The City on the Edge of Forever
Jul. 23rd, 2003 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plutherusI just finished reading Harlan Ellison's book, The City on the Edge of Forever.
For those less into Star Trek and fandom, Harlan Ellison is the writer of the Trek episode of the same name. He has been saying for 30 years that Gene Roddenberry eviscerated his original script, and that what we got on TV was a lame, watered down version of his vision. Now, this sort of thing happens all the time in Television, and my initial reaction on finding the book a few years ago was "Damn, Harlan, it's been 30 years, get over it already." I continued with this impression through most of the introductory essay, which I returned to every few months over the last couple of years. Even after learning that Gene was never telling the truth, intentionally lying to his fans by telling us that Ellison's original script was unfilmable, had all the characters acting out of character, and even "had Scotty dealing drugs" (though in the story I originally heard at a convention, it was McCoy who was the drug dealer). He also, though it's never mentioned in the book, claimed to have asked Ellison to make sure the Enterprise was put in danger, as an added incentive to Kirk, which he refused to change. Turns out none of this was true. In the book, Harlan Ellison included the complete original script to City. (And, if you read the book, I strongly suggest you follow his advice and skip the introductory essay and go directly to the script. Go back and read the rest later.) In the very first draft, the ship is indeed in danger, in fact has been transformed by the change in time to The Condor, a ship of brigands, representing the very worse of humanity. In the revised timeline that Kirk must fix, humanity still reaches the stars, but not as an enlightened group of people trying to peacefully build interstellar communities and "seeking out new life and new civilizations", but as rough pirates, using their superior technology to exploit and dominate weaker worlds. Certainly not an unprecedented situation in human history. Never able to overcome our baser nature and becoming the evil empire similar to what we later see in Mirror, Mirror is by an order of magnitude a worse tragedy than the filmed version where the Enterprise simply vanishes, presumably because humanity hasn't yet reached out into space, allowing the galaxy to go on its merry way without us, until we're ready to head out and take our place. A destruction of the central tenet of the show, that we can be better than we are, that we have something positive to offer the galaxy. In the transformation to the Condor, the dream is dead, with the Enterprise vanishing, it seems merely delayed. The script abounds with these subtly powerful touches.
As for Scotty, not only is he not dealing drugs, he's not even mentioned in the script. In fact, the only characters from the Enterprise who are featured prominently are Kirk, Spock, Yeoman Rand (who in the script is not only a competent officer who can do more than serve coffee and lust after her captain, but has a powerfully poignant scene where she stays behind on the Condor, guarding the transporter room "indefinitely", to protect Kirk and Spock and give them time to get back down to the planet and set things right.), and Beckwith, a new character introduced for the episode who is the drug dealer, not Scotty or even McCoy, who never would be. While reading the introduction, where Harlan talks about the script, I kept thinking that perhaps Gene Roddenberry was right. That was out of character for a Starfleet officer. But, as Peter David pointed out in his afterword, in the series we've had characters in Starfleet of higher ranks transform a civilization into a Nazi regime, become an adviser to a Caesar and force his men to fight each other to the death in gladiatorial combat, and take over the Enterprise and attempt to destroy it in a doomed act of revenge against an alien machine. Is drug dealing for personal profit really that impossible? I was prepared, before I read the script, that the biggest "problem" of the script was having so much action hinge on a character we've never seen before. That he was just the plot catalyst that set things in motion, and Gene's change to it being a freak accident with the established character of Dr. McCoy rather than the deliberate actions of Beckwith, was a change for the better. But one of the central tenets of the script was about human choice. There are no "inevitable tides of history". History is made by those who live it. And Beckwith, a flawed, almost downright evil character, finally does one selfless act, in sacrificing himself to save Edith Keeler from death, and it's this act that Kirk must undo. After reading the original script, I had to change this opinion: It isn't a problem with the script that he put so much on the new character, Beckwith, but a problem with Star Trek that this sort of thing wasn't allowed.
Which brings me to my final points, and the reason why I had to change my opinion of the script after reading it. In Harlan's introduction, he says that he had Kirk refuse to act in the end, the man of action paralyzed by his own nature into inaction, neither saving Edith Keeler nor allowing her to die, but had Spock as the one who finally stopped Beckwith, and allowed Edith to die. I thought, based on his own description, that this was a cop-out, allowing a third party to intervene and neatly tie up the script, the way so many other episodes did, without the characters having to face consequences for their actions, because it was taken out of their hands. But, after reading the script, I realize this was incorrect. Spock in this episode is not a third party, he is a main character, every bit as important as Kirk, and Beckwith. Here we are shown the actual characterization of Spock that is only discussed in other episodes. A man both Human and Vulcan. As a Human, he understands the stakes, the damage that will be done to his Captain and his friend if he acts, and as a Vulcan, he is able to dissect the problem rationally and logically and solve it and overcome his loyalty to his captain and do it. You get the impression that Spock isn't acting out of character but that this is the only episode where he acts in character. It's a powerful and deep Spock, providing a glimpse of what Star Trek could have been had the writers not been so constrained. And the script shows yet another facet, bringing a powerful story of the friendship between two men to the tragic love story it's intertwined with.
For those less into Star Trek and fandom, Harlan Ellison is the writer of the Trek episode of the same name. He has been saying for 30 years that Gene Roddenberry eviscerated his original script, and that what we got on TV was a lame, watered down version of his vision. Now, this sort of thing happens all the time in Television, and my initial reaction on finding the book a few years ago was "Damn, Harlan, it's been 30 years, get over it already." I continued with this impression through most of the introductory essay, which I returned to every few months over the last couple of years. Even after learning that Gene was never telling the truth, intentionally lying to his fans by telling us that Ellison's original script was unfilmable, had all the characters acting out of character, and even "had Scotty dealing drugs" (though in the story I originally heard at a convention, it was McCoy who was the drug dealer). He also, though it's never mentioned in the book, claimed to have asked Ellison to make sure the Enterprise was put in danger, as an added incentive to Kirk, which he refused to change. Turns out none of this was true. In the book, Harlan Ellison included the complete original script to City. (And, if you read the book, I strongly suggest you follow his advice and skip the introductory essay and go directly to the script. Go back and read the rest later.) In the very first draft, the ship is indeed in danger, in fact has been transformed by the change in time to The Condor, a ship of brigands, representing the very worse of humanity. In the revised timeline that Kirk must fix, humanity still reaches the stars, but not as an enlightened group of people trying to peacefully build interstellar communities and "seeking out new life and new civilizations", but as rough pirates, using their superior technology to exploit and dominate weaker worlds. Certainly not an unprecedented situation in human history. Never able to overcome our baser nature and becoming the evil empire similar to what we later see in Mirror, Mirror is by an order of magnitude a worse tragedy than the filmed version where the Enterprise simply vanishes, presumably because humanity hasn't yet reached out into space, allowing the galaxy to go on its merry way without us, until we're ready to head out and take our place. A destruction of the central tenet of the show, that we can be better than we are, that we have something positive to offer the galaxy. In the transformation to the Condor, the dream is dead, with the Enterprise vanishing, it seems merely delayed. The script abounds with these subtly powerful touches.
As for Scotty, not only is he not dealing drugs, he's not even mentioned in the script. In fact, the only characters from the Enterprise who are featured prominently are Kirk, Spock, Yeoman Rand (who in the script is not only a competent officer who can do more than serve coffee and lust after her captain, but has a powerfully poignant scene where she stays behind on the Condor, guarding the transporter room "indefinitely", to protect Kirk and Spock and give them time to get back down to the planet and set things right.), and Beckwith, a new character introduced for the episode who is the drug dealer, not Scotty or even McCoy, who never would be. While reading the introduction, where Harlan talks about the script, I kept thinking that perhaps Gene Roddenberry was right. That was out of character for a Starfleet officer. But, as Peter David pointed out in his afterword, in the series we've had characters in Starfleet of higher ranks transform a civilization into a Nazi regime, become an adviser to a Caesar and force his men to fight each other to the death in gladiatorial combat, and take over the Enterprise and attempt to destroy it in a doomed act of revenge against an alien machine. Is drug dealing for personal profit really that impossible? I was prepared, before I read the script, that the biggest "problem" of the script was having so much action hinge on a character we've never seen before. That he was just the plot catalyst that set things in motion, and Gene's change to it being a freak accident with the established character of Dr. McCoy rather than the deliberate actions of Beckwith, was a change for the better. But one of the central tenets of the script was about human choice. There are no "inevitable tides of history". History is made by those who live it. And Beckwith, a flawed, almost downright evil character, finally does one selfless act, in sacrificing himself to save Edith Keeler from death, and it's this act that Kirk must undo. After reading the original script, I had to change this opinion: It isn't a problem with the script that he put so much on the new character, Beckwith, but a problem with Star Trek that this sort of thing wasn't allowed.
Which brings me to my final points, and the reason why I had to change my opinion of the script after reading it. In Harlan's introduction, he says that he had Kirk refuse to act in the end, the man of action paralyzed by his own nature into inaction, neither saving Edith Keeler nor allowing her to die, but had Spock as the one who finally stopped Beckwith, and allowed Edith to die. I thought, based on his own description, that this was a cop-out, allowing a third party to intervene and neatly tie up the script, the way so many other episodes did, without the characters having to face consequences for their actions, because it was taken out of their hands. But, after reading the script, I realize this was incorrect. Spock in this episode is not a third party, he is a main character, every bit as important as Kirk, and Beckwith. Here we are shown the actual characterization of Spock that is only discussed in other episodes. A man both Human and Vulcan. As a Human, he understands the stakes, the damage that will be done to his Captain and his friend if he acts, and as a Vulcan, he is able to dissect the problem rationally and logically and solve it and overcome his loyalty to his captain and do it. You get the impression that Spock isn't acting out of character but that this is the only episode where he acts in character. It's a powerful and deep Spock, providing a glimpse of what Star Trek could have been had the writers not been so constrained. And the script shows yet another facet, bringing a powerful story of the friendship between two men to the tragic love story it's intertwined with.
