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TrekInk: Review of Star Trek: Harlan Ellison's Original The City on the Edge of Forever Teleplay #5 + Preview and More
by Mark Martinez, trekmovie

LINK:
http://trekmovie.com/2014/11/19/trekink-review-of-star-trek-harlan-ellisons-original-the-city-on-the-edge-of-forever-teleplay-5-preview-and-more/

Look at these nifty posters. This is the more part.

[Bud Brewster]

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I especially like the last one. Wonderful artwork.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

Joan Collins was always very proud of her performance in this episode, and rightly so.

Although Harlan was miffed about the changes in his screenplay I think the episode as completed was the best single episode of ST:tos!

The story as filmed was not as complex as Harlan's original draft and actually was more filmable and direct in it's message.

[Bud Brewster]

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Wikipedia has an article about this episode, and one section is called Ellison/Roddenberry feud.

It's a shame that two such intelligent and creative people — Gene Roddenberry and Harlan Ellison — couldn't get along. But apparently there are some aspects of Ellison's original story that didn't sit well with Gene . . . and the problem wouldn't have been well received by the fans, either.

There was something in the story about drug dealing gong among the Enterprise crew. Roddenberry went around for years claiming that Scotty was the crewman dealing drugs in Ellis initial script, but eventually he admittedly he was mistaken about that.

On that point, I understand Gene's objection to that story element, because the heart and soul of Star Trek is the optimistic and idealistic hope that mankind would be (generally speaking) much less prone to some of our less admirable habits like drug abuse.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I think Harlan was pleased (generally speaking) with the adaptation of his 2 scripts that he did for The Outer Limits: "Demon With A Glass Hand" & "Soldier."

I don't think there's much else he wrote for television that he approved of how it was adapted.

[Bud Brewster]

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I read the fine Wikipedia article I mention above and learned some interesting things. For example, the crewmen who was dealing drugs was never Scotty in any of the many drafts that Ellison and several other people worked on.

Here's an excerpt from the article.
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The first version introduced Lieutenant Richard Beckwith, who is sentenced to death after he kills a fellow crewman when he is threatened with the exposure of his involvement in the illegal drug trade.

Beckwith is then escorted to the surface of a nearby planet alongside Kirk, with Spock to carry out the execution by firing squad. Because of the planet's atmosphere, they have to wear environmental suits. On arriving, they find an ancient civilization and the remains of a city — this was Ellison's "city on the edge of forever". It is inhabited by several 9-foot-tall (2.7 m) men, the Guardians of Forever, who protect an ancient time machine.
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That's drastically different from the final version of the episode, and it seems obvious that Ellison's version some illogical elements. For example, why would Kirk have the ship go to a planet with bad atmosphere and then beam down with group crewmen in environmental suits to serve as a firing squad?

Furthermore, why would they beam down to an area with aliens to execute the man? Didn't the sensors detect the presence of these nine-foot aliens and their super-high-tech time machine?

Sorry, but that's pretty sloppy story telling . . .

It seems more likely that Kirk would just order the condemned man to be tranquilized and then placed on the transporter pad. Kirk himself would activate the transporter and beam the man out into space.

The story in the actual episode eliminates all that nonsense and replaces it with much more interesting concepts, like the strange sensor readings caused by the Guardian, which in turn leads the Enterprise to the planet where the Guardian is located.

No "accidental" discovery of the tall aliens and the Guardian when they pick a random planet for the execution!

Instead of that, we get McCoy's accident with the hypo causing him to become irrational and beam down to the planet they've already arrived at, after which he leaps through the Guardian . . . etc. etc.

Simple and logical.

The article's description of Harlan Ellison's ten-month episode of strange behavior while he was writing and re-writing and re-re-writing the script for this episode — largely refusing to make the changes Roddenberry kept requesting — makes Ellis seem about as irrational as McCoy was from the cordrazine!

Hey . . . I wonder if Gene Roddenberry, D.C. Fontana, and the others who re-wrote the episode got the idea for McCoy's crazy behavior after they had to put with Harlan Ellison during all his!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Harlan thought that having Dr. McCoy accidentally inject himself was a ridiculous scene that showed the Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise as a pretty incompetent dolt.

I was curious as to just why the Enterprise couldn't locate Bones on the planet's surface with their sensors and return him via the transporter? I know, I know, they had to get the characters down on the planet for the story to evolve.

Perhaps the awesome power of the Guardian of Forever and the time displacement waves it radiated also adversely affected the ship's scanners. However, no such dialogue suggests this idea. And it would have been easily explained without requiring any visual effects or costing $$$.

Always fun to watch the scene where Edith Keeler and Kirk walk the streets of 1930's NY and see them pass by the store window with the lettering Floyd's Barbershop.

Interesting that Ellison utilized the trope of time travel in 4 of his outstanding scripts for sci~fi TV shows.

On The Outer Limits his classic Demon With A Glass Hand involved an android from the far future journeying to the past. Soldier, also done for TOL, had 2 combatants from the future accidentally transported into the past.

And on the rebooted Twilight Zone TV series his script for One Life Furnished In Early Poverty was about an adult writer who returns to his boyhood days.

The script he wrote and was never produced for Star Trek: The Motion Picture also had time travel as a key plot point to it.

Harlan Ellison was a brilliant writer and certainly not a one note author. But I found it intriguing that he returned to the theme of time travel a number of times and each time created terrific scripts.

[Bud Brewster]

[Pow]

Ah shucks, Bud, you're making me blush.

Same back at ya amigo.

[Pow]

Fun Facts For the original script for TCOTEOF } The illegal drug that Harlan Ellison created for his script was called the Jewels of Sound. Crewman Richard Beckwith is the dealer of the drug.

Upon murdering a fellow crewman, LeBeque, Beckwith flees the Enterprise by escaping to the planet of the Guardians.

It is Beckwith who jumps through the vortex into the 1930's era and alters time.

Captain Kirk has the line "Like a city on the edge of forever" when he and Mr. Spock first notice the ancient city.

The Guardians of Forever are described as being ''terribly old, nine feet tall, gray-silver in tone, shapeless beneath their long white robes.''

The ground is mist laden on the planet while it was not on the episode.

The gateway is called the ''Time Vortex of the Ancients.''

The gateway is a "pillar of flame, a shaft of light, a roiling brightness of smoke'' and not the construct we see on the episode.

Trooper was a character that HE created for his script that he was very fond of in the story.

Trooper was a legless vet who got around on a washboard on skates. He sold apples for a living and helps Kirk find crewman Beckwith and ultimately dies saving Kirk from a Phaser blast.

In the tragic finale it is Beckwith, not Dr.McCoy, who is stopped by Mr.Spock from saving Edith Keeler from being run down by a truck.

Beckwith in creating a time fracture is now condemned to appear in the heart of a supernova in a time loop over and over again.

The final scene has Mr.Spock saying to Captain Kirk:"No woman was ever loved as much, Jim. Because no woman was ever offered the universe for love."

Gene Roddenberry wanted Ellison to write into Ellison's script that the Enterprise was in jeopardy as part of the plot by space pirates.

Harlan hated the concept but knew that it was a favorite plot device by GR, even though GR always blamed NBC for insisting upon such a plot device when they really never did.

So Harlan created a scene where Kirk & Spock & Rand beam back up to the Enterprise from the planet only to discover that due to Beckwith's time leap that the timeline is now altered.

Instead of the Enterprise that Kirk & company knew, it is a different vessel operated by ruthless renegades.

[Pow]

More Trivia For TCOTEOF } When Harlan was asked to revise his script in order to have Dr. McCoy become a key figure in the story he created a new scenario.

Mysterious magnetic radiation has drawn the Enterprise to the unnamed planet.

The radiation is causing the chronometers to run backward and also having a strange effect upon the crew.

Bones has a zoological alien specimen hooked up to the metabolic panel on the wall of the Sickbay in order to study the effects of the radiation upon the small alien creature.

From the alien's blood sample they detect radiation poisoning.

The creature is described as "silver-blue, hairy, beady little eyes, maybe even an antenna. ''It was taken from the planet Spahfohn."

McCoy observes it as growing younger

The Enterprise begins to be rocked by shock waves arising from the surface of the planet.

Dr. McCoy is sent reeling into the alien creature which moves rapidly and bites Bones' hand.

The radiation poison in the creature's system is transmitted to Bones and in turn is the cause of his going berserk and fleeing the Enterprise by transporting down to the enigmatic planet.

[Bud Brewster]

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Hmm . . . interesting,

My opinion of that premise as a writer is that it's overly complex and inherently disconnected from the rest of the crew.

In short, I'm not impressed.

The story we see in the TOS episodes is lean, mean, and logical. The reason for McCoy's mental instability occurs right on the bridge during the performance of his duties as Chief Medical Officer . . . not some experiment down in sick with a critter that bit him!

I can't for the life of me figure out why Harlan Ellison is so highly regarded!

Hell, he doesn't even have his own message board like All Sci-Fi!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[scotpens]

[Pow]

I actually prefer the alien creature chomping down on Bones hand and infecting him over the accidental hypo-spray scene.

The idea being it would have been fun to see an alien life form.

Trouble is that back in the 60s they could not really create a cool looking creature given the special FX that existed.

They did do such a creature on the episode "The Enemy Within." They took a small dog & put antenna on its head.
And that's just what it looked like unfortunately.
I'll give 'em an A for effort even though the result was a failure.

Now today with the fantastic development of animatronics or CGI they could truly create a remarkable alien looking animal.

[Eadie]

I presume you meant this little cutie:





There is even a kick-starter campaign to identify who's pet played the Alfa 177 creature:


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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.