The perfect future: Roddenberry or Ellison?

I just finished a re-watch of City on the Edge of Forever, and I wonder... Was the utopian vision of the future due to Gene Roddenberry, or was it due to Ellison's writing in this episode? I know this aired roughly in the middle of the TOS run, but how much emphasis was placed on the idyllic future beforehand? Or was most after the fact?

 

Well, first COTEO4E, was in the first season. Second, Roddenberry did not become a "Utopian" until his post 1970's lecture period where he pondered the future of mankind moving on the road of new humanism. This view was most evident in the first season of The Next Generation.

 

Ellison vision of 23rd century drug traffickers/dealers and drug dependent Starfleet officers hardly seem "utopian."

 

Don't forget the off-screen massacre!

 

Yeah, well, since that didn't make it to the screen, there's no point in bringing it up.

 

That's rather disingenuous, isn't it? You can't really give Harlan Ellison a potential 'credit' for the Utopian vision without taking into account his actual script details- regardless of whether they remained in the episode or not.

If anything, those details paint a picture actually more flawed and 'non-utopian' than Roddenberry ever tried- not that he really tried, mind you. He may not have taken on a 'Visionary' aspect until later but he rarely ever showcased humans in the 23rd Century as anything other than, well, boringly well-rounded.

 

I feel like TOS didn't really depict the 'perfect' future. It was better than ours because they can fly around the galaxy and investigate things and solve problems and we presume everyone on Earth got on, as we saw from the multiracial crew, but our view was a crew of a spaceship working together in a quasi-military organisation so of course they would. I don't think COTEOF tells us anything concrete about their future either, just that it's a hell of a lot better than the alternate one. At the very least this idea of a united Earth was there from the start so if anyone deserves credit it's Roddenberry.

 

The only “utopian” thing about City is Edith’s speech at the mission about man harnessing the atom, curing diseases, working together in peace and harmony (paraphrasing), and the future being the time worth living for. Ellison definitely did not write that, and in his book “COTEOF”, he attributes that dialog (which he hated) 100% to Roddenberry.

When I think of Ellison’s fiction, the word “dystopian” comes to mind, not utopian.

 

It was better future, but not a Utopian one.

 

I soaked up all of Ellison's writing when I was in my teens and 20s. His visions of the future were generally pretty damn bleak. Which at the time, were just right for this morose antisocial nerd.

 

Exactly why TOS was, and still is, more interesting than TNG ever will be. TOs was aspirational. "We ain't perfect (yet) - but we're trying real hard" is a more entertaining through-line than "we've solved all our problems back on Earth and we're here to solve yours".

 

Probably also why "The Orville" is getting such a warm reception from the Trek community - it has the same aspirational situation. Whereas (though I like it a lot) Discovery's message seems to be "we're at war - so trying to be better is on pause right now".

 

Ellison version of the future didn't make it on screen because other (superior) writers took major portions of Ellison vision out of the script.

But it was his intention that that vision be persented.

Roddenberry's future (TOS) had some alarming aspects. Treaty ports, government official sending people to penal colonies (apparently) just on their say so, transporting dangerous animals potentially carrying a twenty year prison sentence (excessive sentencing), psychological "adjustment' of civilian prisoners.

Mixed blessing at best.

 

Probably the funniest thing I've ever read here. Intentional?

 

Well, this is how you "unite" with half the world's population of mafia-run totalitarians and ideological groupthink zealots. You don't ask them to answer for ethics or morals. Doctrine's your carte blanche.

 

There is no such thing as "perfection".

 

+1
If Ellison's version of our future = "Demon With A Glass Hand" <--- Yeah, count me out.

 

Deliberate. Ellison's work was unshootable, it took people superior in the writing of a professional script to turn Ellison's half-assed ideas into something a television company could use.

So yes, superior writers.

Noname-Given mentioned Demon With A Glass Hand, it was Robert Justman who changed Ellison original idea of shooting small scenes all over Los Angeles, to the story taking place inside a single building. Starting in the basement and working up through the building to the roof.

Ellison's original idea simple wouldn't have worked, too much time, too much money.

 

True. TOS, exemplified in episodes like "A Taste of Armageddon", has Kirk admitting to Anan7 humans are killers... "but not today". Shatner pretty much ensured he was perfectly cast as Kirk for that scene alone. It's one of Trek's better stories, where the plot may be superficial and constrained but the set pieces that tie into it are of so much greater value.

TNG feels like evolution from TOS when humanity did finally get close to that point. After all, if humans didn't evolve from cavemen times, imagine how much worse it would be. Or better, it depends on what frame and mind and contexts you're wanting to consider at the time.

But TOS also did the "We're here to solve yours", as "Errand of Mercy" is very quick to demonstrate and in a way more than what feels like 90% of all TOS in general where Kirk or other major character either says how computers turn people into automations, or - far more dramatic - makes the computer go all splodey cuz' computers should not be doing humans' work for them - just what sort of acid were they all doping in the 1960s anyhow? Episodes involving such anti-computer sentiment - aka "compuphobia" - include but may not be limited to: "Return of the Archons", "The Apple", "The Ultimate Computer", "I, Mudd", "The Changeling", 1979 TMP, "A Taste of Armageddon", "The Conscience of the King", etc...

 

Reading his script for COTEoF, Ellison had/has a bad habit of telling the director and cinematographer how to do their jobs, which is especially bad since he obviously doesn't know. He claimed a porthole in Kirk's quarters was essential to the final scene, when the desk monitor could easily suffice for the same effect, for instance.