Roddenberry was VERY good at swooping in at the last moment and saving a terrible situation, tops at crisis management... alas, if there was no crisis, he'd manufacture one. He apparently kept coming back to Ellison, who was a beginner writer at the time and didn't have a lot of power, telling him that the NBC execs had demanded this change and that change and it had to be done NOW, NOW, NOW... Ellison was literally on-set, typing with little in the way of sleep or food for DAYS. Turned out the NBC execs hadn't asked for any changes at all, it was just Roddenberry making a crisis so that he could solve it. (This was confirmed by outside sources, not just Ellison making a hero of himself.) Roddenberry made certain promises to Ellison about his script that he did not keep -- uppermost was that he'd keep in the script a legless WW1 veteran who was a beggar rolling around on a cart, who helps Kirk and Spock by getting them back their phaser from the bad guys at a critical moment. Um... no. Just no. Very dramatique and heart-tugging in a film, perhaps, but it didn't feel like Star Trek.
Frankly most of the changes made to Ellison's script are for the better, getting rid of convolutions in the plot, and as another benefit, made the episode cheaper to film by getting rid of superfluous characters -- the elimination of an ancient alien race and replacing it with the donut of time, the elimination of a pair of criminals on the Enterprise/making the injection an accident rather than a crime, getting rid of a time-line screw up that put space pirates up there instead of the Enterprise. How much more beautiful is it when Kirk looks up and NOTHING flies above the planet, rather than a space-pirate ship? And getting rid of Tripper, the crippled WW1 vet. Ellison REALLY loved Tripper.
However: Ellison's ending to the episode is WAY THE HELL more slashy than the simple "Forget" ending. I mean, over the frickin' top slashy! ;)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-12-19 09:17 pm (UTC)Roddenberry was VERY good at swooping in at the last moment and saving a terrible situation, tops at crisis management... alas, if there was no crisis, he'd manufacture one. He apparently kept coming back to Ellison, who was a beginner writer at the time and didn't have a lot of power, telling him that the NBC execs had demanded this change and that change and it had to be done NOW, NOW, NOW... Ellison was literally on-set, typing with little in the way of sleep or food for DAYS. Turned out the NBC execs hadn't asked for any changes at all, it was just Roddenberry making a crisis so that he could solve it. (This was confirmed by outside sources, not just Ellison making a hero of himself.) Roddenberry made certain promises to Ellison about his script that he did not keep -- uppermost was that he'd keep in the script a legless WW1 veteran who was a beggar rolling around on a cart, who helps Kirk and Spock by getting them back their phaser from the bad guys at a critical moment. Um... no. Just no. Very dramatique and heart-tugging in a film, perhaps, but it didn't feel like Star Trek.
Frankly most of the changes made to Ellison's script are for the better, getting rid of convolutions in the plot, and as another benefit, made the episode cheaper to film by getting rid of superfluous characters -- the elimination of an ancient alien race and replacing it with the donut of time, the elimination of a pair of criminals on the Enterprise/making the injection an accident rather than a crime, getting rid of a time-line screw up that put space pirates up there instead of the Enterprise. How much more beautiful is it when Kirk looks up and NOTHING flies above the planet, rather than a space-pirate ship? And getting rid of Tripper, the crippled WW1 vet. Ellison REALLY loved Tripper.
However: Ellison's ending to the episode is WAY THE HELL more slashy than the simple "Forget" ending. I mean, over the frickin' top slashy! ;)