'The City on the Edge of Forever'....51 years ago today

On the 51st anniversary of the episode's broadcast, it's fitting that I would find this page:

http://www.missionlogpodcast.com/discovereddocuments/028/

Bob Justman's thoughts are often hilarious, but it also goes a long way to show the kinds of budgetary constraints that they were facing.

Harlan Ellison has made some good points over the years about what was done with the episode, but the fact is that a good share of what he wrote and how he wrote it would have been much too expensive to film.

 

Been drinking the cool-aid, huh?

ON EDIT: I think it was always more a matter of production staff not liking various elements of Ellison's story than concern over budget.

 

Would that be a reference to this?:

http://harlanellison.com/text/ellicult.htm

Harlan's views on "sci-fi" are a bit harsh. Sometimes even the downright schlocky stuff can lead creative thinkers to vastly improve upon ideas.

 

Nope, don't recall ever seeing that. Of course he didn't create the expression.

I'm fine with the opinions that our beloved Star Trek characters would not have acted as Ellison depicted, just not with the oft repeated lines from Roddenberry and others about "huge crowd scenes" and what-not that would have been so expensive to film.

 

Having read some of the scripts and many of the memos I think the staff all protest too much. Yes, the story had issues, but to be fair to Ellison the assignment for the script was one of the first given out for the show, and all that was available to view were the pilots. As such his first and approved story breakdowns were written before the characters were figured out in any meaningful way. And a lot of what they bitch about in these memos are right out of the outline they gave the script go-ahead to.

Eliison is no doubt a tough person to work with, and my gut is that he probably pushed back on the changes. I would love to know if anyone just sat down with him and went through the script and said, "this is too expensive for this reason" or "as our characters have developed this doesn't work now" followed by "so what can we do?"

 

My opinion is that is that it was GRs show and it was up to him what his characters did and he set the direction for his own show. GR already had enough bosses, Ellison was supposed to work for Gene not the other way around.

I feel sympathetic for Ellison - for his passion for his art. Its like you ask an architect to design a home and you insist on columns and gnomes and a cherub fountain. The architect might be horrified and hate it but its your home - hes got to do what you ask once he's taken the money.

But the episode turned out to be one of the best in Star Trek if not the best so I can't see why Ellison is that upset decades later. Its not like they made Keeler an ex-prostitute or something. Where Ellison complains that Kirk should have saved Edith at the end - I definitely think that that was GRs call about what he wanted to set up Kirk's character for the rest of the series.

Where they complained about the costs of Ellison's original script - it could have been easily stretched to a two-parter to conserve costs and keep Ellison's vision. But I don't think they were in 2-parter thought mode this early in the production. I worry that if you put in all of the original script the episode would have not been about Star Trek but too much about Ellison's own characters like the Gary 7 episode. Although I think Ellison and Fontana and GR could have worked around that.

 

But...but...Kirk's inability to save Edith at the end is one of the best parts of the episode!

 

To clarify an amibiguity from Commish's post (no offense, I hope!): as originally written, Kirk didn't actually succeed in saving Edith. It's just that in a moment of emotion, he tried to rush forward to save her, and had to be restrained by Spock. In the version that aired, it was McCoy who stepped forward, and Kirk who restrained him. The result is the same, but the emotional tone is different. GR's position was that Kirk wouldn't/couldn't put his own feelings ahead of his mission, even for a moment.

 

And GR was right. He got these characters because he created them. Ellison didn't. Basically, Ellison was a poor fit as a hired gun. It's that simple.

 

And, AGAIN, they approved that original ending at the story stage, and then changed their minds. Their prerogative. But he initially delivered what they'd given him the go-ahead to do.

Ellison claims he didn't start publicly bitching about the changes under Roddenberry started and persisted in telling untruths about his teleplay, including the ridiculous and oft-quoted "he had my Scotty dealing drugs!" rubbish. That many of Gene's mischaracterizations get repeated even here shows why someone like Ellison would get his back up.

And there wasn't enough story for a 2-parter, so that just asking for padding.

Finally, I've read the wretched version of the script Steve Carbatsos did. He broke more than he fixed, and we're lucky they didn't just cut off the story at that point Through all the hands the script passed through they whittled away some of the best bits of the original script for no good reason, just because no one seemed to see how things fit together or could fit together. I honestly think no one on the staff truly grokked the material.

 

Ah. Well, Kirk needing to be the one to stop McCoy knowing he's killing Edith in the process is still more poignant than Spock stopping Kirk would have been.

 

Yes sorry I meant tried to save her.

I thought they might have extended the stay in the 1930s to give Kirk a more realistic time to "fall in love" with Edith. I know that the few weeks was a comparative long time for Kirk but still... Maybe half way through the 1930s stay the tricorder could have blown and Kirk could have envisaged a permanent stay and a life with Edith. I don't think it would have been too hard to extend the story.
Wasn't there a background drugs story too and something about that guy who shot himself with the phaser. Why not put some of the good stuff back in? Was the Rand stuff just added for the comic? They could have explored the Guardian Planet more.

I thought it was great it turned out anyway.

 

Rodent, the bum who zapped himself with the phaser, was added in at some point after they deleted the much more poignant character of Trooper. The drugs angle was of course tied to the Beckwith character who was dropped after the first draft.

 

I can't remember the source for this, but: While Gene's claim Harlan having Scotty selling drugs is wrong, there is a slight basis for that assertion, that the way they were using character's early on it could have been assigned to that character. So Gene still made the most sensational statement he could, there was at least a maybe 0.5% truth to it. Not enough to justify it, but who knows what kind of drugs Gene was consuming by then.


BTW, Kool-Aid drinking is almost certainly a reference to Jonestown in Guyanna and that cult's mass suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid.

One last thing, I like Ellison for the most part but he's just complaining too much here about the story, I think the episode is very good as filmed, his version didn't sound too good to me. I do think he's got a legitimate beef with certain things, like the later allegations, but the story really didn't turn out bad, just not his.

 

Was the Rand stuff just added for the comic?

No. When Ellison began his first draft, Grace Lee Whitney was still with the show.

 

Was she just there? Was she frightened? Or was she kicking ass?

 

Sounds like there was enough material to do a 2-parter unless as Justman said the extra stuff was too boring.
Also the stuff with Rand would have made a big difference to the direction of her character. With "The Enemy Within" and :Miri" I would have then expected her to have defended herself more effectively - her role as damsel in distress would have changed.

 

I could see a character who has a basic knowledge of self-defense (minimum required in Starfleet) but who's never had to use it in real dangerous situations before (like a cop who's never fired his gun except on the firing range - most never use them on duty their whole careers). So the first couple of times catch her off-guard (Enemy - it's Kirk, for crying out loud, "Miri" - judo chopping children?), but she decides "never again-I'll be better prepared next time." So she takes advanced training courses (the Enterprise could offer extra training shipboard) and gradually becomes more sure of herself.

 

The whole Rand defends the transporter thing is a big nothing. It's frankly silly that all of history changes and yet the same ol' Enterprise is in orbit, just full of "renegades". The ship disappearing from history is much more dramatic than these (apparently) Roddenberry-requested histrionics.