Harlan Ellison: Star Trek Was Just "A Cop Show"

Discussion in 'General Trek Discussion' started by cooleddie74, Jan 21, 2019.

  1. GNDN18

    GNDN18 270 Rear Admiral

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    Doohan was a featured player during the production run. That’s a matter of fact. Ask Harvey and Maurice: they’ve seen the memos and the contracts. Ask anyone who’s seen the end titles, for all love.

    I was merely imagining what Scotty would have thought; we’re heroes of our own stories, right?
     
  2. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    Scotty was at the center of two stories - "Wolf in the Fold" and "The Lights of Zetar." Doohan was a contracted regular for the second and third seasons (in the first season, he had a commitment for multiple episodes, but contractually, was considered a recurring player, not a regular). He was a secondary character.

    Uhura and Sulu were at the center of exactly zero stories. Nichols was only a regular for the first 13 episodes of season two; before and after that she did not have the contract and was paid by the day. Takei was a regular for the first two seasons; after that, he did not have a contract and was paid by the day. Neither Uhura nor Sulu received a first name, either on screen or in behind-the-scenes materials. They're secondary players at their most prominent; in most stories, they're tertiary ones.
     
  3. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I said one of the four lead characters. Next to the three members in the Troika the character who got the most screentime, dialogue and stuff to do was Scotty.

    Being one of the top four characters in importance and seniority isn't the same thing as being one of the leads in the series but it does matter in the context of the series narrative.
     
  4. GNDN18

    GNDN18 270 Rear Admiral

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    7F43CB6D-45A5-4F4C-BE38-0D0B95B28738.jpeg
     
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  5. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    I don't know that I'd go as far as calling Uhura and Sulu "token". The stars were the stars and everyone else was a second banana (except Scotty), so of course they weren't the focus of episodes. They could have cast anyone in those roles, but they decided to show a broader than white-bread crew, both in speaking and non-speaking parts. If that's "token"ism so be it.
     
  6. Spider

    Spider Dirty Old Man Premium Member

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    Back in the early 70s Ellison was a big deal new-wave writer and editor. He wrote and edited some good stuff. But he was then and always has been a literary snob and asshole.
     
  7. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I guess you could say you...Augmented my original post.

    YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH
     
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  8. J.T.B.

    J.T.B. Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Barney didn't get a send-off, he was just gone the next season and they said he had gotten a job with the police department in Raleigh. They did an episode to try out Jerry Van Dyke as a possible replacement deputy, but just said Barney was out of town. Don Knotts did come back later as a guest and filled in the details of Barney's new life.

    Ellie Walker and Warren Ferguson just disappeared and were never mentioned again.
     
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  9. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Ellison's venom wasn't so much over the fact that he was rewritten, but that he thought he was rewritten badly. He thought that the space pirate stuff he had to add in was stupid, hated that McCoy accidentally injected himself with his own hypo, disliked the elimination of his original characters Beckwith and Trooper, and outright despised that they changed his original ending. Ellison's P.O.V. was that Kirk loved Edith Keeler so much that he could never have sacrificed her life even to save the timestream, while the ever-logical Spock would've done what needed to be done. Obviously, Roddenberry felt differently.

    And the fact that Roddenberry lied about Ellison's story for decades afterwards didn't help. If I were in Ellison's shoes, I'd be pissed off, too.
    Excellent point. If you don't like the story that your freelancer wants to tell, don't buy that story.
    When Ellison wrote "Demon With A Glass Hand" for The Outer Limits, he originally conceived the story as a much more expensive cross-country chase with different locations. At the producer's suggestion, Ellison re-conceived the story as all happening in one location, the Bradbury Building in L.A., with a force field keeping all the characters confined inside the building and the immediate area.

    So yeah, he was pretty flexible if you treated him well and were willing to collaborate with him instead of just rewriting him without any consultation.
    To be fair, Ellison originally pitched COTEOF early in the first season, when the characters and world of Star Trek were much less established. By the time he turned in his story, Trek had almost an entire season under its belt and things were more set. So the sands were shifting underneath him.
    :wtf::wtf::wtf: ...What? I mean, seriously... WHAT?!?

    "They changed the character because someone could've possibly rewritten him as Scotty" makes absolutely no sense at all. I mean, they could've also rewritten the Kirk part to be Yeoman Rand or recruited Elizabeth Montgomery over from Bewitched to play Spock that week. Either one of those theories makes about as much sense, and has as much evidence behind it.

    Any who were these evil outside forces who could've rewritten Beckwith into Scotty, anyway? What would their motivation for this change be? With the period setting, COTEOF was an expensive episode to begin with. Why get the presumably more-expensive James Doohan to play Scotty when a non-name guest actor playing Beckwith would've been just as effective?
    Agreed.
    Why is it automatically bad to mention good things that you've done in your life? Why shouldn't Ellison talk about that stuff? Those are things to be proud of.

    And Sinatra had mob ties throughout most of his career. He was hardly a paragon of virtue. Sinatra probably stayed quiet about integrating the Vegas scene because, in the 50s and 60s, that would've alienated at least half of his fanbase. At least Ellison put his money where his mouth was and took public stands on racial relations.
    True. A lead would've been in every single episode and had his name in the opening credits the way that Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley did. Doohan was supporting cast.
    Hey, the truth hurts.
    Exactly.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2019
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  10. Refuge

    Refuge Vice Admiral Admiral

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    He (Harlan) may have been correct with early Star Trek being like a cop show but what we have with current Trek exampled by Discovery is like a messed up version. The cops are dirty! Season One was like gang warfare, whoever possesses the biggest weapon gets to preach the morals.
     
  11. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    "City" was one of the earliest stories they bought. Ellison turned in a first draft long before the show hit the air, then got busy with another project so his next draft was months later. His first draft was pretty much what the purchased story outline was, so, as @JonnyQuest037 says, the sands shifted under his feet. We know early on John D.F. Black wanted to let the writers write and not have the staff rewrite them, but that didn't happen. Once Black was out and Carabatsos was in he tried a rewrite that was a train-wreck, but introduced Bones injecting himself, etc. I'd have to pull out all my notes, but as I recall Coon then did a revised outline, Fontana got tossed the live grenade, Coon did a rewrite, and then Roddenberry got his mitts on it. In the process they threw the baby out with the bathwater.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2019
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  12. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, after that many rewrites by that many different hands, it's a wonder that any of Ellison's original story remained.

    Interestingly, D.C. Fontana didn't tell Ellison about the fact that she was one of the people who rewrote "City" until she wrote one of the afterwords for the book edition of his original script in the mid-90s. They were friends and she didn't want to damage that.
     
  13. Ricky

    Ricky Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Scotty is a secondary character for sure, but I think he's also the secondary character who's given the most utility and focus. Perhaps due to his scenes having a bit more intensity. When Sulu and Uhura get a line or two they are generally just chilling on the bridge, whereas a typical Scotty scene has him with a sweat on, staring up a Jeffries Tube and telling the captain something is impossible and they are all going to die in three minutes.

    Doohan brings something very charming to the character as well. He's personable in a way that Sulu and Chekov aren't. Sulu is a bit too virtuous for my liking and Chekov is a bit of a twat. If I saw them in the mess hall I'd pretend I didn't see them and sit somewhere else. If I saw Scott though, I'd definitely go and have a chat. He's a bit rough and tumble. No bullshit Scott. Just don't say anything bad about the NCC 1701.

    I think that's why he resonates with viewers. Amidst all the nuts and melodrama that is TOS, Scott tends to end up looking like the only sane person onscreen. He doesn't work in the clean, gentle environment of the bridge very often. He's in the engine room keeping everything going, getting his hands dirty and getting a sweat on so that Kirk/Spock can have the impossible. He's not a captain or a scientist or a doctor. He's an engineer. A skilled labourer. A touch of the 'working' class on board the Enterprise.

    Scotty is the Primary among the Secondaries. I think had TOS gone to a fourth or fifth season as hoped then eventually Doohan would have been granted billing with Shatner/Nimoy/Kelly and I think from all the secondary cast, Doohan would have been the one who could actually point to his characters extra prominence and demand it. Possibly Koenig would have been able to in a potential fourth/fifth season too.

    Of course it would have been nice if they all just got their names in the credits. Cest la vie.
     
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  14. Takeru

    Takeru Space Police Commodore

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    There weren't four lead characters. That Scotty had the most to do from the non leads doesn't matter, he still was a supporting character. The show was defined by the Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic, Scotty was never part of that.
     
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  15. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

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    I was just reminded of another example, from the other side of the pond...on The Avengers, Mrs. Peel got an exit episode in which she passed the torch to Tara King.
     
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  16. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I was just watching Season 6 episodes of Hogan's Heroes and the first black member of the cast (Ivan Dixon, who played Kinchloe for the first five seasons from 1965 through 1970) was replaced during the series' final season by Sgt. Baker, played by another black actor (Kenneth Washington). I don't think the show ever explained what happened to Kinchloe and why he disappeared from the prison camp nor why Baker replaced him.

    Some characters just disappear because the actors get fired or decide to leave that particular series, and unless the writers feel it's necessary to explain where the character went and why they might not even bother. Continuity wasn't the sticking point in the 1960s and 1970s that it is now and sometimes characters just vanished when they outlived their usefulness. Grace Lee Whitney got fired from TOS and thus Gene and the producers just went on without her, as crass as that may seem. She was no longer useful to them.
     
  17. Gary7

    Gary7 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I think calling it a "cop show" is a painful over generalization. Sure, the Federation was about law and order in space -- keeping hostile aliens from doing bad things. But that's just one aspect. The Enteprise was on a mission of exploration and discovery. They also did some general service missions, like ferrying special envoys and people to various locations. Any military outfit is a form of law enforcement... and Starfleet is military.

    Another thing, is that in the 1960's, the perception of the USA was that it was the leading country for bringing peace and order to the world. Gene's vision kind of harped on that. Little did he know how bad it was, the manipulation of other nations, puppet regimes and such... USA's hands got pretty damned dirty.
     
  18. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I think Ellison meant "cop show" in a broader sense than that. Yes, the characters functioned somewhat as intergalactic policemen, but Ellison also meant "cop show" as a shorthand for "mediocre TV." Formulaic stuff where the main characters always did the right thing and the good guys always won. That criticism is harder to deny. A Star Trek that used the original ending of Ellison's "The City on the Edge of Forever," where Kirk can't bring himself to let Edith Keeler die but the coldly logical Spock could, certainly would have been an edgier, more daring show than the one we got.
     
  19. Ryan Thomas Riddle

    Ryan Thomas Riddle Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I've always said that the original ending of Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever" says a helluva a lot more about humanity and the human condition than 700+ hours of aired Star Trek.
     
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  20. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It frankly amazes me that they didn't find a way to keep Ellison's last line, "No woman was ever loved as much, Jim, because no woman was ever offered the universe for love." How the hell do you edit that out?
     
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