In 1996, Ellison complained, “Carabatsos took a chain-saw to [my script] and screwed it up so badly that Gene [Roddenberry] asked me to come back and do yet another rewrite, for no money, of course.” (58-2)
Ellison’s “2nd Revised Final Draft” as he categorized it, dated December 1, arrived on December 19.
In a memo he sent to Roddenberry, one day after the arrival of the new version of the old script, Robert Justman said:
I have just completed reading the “Second Revised Final Draft” of Harlan Ellison’s script, which he has dated December 1, 1966, even though it was delivered a hell of a lot later than that. I hear tell that there’s a possibility that you, Mr. Roddenberry, will rewrite this draft to make it feasible for us to be able to photograph the story for this season’s television viewers. (RJ28-4)
Among the notes:
Would it be possible for McCoy to get infected in some other way [than a bite from an alien dog]? I am reminded of what we went through on a show entitled “THE MAN TRAP” [sic; it was “The Enemy Within”] in attempting to disguise a dog and make it look like a creature from some alien world. We ended up with a dog wearing a suit and a phony set of horns.
Why establish that everybody is growing younger and that our chronometers are running backward? Does this fact improve the essential quality of Harlan’s story? I submit to you that we have had the backward running chronometer bit several times during this season already. We had it in shows such as “THE NAKED TIME” and “TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY.”
On here, Kirk has some words about a “parking orbit.” Please explain.
Again on here, we have our ship rocking and bucking and everybody being thrown all over the place. This, as you no doubt know, is also a very familiar STAR TREK-type effect.
The “red or crimson glow” effect is rather puzzling to me. How do we show this to the few people in America who don’t have color sets? Why do we need this red or crimson glow?
While I think of it, I am able to detect an approximate 58 pages to this version…. I do notice that there is still an extreme amount of description and direction to the Director and other people who are, or would be, involved in this project. This might have a tendency to reflect an even shorter page count than would at first be indicated here. Since the writer has also indicated how the film should be covered by the Director, insofar as the shots go, you might find an even greater disparity between the actual amount of pages and what is projected here. I am hinting that this is a 45-minute show [five minutes too short]. I will also hint, as I continue, that this show will still take about eight or nine days to shoot. I don’t believe that much money has been saved in this version as compared with the previous versions. One does not write direction in a script about “a very small crowd of seven or eight people” and then give scene descriptions indicating a need for about 200 or 300 people.
Why don’t they just transport down to the area of the plateau [where the Guardians of forever are] immediately? Why do they have to transport down to an area on the planet that forces them to travel on foot for many miles? No wonder our Captain and Crew keep on getting into trouble all the time. They don’t have enough sense to save shoe leather.
How come they suddenly spot a City on the Edge of Forever? Why wasn’t it spotted from the ship?
Page 12A caused me to become exceedingly cruel to my wife and children the other night. And it is only one-eighth of a page!
Scene 45 hurts me no end.
I don’t believe Scenes 46 through 55 at all [where a crowd turns on Kirk and Spock and chase them]. I hardly ever believed them in earlier versions and I am sorry to state that I have not changed my mind. Incidentally, this sequence is one of the instances wherein the writer has attempted to kid us by listing 7 or 8 extras and giving them business that should be handled by 200 or 300 people. I also don’t believe the crowd turning on our people. The sequence is dramatic -but unbelievable.
Why don’t you look at the beginning of Scene 62 and all the description contained therein and estimate to yourself how many extras you would have to hire to take care of the business indicated in the scene? Figure out how many people you would have to hire and how many people you would have to wardrobe... and how many cars... and how many special business [with] higher pay rate for extras who are given specific action to perform... and how many musicians and uniforms and car drivers and period [antique] cars and period trucks and set dressing in various windows... and lunches and suppers... and overtime and night penalty -- ten to twenty percent premium on hourly rates... and golden time -- 2 ½ times the hourly rate after twelve hours of “studio” work or fourteen hours of “nearby location” work... and so on and on and on... and you would find your pocketbook and your brains absolutely boggled by the enormity of it all.
Gene, I have written many, many long memos to you on the subject of this story. As always, I feel that this is a fine story and was created by an extremely-talented writer. But we are in the sad position of being unfortunate enough not to be able to afford to make this story, even though it is of high-quality. I feel that we have gone as far as we can with Cordwainer and it must now devolve upon either you or Gene Coon to take this story in hand and make it shootable for us. If you don’t, I fear that we must junk it. It would be immensely cheaper for us to throw away a complete screenplay of this sort than to attempt to film it. A very dear friend of mine used to have an expression which he used in times of stress and monetary troubles – “Your first loss is your best loss.” Take your licking now and get out. It’s cheaper in the long run. (RJ28-4)
On Page 43, we have the staircase fall sequence. I feel that the author has missed an extremely dramatic opportunity here. Firstly, it would be damned difficult to stage this and have the sequence work correctly. By the time Kirk could make up his mind not to catch her, she could have fallen downstairs several times. What I would have done would have been to have him automatically, in reflex action, rescue her before she falls down all the way. Then, later, comes the extremely dramatic realization that he is probably going to be unable to prevent himself from interfering in any untoward fate which might befall the object of his affection. The verbalization of his feelings and his inability to keep his mitts off the girl could be brought out in the end of Scene 80 on here in his discussion with Mr. Spock. (RJ28-4)
It wasn’t all negative. Justman made a creative suggestion for a change that would stick, and benefit the story. He told Roddenberry:
The script clearly still needed a major overhaul. But Roddenberry had already suffered the slings and arrows of famed science fiction writers he’d rewritten on Star Trek. He was in no hurry to repeat the experience. So, Gene Coon ran the script through his typewriter over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, delivering it on January 9, 1967. Among the changes, he eliminated the subplot that takes place aboard the ship where, after the timeline has been disturbed, the Enterprise becomes a renegade ship. And then he found a few areas to add humor.
“The little touches of humor tend more to be Coon’s than anyone else’s,” Fontana said, then added, with a laugh, “And Gene Coon’s immortal line about Spock getting his head caught in a rice picker.” (64-1)
Ellison is said to have hated it.
One day after delivery, Justman wrote Coon:
This is pretty close to a shooting script... finally. There are certain areas within it, however, which I feel need some work before we can say that we can come anywhere close to budget on the show…. Just so that there is no misunderstanding, I want us to do this show. However... there is no doubt of it, and we should not kid ourselves, that we are going to get even close to a Series Budget on this particular segment. (RJ28-5)
Dorothy Fontana’s turn came next. She was, after all, the brand new story editor.
“I reported to work the first day and walked right into a hornet’s nest of trouble with ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ at the heart of it,” she said. “Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon turned to me and said, ‘You’
re it. You try a rewrite.’ Talk about being tossed a live grenade!” (64-7)
Among the changes, Fontana invented cordrazine, the drug that puts McCoy into a temporary state of madness.
Ellison was not impressed. He preferred his own idea, from his rewrite of Steven Carabatsos’ rewrite, using the venom of an animal bite to cause the madness, and argued, “Read my revised second draft, in which I gave Gene a reasonable way in which Dr. McCoy could have run amuck.... But no, Gene [Roddenberry] preferred having an accomplished ship’s surgeon act in such a boneheaded manner that he injects himself with a deadly drug! Yeah, sure, you were a sensational plotter and writer, Gene, and you can schvitz roses with Lysol to make ‘em grow!” (58-2)
Fontana wasn’t about to tell Ellison that the cordrazine idea came from her. Years later, regarding another of her contributions, she said, “I tried to build the relationship of love between Edith and Kirk, gently and meaningfully, so her death would be the most-wrenching personal moment Kirk would ever know.... Harlan liked this draft a little better, but not much.... He thought Gene Coon wrote it. We kept our mouths shut.” (64-2)
Of Fontana’s rewrite, Justman wrote his colleagues:
Although this latest version of Harlan’s story comes closer to being producible than anything we have received to date, I would like to state that I feel there is hardly anything left of the beauty and mystery that was inherent in the screenplay as Harlan originally wrote it. It is very good Star Trek material now, but it certainly bears only structural resemblance at times to what Harlan originally delivered to us. It has none of his special magic any longer. Perhaps that is all for the best, but I for one, feel bad about it. I’m sure you’ll be able to convince me that all of the things I liked best about Harlan’s writing were unsuitable for good dramatic television entertainment.... But I still feel bad. I can’t help it.... In closing, I would like to say that had this version of the script been turned in by some [other] writer, I am sure that we would all have been thrilled with it. My problem is that I read Harlan’s original version and his various so-called re-workings of that version. (RJ28-6)
Justman warned that the script -- now Fontana’s rewrite of Coon’s rewrite of Carabatsos’ rewrite of Ellison’s story -- would still take at least seven days, and very probably eight, to film. He said:
Sometimes I get the feeling the only way we could achieve a STAR TREK segment on budget would be to have 60 minutes of Mister Spock playing kazoo solo as Captain Kirk holds him in his arms while standing in a telephone booth. (RJ28)
The work continued. Justman later said, “After several all-night sessions, Gene [Roddenberry] churned out his own revised final draft teleplay. His version is the one we began filming on the morning of February 3.” (94-8)
Roddenberry’s draft -- The “Final Draft” script, from February 1, with revised pages on February 2 and 3, retained much of the writing from Coon and Fontana. Ellison was livid. Thirty years later, he complained, “There are chunks of dialogue, [like the] speech Edith Keeler gives about how in the future everything will be wonderful because we’ll have spaceships to feed the hungry people, which is precisely the kind of dopey Utopian bullshit Roddenberry loved. So I knew Gene had screwed around [with the script]. But I also knew he hadn’t done the massive restructuring that was done to my story, although that expert liar told people from lecture platforms for the better part of a quarter of a century that it was he who rescued that brilliant script from the inept paws of the slacker Ellison ... when, in truth, Roddenberry had about as much writing ability as the lowest industry hack. A fact. Do with it what you will.” (58-2)
Ellison later said, “If John D.F. Black rewrote you, you knew that either he would do a superlative job and you wouldn’t have a beef about it or, if it was something that rankled you, you could talk him out of it or argue with him logically plot-wise so that you would arrive at the same place by different means. But Gene [Roddenberry], in terms of writing, was a very limited writer. He had three or four plots; they all showed up one way or another, most of which were man goes into space, man meets god, god is insane and man defeats him somehow. Or parallel planet stories. What I was doing was [famed evangelist] Aimee Semple McPherson as [Church of Scientology founder] L. Ron Hubbard, and that’s who that character was. And when he altered her and made her what she was, I always thought it was just another mediocrity that he injected into my script, which Gene Coon just loved.” (58)
On the day filming began, Robert Justman received a letter from Ellison’s agent. It read:
Mr. Ellison would like his credit on Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever,” Production #6149-28, to read “Cordwainer Bird.”
Ellison explained, “He threatened to get me blacklisted if I used Cordwainer Bird. I said I’m entitled, I’ve registered it and I’ve used the pseudonym before, and I don’t want my name on this thing now.” (58)
Regardless, Ellison’s real name remained (as sole writer) when the screen credits were created during post-production. Justman explained, “After a lot of fussing and hemming and hawing and, finally, according to Harlan, an ‘absolute threat’ from Gene [Roddenberry] to keep him from ever working in Hollywood again, Cordwainer Bird was convinced to revert to being Harlan Ellison again, and his screen credit reflected that.” (98-4)
Roddenberry did not take a screen credit for his contributions to the writing, as was the case with “The Corbomite Maneuver,” “The Enemy Within,” “What Are Little Girls Made Of?,” and “Shore Leave.” There’s little doubt he would have liked credit -- what writer wouldn’t? -- but, in his mind, the prestige these renowned science fiction authors brought to Star Trek was more important than the accolades he might receive as a script doctor, or even the bonus money and residuals which went along with the credit. Jerry Sohl, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, and Harlan Ellison gave Star Trek that instant prestige.
Gene Coon also took no writing credit. He had already added his name to the scripts for “Space Seed” and “A Taste of Armageddon,” thereby taking half the credit and half the residuals. But not here despite “City” being very-nearly a complete rewrite in regards to dialogue. Coon knew how important Harlan Ellison’s name on Star Trek was to Roddenberry.
Roddenberry, in fact, believed he had an understanding with Ellison that neither of them, or any others on the Star Trek creative staff, would talk about the writing process of “The City on the Edge of Forever” to the public at large or the press, and Roddenberry later wrote to Ellison about this, when he felt that the latter had broken his word concerning their understanding. (More about this in “Release/Reaction.”)
Pre-Production
January 26-27 & 30-31 & February 1 & 2, 1967 (total six days prep).
Joan Collins on set (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Joseph Pevney was hired to direct. He had more experience with feature films than any other Star Trek director and, in many ways, this episode was the closest thing to a feature film that Star Trek ever made. Pevney said, “Essentially, ‘City on the Edge of Forever’ was a motion picture. I treated it as a movie.” (141-1)
Joan Collins was the most renowned guest star to appear on Star Trek. She was 33 and had worked in TV and films since the early 1950s. Collins was the female lead, opposite Ray Milland, in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing. She was billed above Richard Egan for the lead in Esther and the King, above Richard Burton in Sea Wife, and was top girl in Seven Thieves, opposite Edward G. Robinson and Rod Steiger. She had also taken over for Dorothy Lamour as the girl-in-between Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in 1962’s The Road to Hong Kong.
Joe D’Agosta said, “I think it was a bit of a surprise that Joan Collins was interested in doing a Star Trek. She was a very notorious actress. But, again, I think it was based on the allure of the show. There were two shows in town that everyone wanted to do -- Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. I say ‘everyone,’ meaning within certain limits. We couldn’t get, say, John Wayne. Well, we actually did get John
Wayne. He did a Lucy. But Lucy made that phone call.” (43-4)
Joseph Pevney said, “Joan Collins was very good in it. She enjoyed working on that show, and Bill and Leonard were both very good to her.... Using her was a good choice.” (141-2)
John Harman, who played Rodent, the milk thief who makes the mistake of also stealing McCoy’s phaser, made over 200 appearances in movies and TV, from 1935 to 1983. He was 61 here, and returned to Star Trek for a prominent role in “A Piece of the Action.”
Hal Baylor, the New York City Irish policeman, was a character actor in films and TV with hundreds of roles under his belt. Before acting, he was a boxer, and often brought that talent into his work before the camera. Baylor returned to Star Trek for an appearance in “Elaan of Troyius.”
It is Bart LaRue who provided the voice of the Guardian, not James Doohan, as some sources have claimed. La Rue was well liked at Star Trek. He returned, to be seen as well as heard, in “Bread and Circuses,” and to provide more voiceovers in “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” “Patterns of Force” and “The Savage Curtain.”
David L. Ross, noticeable as a red-shirted security officer in “Miri,” “The Return of the Archons,” and “A Taste of Armageddon,” is also noticeable here, playing security officer Galloway.
And John Winston, as Lt. Kyle, is present for his third appearance in the series. He gets knocked out by McCoy.
Production Diary
These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One Page 95
