SCRIPT REVIEW: “Harlan Ellison’s The City on the Edge of Forever,“ Part II: The Original Teleplay (1995)
Yesterday we reviewed Harlan Ellison’s awkwardly titled 1995 tome, “Harlan Ellison’s The City on the Edge of Forever, The Original Screenplay that Became the Classic Star Trek Episode, With an Expanded Introductory Essay by Harlan Ellison.” There were essentially *two* issues going on in that book - on the one hand we had the struggle between the Artist par excellence, and The Man Who Would Be God; and then you also had this script thing tossed in there.
I’m being glib, of course. The script is what the book was all about, it’s what caused all the fuss after all, and yet it’s merely an opening salvo in the much larger war between Roddenberry and Ellison, and as such it’s almost insignificant on some levels. By comparison, the American Civil War was inevitable, and even if somehow the shooting managed to be avoided at Fort Sumter, it *would* have happened a day or a week or a month later somewhere else over basically the same issues. Likwise, had Lee prevailed at Ghettysburg, he would have been defeated at some unsought battle history managed to avoid, at Harrisburg, or Baltimore, or wherever. With issues that big and fundamental, it’s certain that the bowling ball will begin to roll eventually, and once it gets going, perhaps you can brush it to one side or the other a little bit, but it is certainly not going to stop until it reaches the end of the lane. The fundamental conflict at hand between Roddenberry and Ellison was clearly like this, and in such a setting the actual triggering event can get lost in the fuss.
Which is a shame, because in this case the actual trigger - the script for “The City on the Edge of Forever” is a fine, fine story that really deserves to be seen an enjoyed.
This is not the best script ever written - hell, it isn’t even the best thing Ellison’s ever done - but it is really really good, and far above average, and it would have been a fine addition to the Trek cannon, had it been done as written.
Ellison gives us a lot of overlapping material to sift through here - two treatments, a complete original script, and an entire section of his first rewrite. For some this might be daunting or simply annoyingly repetitive, since it is basically the *same* story over and over, but personally I found it fascinating since it allowed us to watch the evolution of the tale *in* Harlan’s own mind.
The overall story is superficially pretty close to the episode everyone already knows: Enterprise discovers a planet with a time portal, a crewmember freaks out and travels back in time, thus creating a paradox and screwing up everything for everyone everywhere. Kirk and Spock travel back in time to fix the problem, there’s a love story involving a missionary lady who is fated to die, history is repaired, and everyone lives happily ever after…excepting the dead lady, of course. The details make the difference, however, and they’re all that separate the filmed version of “City” (Re-written by DC Fontana) from the vastly superior original version by Ellison.
In the first treatment, the Enterprise is tooling around doing whatever it is they do when the cameras aren’t rolling on them. There’s a junior officer named “Beckwith” who’s pushing drugs on the enterprise, and he’s gotten a man named “La Beck” hooked on “The Jewels of Sound,” a particularly interestingly thought-out and entirely addictive psychotropic drug. Beckwith is doing this to get information about their missions, and to trade with the local natives on whatever new worlds they come to in order to make a personal fortune. When his hitch in Starfleet is up, he intends to retire a wealthy man.
(While this may seem inconsistent with Trek as realized today, it’s important to note that economics did furtively come in to play on TOS, and the entire franchise had not become so rigidly communistic as it became in the TNG era)
After a near-accident while under the influence, La Beck has had enough and decides to give himself up. Before he can do so, Beckwith kills him, and is quickly captured by security. He’s placed on trial, found guilty, and will be executed and buried just as soon as they can find an uninhabited world. We’re told that the Enterprise is in “The Coal Sack Nebula” which is “In Between Galaxies” and that planets are few and far between, so this might
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Tue, 10/19/2010 - 11:47
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ok, where to begin?
First of all, the reason for Edith Keeler's importance (which you admittedly missed in the script and apparently also missed in the aired episode) is in the final and complete version. Reading through your review, I was beginning to think that was a DC Fontana thing, because I always wondered why a screaming liberal (at least I perceive him that way) like Harlan Ellison would have written a story in which the moral, essentially, is that we as Americans can not afford to sit idly by and not do our part in keeping the world safe. Especially during the time of the Vietnam War when all the hippies and liberals were telling us that we should be doing exactly what Edith advocated during WW2--keep our nose out of it. I have always interpreted this episode of Trek as meaning that staying out of other nations' problems is bad foreign policy, and I agree with that. I just didn't know Harlan Ellison really felt that way.
Anyway, not having read the full script myself (which I fully intend to do) I have to say I like the aired version of the story better. Again, this may change if and when I read the thing myself. I do, however, like the idea of McCoy being bitten my an animal which causes him to lose his mind better than the Cordrozine overdose thing. They should have kept that.
I am also imminently glad they did away with the drug pusher thing. It doesn't fit. It is not in keeping with Trek, nor do I feel Trek *should* have been that way. I hated that from the first few lines of the article. Also, and again it could come from ignorance of the actual script, I think the final aired version did a better job of fleshing out the romance between Kirk and Edith. For most of the episode, you almost forget it is Star Trek and it becomes about them. Then Spock is there to bring you back into it. I also like the idea best of Kirk grabbing McCoy and letting Edith die. The way that's played with Kirk grabbing McCoy and burying his face into McCoy's shoulder and crying is just amazing all around. It was almost like Kirk, while holding McCoy back, was also kind of forcing McCoy to hold him because at any moment he could wuss out and do the wrong thing.
I would have liked to have seen Kirk open up and talk about being alone. That would have been some good character development, but Kirk's last words, "Let's get the hell out of here" really kinda said it all. All in all, I have always wished this episode would have played a bigger role in the development of the Kirk character, but Edith Keeler and the events of this story are never referred to or spoken of again. That's a shame.
As for Kirk being a master manipulator, that too would have been good to see although you kind of get that impression of him anyway. JJ Abrams actually hinted at that and pretty much came right out and said it with the Orion girl in ST09, but alas, that scene was cut as well. I hope JJ revisits that aspect of Kirk in future adventures of the young Captain.
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On the whole, I think Harlan's script was stronger than the one that aired, but at the same time, he was hamstrung by writing an episode before the show really got underway, so the feel of it was somewhere between Trek and a really good episode of The Outer Limits. This works against it in that it doesn't really make full use of the Trek framework, but it works for it - more, I think - in that the episode really focuses on Kirk and Spock and their relationship, showing the strengths, but also the inherent limitations. We find out a lot about Kirk, not his specific history, but his character, and in the original script his love for Edith makes a lot more sense than the 'starcrossed lovers' cliche in the version that ultimately aired.
It's easy to say the drug thing didn't/couldn't/shouldn't work in Trek on this end of history, but remember this was written before the franchise became utterly preachy and didactic, and it is specifically introduced to set up a very specific moral dilemma, which is completely absent in the version that got on the air, and which is kind of the crunchy center of the ep. In other words, we say "This ain't trek" because it didn't get filmed, but if it had been filmed, our concept of what Trek is would have been different.
Basically, Roddenberry ended up saying Humanity had perfected itself. Ellison was showing that things were better, but we're still a work in progress.
DC Fontana wrote the version that aired, and she's since admitted that she basically just tried to preserve as much as possible of what Harlan wrote. The only real improvement I think she made was the "Stone Knives and Bearskins" running gag, which replaced a computer scene in the original script that Harlan himself told me he didn't think entirely worked. I do prefer McCoy to the random villainous redshirt, but that changes the point considerably. Roddenberry consistently maintained that he wrote the script, but he didn't, though it's possible that Edith's speech about space ships might have been his addition.
So: As filmed, it *is* more Treky, but it's lacking the moral dilemma, the whole scene with Trooper, a really strong leadership role for Rand, and a much greater window into Kirk's soul.