The City on the Edge of Forever (34 page)

I later learned that this was a carefully prearranged gag Harlan and the starlet—who was in that week’s episode, and whom Harlan had been dating—had set up to amuse the cast and crew during the lunch break.

That
is
Ellison—and this screenplay is Ellison at his best. All of these emotions are pounding throughout this script that he so desperately wanted produced…all of the fire and anger rage as he races through one exciting moment after another—and then, quite suddenly, when we take a deep breath, he delivers some of the most touching, heartbreaking scenes ever to grace the pages of a film script. Harlan’s wonderful, irreverent feel for a scene is rare among writers. This is the story behind the story of “City.”

It has been a choppy history and, like Harlan himself, a legendary topic of controversy. But at last, apparently, much of the story we did not know is before us. It makes one wonder.

Read it.
You’ll love it!

Walter Koenig

At the time
Star Trek IV
was released, Harlan and I had yet another heated exchange in what has become a vast catalogue of heated exchanges. So indigenous to our mental set and so inevitable in our lives is this mutual contentiousness, that I am convinced the first stooped and knuckle-dragging primates to turn their backs on Tyrannosaurus Rex and start throwing rocks at each other were progenitors of the clans, Ellison and Koenig.

The Jungian battle presently addressed occurred in 1986 and was fought out over the phone. Expletives of a most incendiary kind were followed by telephone carriage abuse that rivaled the impact suffered by crashed automobiles in traffic school films.

Histrionics notwithstanding, to this point, the fight was still a thing easily forgotten and dispatched with time. But then Harlan committed the cardinal sin; he took it public, wrote about it—to be sure, not as the basis of a treatise, only in passing—and used my name making sure which of us looked like the good guy. (Well, I guess I can’t blame him for that.)

It was then I swore I would never ever speak to him again. I swore it and I swore it with nostrils flaring and veins popping, with legs locked and fists raised to Heaven, with epic oaths and pledges made to the devil. I swore it and I swore it and, of course, here I am writing this afterword, my resolve as insubstantial as RediWhip
^TM
, as cotton candy, as dandelion puffs. Why? Because in the end, no matter what the transgression (real or imagined) homage must be paid the artist.

Harlan Ellison can really piss me off, but when he writes of Edith Keeler’s idealism, Captain Kirk’s pure love and the tragedy of being Trooper, I begin to suspect, against all reason, that I, alone, am ignoble and the sole cause of the endless disputes between us.

There is in “The City on the Edge of Forever” a profound sensitivity that taps into what is good in man while never letting us forget that we are also by nature a callous, selfish, indifferent breed and that only through monumental struggle and much personal sacrifice can we achieve the best of which we are capable.

It is a story that is both despairing and uplifting. It makes us ashamed and it makes us proud and because of that, time portals and Guardians and the twenty-third century notwithstanding, it is about life, our life, life in North Hollywood, California and Beacon, New York and Kaukauna, Wisconsin and Culpeper, Virginia.

The test of any work of art is the uniqueness of its creator’s vision and the universality of his message. Harlan Ellison, the sonofabitch, is a master craftsman who marches to his own drummer but never fails to teach us the steps.

How often have we read a story and said what a terrific film script could be made from it. The book you hold in your hands is a film script that reads like a terrific story. If you loved the TV episode, you have to love this tome even more. And if you didn’t like the TV episode, you still have to love this work.

He’s done it again, the mother__!

Leonard
 
Nimoy

In our business, that of producing movies and television shows, there is a commonly repeated saying that is, sadly, too often true:

“Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.”

Clearly “The City on the Edge of Forever” was a resounding success. I remember well the day I read the draft of the script submitted by Harlan Ellison. I found myself holding my breath and turning pages without knowing it, as this wonderful story unfolded. Some
Star Trek
scripts were actually unreadable. Harlan’s was unstoppable. You couldn’t put it down. No matter what happened later, the unalterable fact is: Harlan Ellison delivered a piece that had creative love pouring out of every page.

And if you don’t know by now that Harlan Ellison and Gene Roddenberry were engaged in a blood battle over this project ever since its inception, then you have been living on some strange planet devoid of intelligence and communication.

The fact is that “The City on the Edge of Forever” lives. And I have always been deeply grateful to Harlan for his energy, his passion, his talent and this gift to
Star Trek
.

Melinda M. Snodgrass

Star Trek
is almost thirty years old, and there are going to be hundreds, nay thousands, of words devoted to its impact, its genius; words of wisdom from its actors, past and present; and of course hosannas sung to its creator. As I look over this list I notice the one glaring omission—where are the writers?

Kirk would never have been so charming, nor Picard so turgid—excuse me, wise—without the writers. But writers do more than merely put words in the mouths of the attractive mynah birds. In the field of science fiction they create entire cultures (evidence D.C. Fontana’s remarkable work in creating Spock and Vulcan society), and if they’re any good at their craft they look at the collections of traits and quirks which define “character” on your average television show, and they try to find the guts of these people.

Guts are messy, and writers root about in them because we’re trying to understand humanity, its condition, and ultimately ourselves. This is terrifying to the pablum of television that demands life be simple and comfortable, and problems which are solvable in 22 or 47 minutes.

“The City on the Edge of Forever” is not a comfortable script. There is nobility and sacrifice, but there is also pain and imperfection on these pages. No wonder Gene Roddenberry wanted it rewritten.

I came aboard
Star Trek: The Next Generation
, and within weeks discovered I was bound in a creative straitjacket. The directive had come down from on high—my people are perfect. Star Fleet is perfect. The Federation is perfect. Only the little fuzzy-wuzzies possess flaws, and our mission is to seek them out and set them straight.

Most of my Wailing Wall generation (Richard Manning, Hans Beimler, Ira Behr) grew up on Classic
Trek
. We would look back, and fantasize about how wonderful it must have been on the old show. Imperfect people, passionate scripts…

And then I read “City,” and realized it had all been a shuck. Gene was already protecting his place in history, although perhaps not as desperately as he would by 1988. Heaven forbid there should be immorality, and out and out dishonesty on the blessed
Enterprise
. Perish the thought that Spock and Kirk could
fight
, and yet still remain friends. In Gene’s universe, love is established by people standing around telling each other how much they love each other, and never doing a damn thing about it.

Please note I am discussing love here, not sex. In addition to the mantras of “Picard is the Captain, keep him strong,” and “My people are perfect,” we often received the directive to “LET THEM FUCK!”

Read “City” again. This is about love. Not fucking.

Like Harlan, I came into the insane world of Hollywood through the emotionally sustaining but economically unsatisfying world of books. There, a writer’s words are his coin, and his spirit, and no one touches them. Editors can suggest, but a writer can refuse to accept their guidance; in publishing we’re permitted to starve on our principles. Not so in Hollywood. You’re a high-paid typist, your words are worthless, your vision unimportant. You take the high ground, and they come through with a bulldozer and remove it. If they don’t like a script, they’ll “polish” (piss on) it, and make it their own.

Being invited to write this afterword meant a great deal to me. I, too, have a script in my closet which was destroyed. Unfortunately the filmed version of “Ensigns of Command” does not bear comparison with even the watered-down film version of “City.” I think that is a testament to the power and passion of Harlan Ellison’s work.

A final note. For those of you vid kids who bought this book because it was
Trek
, and TV, and so cool, and who have never read a word of Harlan Ellison’s prose—
Go Buy Some and Read It
!

Because ultimately books are better.

George Takei

Before reading the manuscript of Harlan’s original “The City on the Edge of Forever,” I thought I would jump through the “time portal” of my own to refresh my memory of the version we had filmed back in 1966.

I threw the cassette into the VCR and snuggled down with a hot cup of tea. It opened with the familiar soaring music and the good old
Enterprise
dependably whooshing by—it was all so comfy. Then, the jolt. It wasn’t, however, the action of the first scene where the bridge was being violently shaken by a time disturbance. I had expected that. The shock was in how bloomingly young we all looked back then. Oh, so very young.

But the action quickly grabbed me away from the warm fuzzies of nostalgia. This was gripping drama. Yes, it was one of our best episodes. Sure, some of it was dated—Uhura’s whispering “Captain, I’m afraid”—a line that could hardly be written for a woman today, though perhaps it could be said by a man now—a measure of the times.

Another time warp—Joan Collins as the personification of purest virtue. Time—that’s what this story was about—past, present and future deconstructed by Harlan’s fertile imagination into a mind-play fable. Intriguing concept, tight drama and stimulating science fiction.

So, what was Harlan’s big beef about his script being debased? This was great television. With that, I began reading the original manuscript.

Immediately, the differences become apparent. The images are soaringly elegant and striking science fiction. The Guardians of Forever—the tall, petrified, ancient keepers of the Time Vortex—resonate mysticism and the quality of legend. How awesome, in the truest sense of the word, it would have been to have seen these immensely dignified science fiction figures realized cinematically.

Even the language of the stage directions and descriptions is compelling poetry. The sun of this alien planet is described as “a burnt out ember…hanging dolorously in the cadaverous sky.”

There is a real villain here, not our good Doctor McCoy temporarily crazed. The odious act of drug dealing is still today, as it was in the 1960s, and as it will always be, an agonizingly real societal cancer. The evil is pure, constant and absolute, as is the goodness.

And in Harlan’s original, the play and the balance between evil and good, death and life, is made more intriguingly ambiguous in the larger context of history. The aching tragedy and personal pain of Verdun (absent in the filmed version) is dramatically poignant in the longer perspective of time. The vast, epic scope of Harlan’s original gives “The City on the Edge of Forever” the resonance of legend.

This manuscript truly tantalizes the mind. Yes, I can understand Harlan’s frustration. Yes, I would love to have seen this original filmed. This is one of the intriguing “what ifs?” of life—but time has played out this plot differently—just as in his story.

Harlan, you rascal, you master manipulator—you’ve done it again. You’ve placed a clear mirror in front of a tarnished mirror. Is that expression I see reflected on your face one of frustration, or a Cheshire Cat grin?