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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bottled Anger Erupting On Page, May 9, 2001
For more than thirty years now, controversy has raged over the fan favorite Star Trek episode, "City on the Edge of Forever." Here, Ellison gives us the story of his script, how it was written, then rewritten numerous times, finally to the point where he disavowed it, trying to put his nom de plume, Cordwainer Bird as author. The book, which starts as an interesting piece of, if not Trekker lore, television behind the scenes, quickly becomes a (likely justified) character assassination of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Plenty of evidence is presented to prove the claims of dishonesty by Roddenberry against not only Ellison, but other creators. "City" is not the first tome to assert Roddenberry's credit stealing or lack of writing ability (although it has never been put so succinctly as when Ellison says Roddenberry, "couldn't write worth sour owl poop.") In three separate interviews printed here, Roddenberry claims that Ellison's script was unfilmable for two reasons. One, he had several crewmen acting out of character and two he was over budget. Taking these one at a time, Roddenberry was actually quoted as saying, "He [Ellison] had my Scotty dealing drugs!" Scotty does not appear on the script anywhere. Several times Roddenberry had apologized for his mistake, but he never seemed to stop making it. Although Scotty was not dealing drugs, another character created just for this episode, Lt. Beckwith, is dealing in Jewels of Sound, a sonic narcotic. Roddenberry objected to having any of his perfect crew showing such poor character. Perhaps this was Roddenberry's complaint, and not defamation of Scotty, but Starfleet officers in general, whom Roddenberry never wanted to show with conflicts or flaws. As for the second issue, budget reports reprinted here show Ellison did go over budget $66,000, which is a negotiable amount. Ellison proved he was willing to rewrite to accommodate expenses; he did so three times without pay, something that is against the rules for producers to ask writer's to do, according to the Writer's Guild of America. Roddenberry's claim of being $300,000 over budget is ludicrous and, I would hope, just a result of bad memory and not a willful lie. No one else is safe from Ellison's legendary wrath, either. He recounts an incident with William Shatner, who had requested to be the absolute first to read Ellison's completed script for "City". Ellison invited Shatner into his home (after Shatner wipes out his motorcycle showboating in his driveway.) to examine the script. And examine it he does-for several hours. Thus we had the first request for a rewrite, because Shatner had counted the lines he had, and realized that Leonard Nimoy had a handful more. Such were the egos involved here. What exasperates the point to almost unbearable levels is that the original script, unfilmed and owned exclusively by Ellison, won a Writer's Guild of America award, while the filmed version ("a thalidomide baby version of my script", according to Ellison) won a Hugo in 1967 for Best Dramatic Presentation, the only teleplay ever to do so. Ellison accepted the Hugo award in "memory of the script they butchered, and in respect to those parts of it that had the vitality to shine through the evisceration." One is compelled to ask, then: Is the script really that great? In a word, yes. As a piece of writing, the original "City on the Edge of Forever" is a touching story. I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of a legless World War I veteran named Trooper who becomes a tragic hero, so important and yet, unimportant. He is a very poignant character I would have liked to have seen added to Trek lore. Ellison's original script has an officer, Beckwith, dealing in drugs and then escaping to a nearby planet. Beaming down after him, Kirk and crew discover the Guardians of Forever, who watch over a beautiful ancient city. As in the filmed version, a portal shows the crew events from Earth history, but Beck with is the one to jump through to escape, not McCoy. He is also the one who saves Edith Keeler and changes history. The love story between Kirk and Keeler is played up, and becomes all the more tragic as Kirk honestly contemplates sacrificing for love the future, as it should be. In the end, Spock must grab and hold Beckwith as Keeler is killed, there by setting the time stream right again. Beckwith jumps back through the portal and lands in the heart of a sun and is forced to repeat that cycle forever. This book is worth a read through, particularly just to have a copy of the original script. A good seventy pages is nothing but an angry rant by Ellison that true fans of his will enjoy, but others will think is just fussy and unnecessary. Because of this episode's status in the hearts and minds of fans everywhere, the battle to claim credit for it may never cease. Ellison, however, makes a fine case here.
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37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Angry Man's CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER, November 24, 2001
This book is divided into three parts. The first part is an extremely long, bile-filled introductory essay from the pen of author Harlan Ellison. The second part, and the meat of the text, is the actual script treatments of CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER, with two additional revised scenes at the end written after Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek's creator and executive producer) insisted that certain elements of the story be removed or changed. The final part is a collection of afterwords written by various people to have worked with Ellison over the years, particularly those who were familiar with the conflict between himself and Gene Roddenberry - the Great Bird Of The Galaxy.Harlan Ellison's introductory essay is a delightful, 72-page, no-holds-barred rant concerning the circumstances behind the Original Star Trek episode, CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER. The essay, filled with some of the most creative insults you'll see this side of a Don Rickles' act, is easily worth the price of admission by itself. In it, Ellison starts at the very beginning, painstakingly detailing the events behind the writing of the script, continues through the fights during the production and then screams about everything that took place after the show had ended. Ellison includes numerous photocopies of damning documents that build a very convincing case for his side of the argument. It's laughable the number of things that Gene Roddenberry thought he could get away with saying at Star Trek conventions. My favourite is that Roddenberry would state during a speech that Harlan Ellison "had my Scotty dealing drugs!" When Ellison would contact Roddenberry to complain about the inaccuracy of that statement, as Scotty wasn't even in the original outline, the producer would admit his mistake and promise never to say that again. Yet the next time Roddenberry gave a speech or an interview, the "he had my Scotty dealing drugs!" line would be back. Also worthy of note, is the supposed cost of the script that kept getting more and more expensive the more that Roddenberry would talk about it. It seems odd that Ellison claims to have been mostly silent on this topic over the years since the production. Judging by this introduction alone, it's hard to imagine him being silent on any topic at all. Still it's an amazingly entertaining rant, and a testament to what bottling up anger for about twenty-five years will do to a writer. On to the actual script. Compared to the version that was actual transmitted as the Star Trek episode, the guts of the story are relatively the same. Kirk and Spock go back in time to the 1930s to prevent history from becoming perverted due to a rogue time traveler. There are a number of important elements that are different enough and change the light in which several powerful scenes are played out. Spock is much colder here, and more like the alien creature seen in the original character outline and in the second pilot episode. The opening is completely changed, as it isn't McCoy who goes back in time, but an officer on the Enterprise who is caught dealing psychedelic drugs (showing us a grittier, dirtier, less idealistically perfect, more realistic version of Starfleet than Gene Roddenberry wanted to portray). The relationship between Kirk and Edith Keeler is also slightly different and the ending (I won't spoil it), while sharing certain elements from the transmitted version, is turned completely around. Both the original ending and the alternative version are powerful, but it's interesting to see the differences in them from the standpoint of the men who created them. Ellison's version is starkly realistic, showing a human, flawed side to Kirk's character. Roddenberry's adaptation is much more idealistic, with characters who instinctively do "the right thing" no matter how difficult it should be for them. However, some of the changes made make sense from the standpoint of the producer. Star Trek was, of course, a continuing series and several of the elements introduced in the script just wouldn't work inside the confines of the universe that Gene Roddenberry had created. As a standalone story, this original script is fantastic, but it doesn't make sense to see such gritty and flawed human beings when every other story has shown Starfleet officers to be perfect Supermen. Ellison's vision may have been more dramatic, but I can sympathize with a production team that was attempting to construct a coherent serial storyline. While Harlan Ellison's Star Trek may have ended up being better then what we got, it does make a certain sort of sense for many of his ideas to have been toned down when writing for Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. That said, however, I do think that a compromise situation (losing some of Roddenberry's idealness) could still have worked in this case. The afterwords are a bit of a mixed bag. Several of them do little more than take up space and to give Harlan Ellison a good character reference. One or two of them make for interesting reading, as few of the Star Trek production team give their two cents as to what exactly was going on at their end of the debate. The book is definitely worth getting, if only for the hilarious introductory remarks. Ellison's argument is quite argued coherently and the evidence he includes is extremely incriminating. The amazingly fun and witty way in which he carefully demolished practically everything that Gene Roddenberry has said about the subject makes for quite entertaining reading. The script itself is very enjoyable and very effective at tugging at the heartstrings without feeling manipulative or exploitative. Fans of Star Trek should definitely check this out, if only to see how different this is from the transmitted version. While much of the prototype shines through to the finished script, it's fascinating to see the original path taken with the concepts that Ellison created.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Loved the Essay and the Episode...The Script? See Below..., May 17, 1999
By A Customer
Harlan Ellison's bitter introductory essay is the absolute finest reason to buy this book. He handily deconstructs the myth that has been Gene Roddenberry in a literate, angry rant that makes the reader almost experience a vein-throbbing aneurysm as an act of pure empathy. I myself had to be hospitalized for several days after exposure to his acidic version of what went down. That having been said, I'm still a fan of the televised version of The City on the Edge of Forever and I think it was an improvement on Ellison's original draft. The number one reason is (as D.C. Fontana points out in her afterword) that Ellison's script just wasn't very series television friendly. The City and the Guardians as originally envisioned by Ellison could have never been delivered to his satisfaction given the special effects/makeup limitations of the time and would have been a legitimate budgetary concern. Personally, I think it was a stroke of genius to make the Guardian actually BE the gateway and substituting the original antagonist of the drug-dealing Beckwith (what's the street value on a Jewel of Sound, by the way?) with the accidentally doped-up but otherwise decent Dr. McCoy simply made more sense from a TV standpoint. Ellison's addition (okay, okay at Roddenberry's insistence) of space pirates came off as silly and the Enterprise simply ceasing to exist was certainly more profound than having them turn into a ship full of buccaneers. What I find incredibly interesting in the reading of Ellison's essay and the various afterwords are the unanimous suggestions that Roddenberry wanted HIS Starfleet people to be portrayed as perfect and uncorrupt while refusing to address the many episodes made under Roddenberry's supervision that depicted imperfect and corrupt Starfleet personnel. In Charlie X, the captain of the USS Antares passes Charlie off on the Enterprise even though he suspects the young man is a dangerous force and only tries to warn them when he figures his own vessel is a safe distance away. In Court-Martial, a Starfleet officer fakes his own death so as to incriminate Captain Kirk. Don't even get me started on John Gill and his little Nazi-experiment on the planet Ekos. Of all the people involved with this book, only Peter David took the trouble to write about this obvious double standard while not offering a theory to explain it. I have little doubt that Gene Roddenberry did have the most fond desire to have the universe he's credited with creating (he had a LOT of help) populated by the most brave and perfect human beings and I also have little doubt that he paid lip service to this concept throughout his life but it was obviously a desire he was able to put aside when the story demanded it. The simple truth is that The City on the Edge of Forever didn't need the arch-villain Beckwith to set in motion the events that resulted in the brief annihilation of the universe as James Kirk knew it. Point of fact: it was an act of mercy and kindness (the snatching away of Edith Keeler before she met her demise under the wheels of the beer truck) that caused this annihilation and was certainly much more in character for the kindly Dr. McCoy than some evil junior officer dealing space-crack. Ellison made much to-do of the changing of his original ending (which I won't reveal here) but I have to say that the one that was filmed has endured in my mind as more affecting than any thing I have seen on Star Trek to date with the possible exception of Spock's death in Star Trek II. Isn't it human that Kirk had the desire to give up his universe for the woman he loved but in the end sacrificed her and his happiness so that millions would live? Isn't it human that he had the desire but in the end did what was right? Isn't it more heroic? To Ellison's credit, the basic story is all there in his original script so City is his baby, albeit a bastard one with many vying to be the father. I doubt that the multiple fingerprints it endured on its way to the screen could have fashioned such a piece of TV history without Ellison's apt jump-start. For those of you who reviewed the book and wondered if Ellison had ever even seen an episode of Star Trek when he wrote his script, I would suggest that you read the book again and put yourself in the time and place. Ellison turned in his first treatment in March of 1966 and the second in May of that same year. Star Trek hadn't even premiered yet. The only episodes that were probably in the can at that time were the two pilots. It's quite possible Ellison was able to view those episodes in preparation for writing a Star Trek script but bear in mind that Spock was the only character in The Cage who appeared in the series and he wasn't really the Spock that we all know and love. Likewise, the characters as they appeared in Where No Man Has Gone Before were still characters in flux so Ellison had a lot of room to play around. I admit that reading Ellison's script gives one the initial reaction that he missed the characters by a country mile when it came to dialogue and mannerisms and I have no doubt the even the most casual Star Trek fan could summon exchanges between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy so authentic sounding that they would put Ellison's attempt to shame but just bear in mind that he did not have the benefit of experiencing Trek as a thirty-year old cultural icon. This was a guy who was in on the ground floor, folks. And in spite of my personal opinion on what he came up with, he is still the person who built The City on the Edge of Forever.
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