I am reading the book of the various versions of the script again.
I did not previously notice that Trooper has a sign on his cart, “I Fought at Verdun”.
The battle of Verdun was February-December 1916. The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917.
Was Trooper lying, was he serving in the English or French army?
After the Battle, the front remained barely two miles north and northwest of the town of Verdun. It remained there until the Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918, in which many Americans participated. A fictional American fighting in the latter action could be forgiven for saying he fought “in the Verdun sector”, or even “at Verdun”.
UK/Commonwealth soldiers did not fight at Verdun, that was purely a French battle, and a French victory (in as much as anyone won any major battle in WW1).
Because it was. Verdun is the least of the problems with his original script. The lazy, artificial tension building of the constant cutting back to the crew still on the planet, how they are constantly this close to being killed, all to show the urgency of our heroes mission back into time, was just unnecessarily stupid. Especially because, if the mission is successful (and you know it will be) none of it will have never happened.
Having the antagonist and driving force (the “random factor”) be a drug dealer is just about as bad. Roddenberry was correct in this case. There are no drug dealers in Starfleet.
In one version they were “space pirates” and in another they were “Rouges” or “Barbarians” or “Mimes”, or something and they were damned irritating even for two scenes, but Janice Rand was in charge of holding them off, which beat only showing off her ass when Kirk signed things. I do prefer the filmed version, “What happened, Sir?” “You only left a minute ago.” “We were successful.” “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Plus the original script had everyone acting out of character, a failure of the author to be familiar with the basic “rules” of the universe (Star Fleet simply doesn’t have skeevy 1950’s style drug-pushers in their ranks), preachy, completely ham-fisted anti-Vietnam stuff and a totally horrible climax.
Y’know how, in the filmed ep, Spock has to stop Kirk from saving Edith and how powerful it was that Edith was the one woman Kirk was willing to consider sacrificing the Enterprise for? In the Ellison version, Kirk just…freezes in indecision. Whee. Big drama there. And totally in character for Kirk. :rolleyes:
Also, there was some torture porn thing about the drug dealer being sent to the heart of a star and being forced to die over and over again.