The book is “City On The Edge Of Forever”, by Harlan Ellison, and if you want the WHOLE story – very much from Ellison’s point of view – I’d STRONGLY recommend reading it. It ain’t dull.
The book includes Ellison’s version of the script, which won a Hugo award (although Roddenberry’s version also won a Hugo, in a different category, that same year). Ellison rounds out the book with a great many anecdotes, most of which are pretty vituperative, most of which are aimed straight at Roddenberry, although he apparently wasn’t too fond of William Shatner, either.
Apparently, Roddenberry really got under Ellison’s skin in a variety of ways, but his two main volcanic rants seem to be based around these two points:
- Roddenberry and Ellison agreed that Ellison would write the script, and that all rewrite work would be done by Ellison. A great many changes were made during the process, and Ellison continued to rework the script to suit Roddenberry, even after the budget ran out of money to pay Ellison for his continued work. Finally, Roddenberry took the script and ostensibly rewrote it himself, in violation of his agreement with Ellison (although we find out in the book that Roddenberry actually handed it over to D.C. Fontana to do the actual rewriting).
Ellison was very upset by this. He was also upset by the fact that many of the changes that were made were demanded by Roddenberry – and then yanked from the completed version (most notably, a scene where instead of simply being gone, the Enterprise is a pirate ship, in the new reality created by the crewman jumping through the time portal).
- One of the elements in the original script involved a criminal Enterprise crewman, who is making money on the side selling a kind of addictive drug to his shipmates. When Captain Kirk finds out, he orders the arrest of the crewman, who flees, beaming down to the planet, and ultimately is the guy who leaps through the Guardian Of Forever, and screws up the timestream of the universe (instead of Dr. McCoy, as in the final teleplay).
Roddenberry didn’t like this. He didn’t want any Enterprise crewmen to be doing naughty things. This was one of the reasons for all the rewrites, which ultimately resulted in Dr. McCoy (rather stupidly) accidentally injecting himself with a hallucinogen that drives him berserk and makes HIM leap through the Guardian (although you’ll notice he’s still together enough to operate a Transporter, a trick I sure wouldn’t wanna try if I was on drugs).
Anyway, this wouldn’t have been any big deal, but in some convention appearances, Roddenberry began … um… creating a legend, so to speak.
When asked about Harlan Ellison, and the script, and rumors of trouble, and why Ellison never wrote any other episodes, Roddenberry remarked that Ellison was a rather temperamental chap, hard to work with, and who did not wish to stick within established Trek canon. “He had Scotty dealing drugs!”
Well, apparently, Scotty was never the drug dealer, in ANY of the drafts. It was another anonymous red-shirt crew guy.
Finally, after hearing this story one time too often, Ellison went and confronted Roddenberry, who apologized, and remarked that he certainly must have misremembered things, happened a long time ago, and all that, and so sorry, won’t happen again.
Unfortunately, it DID happen again, numerous times, and at least once in print. Apparently, Roddenberry liked the story well enough that he just kept telling it whenever anyone asked about Ellison, or the episode, along with a song and dance that made Ellison seem like a frothing, rabid prima-donna who just couldn’t write for television without being an asshole.
Ellison may or may not be an asshole… never met the guy myself… but in his book, he goes above and beyond to cite, provide written evidence, prove, and otherwise exonerate himself on all these charges, and several others. Even to the point of including photos of documents.
I have presented only the tip of the iceberg; there’s considerably more. Anyone really interested in this particular wild-assed chunk of Trek controversy really should go out and get the book.
) but at the same time, Ellison’s preachy junkies-in-space just didn’t work for me.