So spake Harlan Ellison ...

[fajrdrako]

Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! ...This TV viewing will not harm you ... will, in fact, delight and uplift you, stretch your imagination; tickle your risibilities, cleanse your intellect of all lesser visual SF affections... Doctor Who is the apex, the pinnacle, the Louvre Museum, the top, the Coliseum, and other et cetera. -- Harlan Ellison

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I think so too - and it just so happens that "City on the Edge of Forever" is my favourite Star Trek episode. If only they'd all been that good! but I believe he had a falling out with the producers - ? As he so often did.

Not one of my favourite people, Harlan Ellison, but an interesting person.

[gryphons-lair.livejournal.com]

I believe he had a falling out with the producers - ?

"The Making of Star Trek" said so, but then it also said Roddenberry had never laid eyes on Nichelle Nichols before they met on the set. (They were actually in the middle of an affair at the time.)

But yeah, apparently Harlan didn't want anyone editing/reworking the script but him, which resulted in his putting rather more time in the project than anticipated. He also seems to have had some problems with changes they made to his version of the Guardian and its ruins to keep the sets within budget.

But Harlan doesn't exactly have a rep for being the most easy to get along with SF writer out there. *wry g*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that about Roddenberry and Nichelle Nichols - it just goes to show that you can't believe what you read!

That would explain Ellison's attitude, but also, he made a career of being clever, grouchy and cantankerous. So. His rep was well-earned.

[gryphons-lair.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that about Roddenberry and Nichelle Nichols

Yeah, it came out in her biography, IIRC. There was even a picture of her, Roddenberry, and his wife sharing a table in a restaurant.

Which was a total 180 from the quote from her in tMoST, where she claimed not to have had any clue who he was when he said something to her the first day on the set.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Well, she was an actress - obviously she was very good at keeping her secret!

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

Ellison had a falling out with Roddenberry.

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! ;)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

So - ? Now you have me curious! What happened in the slashy ending?

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

Hee! Spock talks to a devastated Kirk about how he's gonna take him to heal his heart, to Vulcan, "where silver birds sing against the sky." ::swoon::

;)

The "forget" ending is way more elegant and powerful, and more in character for Spock. And still pretty frickin' slashy.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

"where silver birds sing against the sky."

Oooh - how poetic! How romantic!

I like the 'forget' ending, but "silver birds" is better.