- Scott: “It’s a shame for a good Scotsman to admit it, but I’m not up on Milton.” Kirk: “The statement Lucifer made when he fell into the pit: ‘It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.’”
ASSESSMENT
This is a smartly-written script and, overall, a well-made and effective episode. The positive/negative dynamic between Ricardo Montalban and William Shatner was still electric a decade and a half later when their characters again clashed, this time on the big screen, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Despite its attributes, “Space Seed” does break with the pattern of very nearly all other Star Trek episodes. It projects a bleak future for mankind, in the 1990s anyway -- one filled with war and despair -- a future well-within the lifetimes of many who were watching when “Space Seed” first aired in February 1967. Time has proven the terrible events predicted in this episode for the late 20th Century wrong -- or at least that their timing was off. Strange and dismal happenings of the new millennium, more coming with each year, indicate that the dark ages talked about in “Space Seed” could yet be just around the corner.
Two minor blemishes: The awkward fight scene in engineering is reminiscent of the one in “Court Martial,” also staged by director Marc Daniels; and the chauvinistic attitudes of Khan, combined with the passiveness of Lt. Marla McGivers, are either believed or dismissed, depending on the tastes and beliefs of individual audience members.
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
Script Timeline
Carey Wilbur’s story outline, ST #35, “Botany Bay”: August 29, 1966.
Wilbur’s revised outline, gratis, now “Space Seed”: September 1, 1966.
Wilbur’s 1st Draft teleplay: October 26, 1966.
Wilbur’s 2nd Draft teleplay: Early December, 1966.
Gene Coon’s rewrite (Mimeo Department “Yellow Cover 1st Draft”): December 7, 1966.
Coon’s script polish (Final Draft teleplay): December 9, 1966.
Coon’s further script polish (Rev. Final Draft teleplay): December 12, 1966.
Gene Roddenberry’s rewrite (2nd Rev. Final Draft teleplay): December 13, 1966.
Carey Wilbur was 50 when he did his share of the writing on “Space Seed.” His screen credits went back to 1948 for Studio One, with stops in between at Captain Video and Robin Hood. He had even written for Jeffrey Hunter’s series, Temple Houston; one of his two contributions to that show was badly panned by Daily Variety, which said:
Carey Wilbur’s script, “Fracas at Kiowa Flats,” was not a good one, [with] the humor belabored and downright silly at times. It was an inane yarn.
The trade also savaged an episode of Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, saying:
Somewhere in scripter Carey Wilbur’s typewriter there may have been the germ of a good idea, but it got lost between the keys. Consequently, his “Whale on the Beach” comes across with no more sincerity than the papier mache whale washed up on [the] sand.
Roddenberry probably hadn’t read these reviews, and might not have cared anyway -- every TV writer got a bad review from the trades now and then, Roddenberry included. What mattered was that “GR” knew Wilbur and liked him. The two had worked together briefly on a 1950s Ziv production Harbormaster, where Wilbur served as Story Editor. During the same period Wilbur wrote for Star Trek, he sold scripts to Irwin Allen for The Time Tunnel and Lost in Space. To Wilbur, science fiction shows were interchangeable.
“Hell, the plot for ‘Space Seed’ came from an old Captain Video I did,” he admitted. “We did some very far out things on that show, including the popular idea of people being transported in space while in suspended animation.” (184-1)
Elements of the plot for “Space Seed” can also be found in the first few episodes of Lost in Space, where Wilbur was working one year earlier. The space family Robinson is frozen, their breathing and heart rates slowed, thereby reducing aging while their space ship makes the long journey to Alpha Centauri. Wilbur’s Star Trek story also involves space travelers put into suspended animation. Something goes wrong with this ship and it too is lost in space ... only to be found by the Enterprise two centuries later.
The new element -- the real point of the story -- is that these space travelers are criminals, discarded much the same way misfits from England back in the 1700s and early 1800s were exiled to Australia. The space ship is even named after the landing place of the first convicts to set shore in Australia: Botany Bay.
(Contrary to popular belief, and the rewriting of history presented in this episode by Wilbur, Coon, and Roddenberry, there never was a penal colony at Botany Bay. After landing there, the British soldiers in charge of the convicts soon discovered the area to be unsuitable for colonization and made their way to Port Jackson, which then became the first permanent European settlement in Australia.)
For his story, Wilbur chose the name Harold Ericsson for the leader of the convicts, describing him as a “Nordic superman.” “Second Communications Officer” Marla McGivers falls for Ericsson and helps him to revive the rest of the convicts on the damaged sleeper ship so they can commandeer the Enterprise.
Wilbur’s story outline, dated August 29, was 18 pages long. Three days later, before anyone at Star Trek had a chance to respond or even read it, he turned in a revised draft, adding three pages of additional plot points.
Coon was enthusiastic ... at first. He wrote to Wilbur:
This is one of the best outlines, in my opinion, that we have received, certainly the best since I have been on the job. (GC23-1)
Coon had only been on the job for two weeks. Robert Justman had been reading outlines and scripts for more than six months now and was less enthusiastic. Four days after Coon’s complimentary letter to Wilbur, Justman told his new producer boss:
As presently written, [this] is incredibly expensive and difficult. There is more financial retribution inherent in this story treatment than in the original story treatment for “The City on the Edge of Forever.” When are we going to get back to the original idea of Star Trek, which is essentially a series about people in dramatic situations and conflicts? When are we going to do another “Charlie X”? When are we going to do another “Naked Time”? Yes, the basic story idea here is extremely fascinating. It is also very much science-fiction. It is very much “astounding science-fiction.” It is at times very Buck-Rogerish. Very much akin to Flash Gordon at times. We need people stories. (RJ23-1)
Justman signed his memo, “Ming the Merciless,” the villain from Flash Gordon. Coon ran the numbers with his production staff, and then sent Wilbur the bad news.
Carey, quite a few people have talked to me about your outline and, while they all agree that it is a fine story, and would make a whale of a script, they are, to a man, all frightened by its potential cost. (GC23-2)
Among other notes, Coon tried to help Wilbur with the characterizations. He wrote:
And don’t understand Marla. She should be a strong woman, though a little fuzzy in the head when it comes to historical novels and ancient Viking warriors or conquistadors. She is giving up an important career for love… in fact, she actually turns traitor for love. Technically speaking, by helping Ericsson in his capture of the ship, she is engaging in mutiny, and could be strung from the nearest asteroid by her neck, or whatever they do to mutineers in that far-off time. So she is much in love… and Ericsson would also be in love with her. It is Kirk’s great understanding of people which allows him, so to speak, to let Marla off the hook after what she has done.
Some notes were more difficult to give than others. This was the part of the job Gene Coon dreaded. In his letter, which lasted several pages, he asked Wilbur to cut many of the scenes requiring optical effects, elaborate sets, and space suits. With a mix of embarrassment and humility, he wrote:
The inevitable question, which you are allowed to ask, is why and how are we doing a science-fiction series without allowing for any science-fiction. We lie a lot, for one thing. We cheat a lot, for another. (GC23-2)
On the same day, Coon wrote a letter to Mary Dorfman of the Writers Guild of America. The tone, as in the letter sent to Wilbur, betrayed his disdain for certain aspects of being a TV producer. It began:
I seem to find myself producing Star Trek and, in the course of so doing, I have bought a story from Carey Wilbur, entitled “Space Seed,” which deals very roughly with persons traveling through space in a state of suspended animation. Since buying this story from Carey, I have discovered in our files another story entitled “The Rebels Unthawed,” apparently written, if I may use the word, by one Philip Jose Farmer. This story was submitted to us unsolicited and was not purchased. It bears a vague resemblance to the Carey Wilbur story insofar as it deals with the discovery of persons on board a space ship in a state of suspended animation. (GC23-3)
Coon’s letter was the first line of defense against possible litigation from Farmer, the sci-fi author with no TV experience but with whom Roddenberry had been corresponding.
Better news arrived a few days later from NBC. Stan Robertson liked the story outline for “Space Seed.” And he was now acknowledging Gene Coon, writing to the new producer directly rather than to Roddenberry. Robertson gushed:
The author of this storyline, Carey Wilbur, seems to have, at least in the initial presentation, come up with a most exciting Star Trek episode. There is an exciting blend of past Earth history -- the similarity of the plot with the colonization of Australia; [plus] a current problem of our contemporary society -- over-population; and a believable and interesting, if not novel, science fiction gimmick -- the revitalization of people several hundred years after their normal span of life. (SR23)
Robertson did not complain that “Space Seed” was in a sense a bottle show, since, at this stage, to the horror of Robert Justman, much of the action took place on the sleeper ship and even out in the vacuum of space.
When Wilbur’s First Draft script arrived, Justman fired off a new memo to Coon, Roddenberry, and Carabatsos, warning, “Gird your loins, gentlemen. You are about to get another long memo from Constant Reader” (the sign-off often used by the acerbic writer Dorothy Parker). Several pages later, after noting one or more problems on nearly every page of the script, Justman wrote:
What the hell is Systems Officer Marla McGivers doing on the Bridge in Scene 2? What is all this schtick about her humming a song and all the other jazz that occurs on the first page of this screenplay? I don’t believe it and I really don’t like it either…. Why does Kirk have to be asleep in Scene 4? If Uhura gives Kirk the message that the signal is originating from the “Coal Sack” [the name of the ship they encounter], then why does Kirk ask for a heading and range on the signal? Why does Kirk tell Uhura to alert all decks? Why is this signal considered to be dangerous by the writer? My feeling is that this TEASER as written is fake. It doesn’t establish anything, least of all jeopardy to the Enterprise and its crew. Also, the TEASER is too short. Also, where is Mister Spock?... Spock’s last speech on page 4 is definitely not Spockian. Mister Sulu’s first speech on page 5 and Kirk’s answer are, I feel, entirely out of place. Sulu wouldn’t venture a remark about Mister Spock’s spirit breaking and Kirk would not pick him up on it and tell Sulu that it wouldn’t hurt to shake Spock up a little…. As you may know, escape velocity is the velocity an object needs to escape the gravitational pull of a planet or other body. Therefore, Sulu’s speech about “escape velocity” is not applicable in this case. There is no standard escape velocity that can be used as a yardstick throughout space. I also find no need for Yeoman Rand in this script and even if there were a need, she would not be the one to announce action stations over the ship’s intercom…. For some strange reason I find that Scene 17 irritates me no end. (RJ23-2)
And this was only the first page of Justman’s six-page memorandum. He continued:
Gee whiz, fellows, I suppose I could go on forever giving you instance after instance of bad dialogue or unbelievable situations in this script. So, therefore, I will hit the rest of them as fast as I can in the few minutes remaining to me before I run out of energy…. Please don’t let Kirk and Ericsson fight with phasers guns on Pages 60 and 61. They will not only rip the ship to shreds, but they will rip the budget to shreds. (RJ23-2)
Justman closed:
I’m sorry that I have been so caustic in my analysis with regard to this script -but I just don’t have the time to be kindly. This script needs an enormous amount of work if we are going to be able to salvage it. (RJ23-2)
Justman was not alone in disliking Wilber’s teleplay. The staff memo, which did not identify if the sender was Stephen Carabatsos, still working as Script Consultant, or Dorothy Fontana, who had been giving notes in an unofficial capacity, was highly negative. Among the damning remarks:
This story starts much too slowly and plods in other spots. All our regular characters are out of character, especially Kirk and Spock. Kirk has no command presence, no strength. He stands around a lot. In fact, almost all our people stand around a lot. Marla’s attitudes and the “love story” with Ericsson are unbelievable and the payoff is mellerdramer [sic]...not Star Trek. (Staff23)
Later that day, Coon wrote to Carey Wilbur:
We have quite a bit of work to do on this script. Part of it is because of the unfamiliarity with what is possible or probable in standard operating procedure on our ship, and part of it is due to just flat missing the mark here and there.... The character of Ericsson just does not come off as the heroic, gigantic, conquistadorian figure I think we need. In some aspects he comes off almost as a small time thug, almost a punk, who would have no chance of taking over the Enterprise, and couldn’t even conceive of a grand decision, which is, I believe, hacking out a place for himself in this world of the future.... The second major flaw we have going for us is in the character and action of Marla McGivers. As it is, she takes a look at the unconscious Ericsson and decides she loves him. It is imperative that we establish first that she, too, is a person out of her time. She yearns for the ancient heroic, the grand, the days when men were men, and all that jazz. And she has not known love in this modern age. She has never found a man of the stature she requires -- the great conquistador, the hero, the flamboyant world-shaking giant of a man, a la Ayn Rand. (GC23-4)
Ayn Rand, the popular writer of the 1950s, wrote many stories about women falling for domineering men. One such man in one of Rand’s early novels, The Little Street, was Danny Renahan, whom the author described as “a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own... A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul.” In other words: Ericsson/Khan.
Part of the problem regarding Marla McGivers was that Wilbur made her Uhura’s alternate as ship’s Communication Officer. Coon would later change this and have her be the ship’s historian, a crew member in love with the past, and its men, and whose input is so rarely needed that Kirk can’t even get her name right.
Coon’s dense letter, clocking in at 13 single-spaced pages, listed all the problems he and his staff had come up with in the 66-page screenplay.
Wilbur accepted the feedback and harsh criticism well and, in early December, turned in his Second Draft. The improvements were far and few between.
Gene Roddenberry had much to say to Gene Coon over Wilbur’s rewrite. In a lengthy memo, Roddenberry called it “A deceptive script,” then elaborated:
At first reading, it seems clean, straight-lined, an orderly progression of ideas and emotions. But actually its entire underpinning is weak -- fixable, however, if we take a long hard look at the shaky logic supporting the whole story, replace it with believable ideas. (GR23-1)
At the center of the shaky logic was the very seed of Wilbur’s story -- that Earth’s misfits would be frozen and shot into space. Beginning with a reference to the sleeper ship named Botany Bay, Roddenberry wrote:
This concept, sounding romantic, may have gotten us into trouble. For example -- it is hard to believe the world of the 1990s sending men
off to a penal colony in the stars. Romantic, but impractical. No “advanced” world of the 1990s would do this; no barbaric or dark ages world of the 1990s would spend the hundreds of millions required to do it, when a simpler expedient for a barbaric world would be simply to put the men to death. So the entire concept is rather shaky to start with. (GR23-1)
And then there were what Wilbur described as “The Dark Ages of the 1990s.” Roddenberry wrote:
This may be a possible key to making this story believable. Let’s say the Earth, during the 1990s, was catapulted into a kind of “dark ages.” Let’s further say that it’s this period that, instead of being involved with criminals and criminal deportees, was a period of crime and the criminals being glorified. It’s not that impossible -- criminality, from one philosophical viewpoint, was glorified in the age of chivalry. So, following that line of logic, let’s say that a “society” of super-criminals, highly intelligent, intellectually and physically daring, believing in the purity of violence in war and conquest, took advantage of atomic war and catastrophe and rose to control the Earth. This could, in fact, be Ericsson and his men. Think of it in terms of Hitler and his cohorts in the black -- from their point of view -- days of 1945. Had space travel been practical at that time, Hitler and his crew might well have decided upon the “suicide” of leaving this world.... At any rate, this could be the background of Ericsson and his crew -- a dangerous group in the extreme. As such, they offer much more jeopardy to the Enterprise than merely a group of common criminals usually rounded up and deported. (GR23-1)
As he had done many times before, in one memo -- and, in this instance, in only two paragraphs -- Roddenberry completely reinvented a story, from something that might have worked on Lost in Space to something that did work on Star Trek.
These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One Page 83
