is better told by Roddenberry...

Rob

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

That whole side story with scotty was just filler...the story is better told by Roddenberry...

No, it's not. He wasn't one tenth the writer that Ellison is, and he damaged the script.

Now, it's likely that other writers were involved to - according to one account, Gene Coon - so it wasn't as bad as it might have been.

 

[Eric Cheung]

It's been a very long time since I read Ellison's book on the subject, but wasn't DC Fontana the primary script doctor on that one? I don't even recall others being involved.

 

[RobertScorpio]

The aired version was better..and was geared to a TV show...Ellison's was to big, and GR and company cut it down to what it should have been..A KIRK/SPOCK story..

As for the ending? If your wife had to die so as to save billions upon billiions of lives, and you decided she had to die..it would be far more dramatic if YOU killed her than you trying to save her...

City is great as is...and as a TV episode, it accomplishes what Ellison couldn't...K/S bonding in an hour's time...Ellison is a better writer than Gene...but Gene was a better TV producer, and he knew the difference between writing a story and writing a TV episode...and he did so and even made the story more dramatic at the end...I am not a GR fan, but he got this one right...just ask Nimoy and Shatner.

Rob

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

...and as a TV episode, it accomplishes what Ellison couldn't...K/S bonding in an hour's time

Which was certainly not Ellison's goal, anyway. "K/S bonding" is not the highest measure of a story's dramatic value.

And Roddenberry did not know more about writing TV scripts than Ellison.

Having Kirk sacrifice Keeler is not necessarily better storytelling or better drama. It is certainly more dependable melodrama, right by the numbers. Hesitancy or inability to follow through on such a thing would have made Kirk more fully a human character, and there is more real drama to be had with characters like that. Alas, in the 1960s and the "Star Trek" framework the series was never destined to go in those directions.

As far as the rewrite questions go, an anecdote was recounted in one of the books written by Marc Altman ("Captains Logs?") about Coon expressing some chagrin at the EMMY awards about Ellison winning for "my writing," indicating that he did a pass on the script as well.

 

[TheGodBen]

...and more important he makes it superior, IMO, by having Kirk grab McCoy and stopping the doctor from saving the woman Kirk loved...by far, leaps and bounds, more dramatic than Ellison's version, again, IMO...

Disagree.

Having one of the others stopping Kirk from saving her would be dramitcally superior. It would show that Kirk is fallible, human, and not some kind of uber-captain.

Let me just say that I've only watched the episode for the first time a few months ago, and it can't live up to expectations. These expectations led me to being disappointed by the episode as I was watching it, it was certainly good, but I just couldn't see why it was fanatically popular. The only thing which lifted this episode up to be something great was the fact that it was Kirk who made the choice to let her die, not somebody else. That is what makes the episode special to me. Definitely Shatner's best performance on the show.

 

[Maurice]

That whole side story with scotty was just filler...the story is better told by Roddenberry...

Whoa! Scotty doesn't even appear in the script! I'm beginning to suspect you haven't actually read it, but just repeating Roddenberry's "story" about it.

The story is NOT better told by Roddenberry and company.

I'm also going to go out on a limb here and say I don't think we can fairly judge what Ellison did vs. the Trek writers without seeing Ellison's subsequent drafts, of which there were apparently several. The one reprinted in the book is the first draft. The Teaser of a subsequent draft appears afterwards, and it's already eliminated Beckwith and LeBeque and substituted McCoy (who doesn't stupidly inject himself), and turned the Guardians plural into one voice from something insubstantial. Who knows what else that we assume was the Trek writers doing may not have originally come from Ellison's drafts?

And Ellison's first draft script is not bloated. It's spare on characters, spare on locations, and has some great sequences. Edith Keeler's character is charming and beautifully written, and the version we got is a watered down pablum spewing imitation.

The problems with the first draft are mostly structural. Edith isn't revealed until the end of Act Two, and Trooper not until the top of Act Four. Both could easily have been introduced earlier (as was done in the episode, by having Kirk and Spock stumble into Edith's "milk kitchen" shortly after their arrival).

The version we got is "Kirk makes a tough decision". The version Ellison submitted includes Kirk faces a horrible decision, and addressed a fundamental irony of humanity: that even the most evil of us (Beckwith) and the most destitute (Trooper) can, surprisingly, act selflessly and without thinking when others are in need, or have shown then a shred of respect.

I'm not going to get into the argument over Kirk's decision, because I think that point's been argued to death, and overshadows the larger themes in Ellison's draft.

In summary: Ellison's first draft wouldn't have been Star Trek per se, but it could have been made a perfectly fine and even better episode than what we got without the hatchet job done to it.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Edith Keeler's character is charming and beautifully written, and the version we got is a watered down pablum spewing imitation.

That's for sure.

 

[paudemge]

Having Kirk let Edith die was 'a better' trek story. But i haven't read the original in a long time so won't comment on the story beyond that.

However, I think Ellison handled the whole thing badly, whether he thinks they butchered it or not, it was theres to do what they wanted with the story.

 

[JNG]

Ellison had zero understanding of what Star Trek was supposed to be about, and I'd use a metaphor to illustrate that if I could think of one more apt than the drug-addicted crewman he actually included in the story. He's so up his own ass with the idea that altering anything you write for any reason makes you a "whore" that he seems to think he's above collaborative art forms like television. Kudos to those who were able to see what was good in his attempt and make a brilliant episode of Trek out of it, and shame on him for handling this so poorly as a matter of public relations that it almost seems the episode is good in spite of him.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The version we got is "Kirk makes a tough decision". The version Ellison submitted includes Kirk faces a horrible decision, and addressed a fundamental irony of humanity: that even the most evil of us (Beckwith) and the most destitute (Trooper) can, surprisingly, act selflessly and without thinking when other are in need.

If those elements, including Kirk's inability to act, would've given us a much more different Trek than the one we got. Perhaps even something a bit more daring and controversial for 60s television.

Of course, Roddenberry was already on the kick that the crew of the Enterprise was the best of the best and wouldn't sell drugs or do naughty things or be less-than perfect, despite already having a bigot officer (Stiles) and a timed officer (Bailey) appear in earlier episodes. Then there was the television mentality of "our character wouldn't do that." Something that Ellison had hoped Trek wouldn't adhere to.

I think that Ellison is right when he says (paraphrasing here) that stick 400 some odd men on a tin can hurtling through space, not all of them are going to be the best nor are they not going to have some kind of conflict.

There's not much else that starship polaris or DS9Sega hasn't said that I can add to the discussion. Except that, according to Ellison, Shatner may have had a hand in getting the script changed as well. The story is told in Ellison's introduction to the original script that was published by White Wolf.

CoTEF is my favorite Trek episode, both the aired version and Ellison's original script. The latter has the better drama, imnsho. I do, however, wish that we'd have gotten Ellison's CoTEF instead and possibly more Ellison pinned Trek.

On a side note:

IIRC, Michael Pillar on one of the old QVC Trek shilling shows said that TPTB had approached Ellison to make a contribution to DS9. According to Pillar, Ellison suggested a sequel to CoTEF where the DS9 crew go back through the Guardian and to the same era as Kirk and Spock did. I don't recall anything else other than it would be sorta like what was done in "Trails and Tribble-ations."

Ellison on working for Deep Space Nine:
"In fact, they asked me to write for Deep Space Nine. We talked about me doing a show or two for them, even a story arc, but once Joe hired me to do the manifesto I just felt it would not be ethically correct."

Source:
http://www.midwinter.com/b5/ellison.txt

 

[number6]

Alright I am going to come clean.


I rewrote Ellison's script.

Ellison hasn't spoken to me in years and is so pissed off at me that he never mentions it.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Ellison had zero understanding of what Star Trek was supposed to be about...

No, just an understanding of what storytelling and drama was about that vastly exceeded Roddenberry's.

It's not clear that the producers or studio knew in that first year "what Star Trek was supposed to be about," which is probably why so much exceptionally good stuff made it to the screen.

 

[Mysterion]

I am in total agreement with what middyseafort and Starship Polaris have said in this thread.

Ellison's script for City is vastly superior to what we got. That being said, what we got wasn't a bad episode. It just could have so much more.

 

[number6]

I am in total agreement with what middyseafort and Starship Polaris have said in this thread.

Ellison's script for City is vastly superior to what we got. That being said, what we got wasn't a bad episode. It just could have so much more.

Ellison wrote a good story, but it wasn't a Star Trek story. Most scripts are rewritten to fit within the confines of budget and to fit with the series concepts. A lot of Ellison's script involved activities that the Producers of Star Trek felt were antithetical to how their characters would behave and were changed appropriately. Had Ellison submitted that script to a sci-fi anthology series, it would probably have gone unchanged, but for all the time Ellison sprent on the Star Trek stages, hanging out with the actors and production people as he did, his script shows very little understanding of the Star Trek universe as seen in other episodes being filmed at the time.
D.C. Fontana's final rewrite managed to incorporate all the important elements of Ellison's story, while still incorporating the GR and Coon elements that made it more "Star Trek."
Ellison wasn't the only sci-fi writer angry over being re-written, and at the end of the day, it is his name listed as the writer of the episode, not the others. He should just get over it already, and so should all of you.

 

[Maurice]

Ellison had zero understanding of what Star Trek was supposed to be about, and I'd use a metaphor to illustrate that if I could think of one more apt than the drug-addicted crewman he actually included in the story. He's so up his own ass with the idea that altering anything you write for any reason makes you a "whore" that he seems to think he's above collaborative art forms like television. Kudos to those who were able to see what was good in his attempt and make a brilliant episode of Trek out of it, and shame on him for handling this so poorly as a matter of public relations that it almost seems the episode is good in spite of him.

Given the endless lies Roddenberry and company have told about the production of this script, it's not surprising Harlan's "public relations" regarding it are so crude. Hell, look how people here fly off the handle for the tiniest implied infraction, let alone having their professional reputation attacked. I'm not going to defend Ellison in general, but in the case of this script and the way he's been pilloried and impugned by Trek people since then, I'm with him 100%.

Ellison wrote a good story, but it wasn't a Star Trek story.

Which says more about the blandness of Star Trek than it does about Ellison. When I read that script, and I saw the themes being attempted, I realized THAT'S the kind of Star Trek I always wanted. Sadly, almost none of it's ever gotten close to that level.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Ellison wrote a good story, but it wasn't a Star Trek story.

Which says more about the blandness of Star Trek than it does about Ellison. When I read that script, and I saw the themes being attempted, I realized THAT'S the kind of Star Trek I always wanted. Sadly, almost none of it's ever gotten close to that level.

Exactly. As much as I love Star Trek, it's never been as deep or intellectual as it could have been. And I find that the characterizations in Ellison's original much more interesting than the ones in the aired version. To me, Ellison understood more about the contradictions in human behavior than Roddenberry ever did. In the original, the hero, Kirk, freezes in indecision unable to save his love. Whereas the villain, Beckwith, takes the action that Kirk couldn't. For Roddenberry, people are consistent. For Ellison, people are not consistent from moment to moment. The latter is much more true to people than than the former.