Filmed February 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13 & 14 (1/2 day), 1967
(Planned as 6 day production; finishing 1½ days behind; total cost: $245,316).
Day 7, February 13, 1964, Bill McGovern on Stage 10 (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Principal photography began on Friday, February 3, 1967. This was the week The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour kicked-off on CBS-TV, with Ed Sullivan on hand to introduce the brothers, and guests Danny Thomas, James “Gomer Pyle” Nabors, Danny Thomas, and Jill St. John. And the Smothers won their time slot, beating NBC’s top-show, Bonanza. A.C. Nielsen estimated that The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour had 36.8% of the TV audience, compared to 24.3% for Bonanza. The Monkees were on the cover of TV Guide, as well as having the top-selling record album in America (their debut disc, now in its thirteenth week at the summit). They also had the song getting the most radio action (“I’m a Believer”). Other performers had given up hope of hitting the top of the singles charts. The new song to be held off, at No. 2, was “Georgy Girl,” by the New Seekers. Dr. Zhivago was the hottest movie ticket across the nation, having dethroned Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. “Court Martial” had had its only NBC broadcast the night before, and Star Trek was now about to make its most-acclaimed episode.
Filming began at Desilu 40 Acres. This day, cast and crew assembled on the streets of Mayberry for the third time (following “Miri” and “The Return of the Archons”).
Amazingly, Joseph Pevney was asked to get all the location work done in a single day, and to keep to the mandated six-day schedule. No one at Star Trek believed “The City on the Edge of Forever” could be shot in six days but, with a first season deficit of $74,507 on the books, and only two episodes left for Desilu to attempt to recoup (or at least reduce) this financial loss, the producers had to try ... or, at least, appear to be trying. Pevney fell behind immediately.
The work at 40 Acres was extensive. During the daylight hours, which only lasted until 5 p.m. during this time of year, the scene where Kirk and Spock arrive, literally leaping into an alleyway out of nowhere, was filmed. The two are spotted by the stunned crowds and hurry across a busy street. They enter a second alley where Kirk climbs a fire escape and steals clothing that has been hung out to dry. And then they are confronted by a policeman. Spock drops the cop with his “FSNP,” then they flee, running down a second street, then into a third alleyway, then down the stairs and through a door which we will learn leads to the basement of the mission (the interior to be filmed later at the studio). More work was needed for the nighttime scenes. We see Kirk walking Edith home, having a conversation in front of Floyd’s Barber Shop from The Andy Griffith Show, Floyd’s name prominently displayed in the shop window; we see a deranged McCoy arrive in the dead of night, leaping into this world of the past and accosting a homeless man named Rodent; finally, there is the big finale, outside the mission, as Kirk and Spock are reunited with McCoy, and Edith is run down by a truck. All these scenes required numerous extras, with period costuming and period cars, all things guaranteed to complicate and slow down the business of filming.
With everyone but the studio bean-counters knowing that Pevney was not going to get it all done, that no director could, the immediate problem was when to finish ... and where? Desilu 40 Acres was bustling with activity. Rango, a western, needed the western street at 40 Acres, too close to the streets of Mayberry to allow both productions to film simultaneously. Gomer Pyle also had 40 Acres booked for its outdoor Marine Camp scenes, and Hogan’s Heroes had a booking for the exterior of its POW camp. More of a problem in the coming week was The Andy Griffith Show, needing to get Mayberry back and shoot exteriors on the very streets Star Trek was using. Pevney and company had to wait several days before returning, well after dark.
On Day 2, Monday, production moved to Desilu Gower Stage 11, the home of My Three Sons. With that series on hiatus and its sets collapsed, Stage 11 was used for the interior Mission set and the back room where McCoy is bedridden and cared for by Edith.
DeForest Kelley shared, “During the filming, I became convinced that McCoy should also fall for the lovely Edith Keeler. I felt it would add to the intrigue, should McCoy as well as Kirk come under the spell of her decency, humanity, and beauty -- both inner and outer. I suggested it to Joe Pevney. I thought a good spot to indicate the attraction would be when Edith comes to McCoy’s room where he’s recuperating. Pevney shot it. It was never seen.” (98-3)
On Day 3, Stage 10 was used for the interior Mission basement sequences, as well as the “flat” shared by Kirk and Spock.
Shooting on Day 4 was still on Stage 10, still filming scenes left unfinished from the previous day. The “Tenement Stairway” came next, where Spock witnesses Kirk saving Edith from tumbling down the stairs. With nightfall, the company moved outdoors behind Stage 10 and filmed the alleyway scenes where McCoy catches up with a fleeing Rodent, then collapses, allowing Rodent to find his phaser and accidently disintegrate himself.
On Day 5, Stage 9 was used for all the scenes on the Enterprise bridge, including when McCoy, behaving like a madman, struggles with the Captain and other personnel.
John Stanley, a writer for The San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle, was visiting the set. In an article published in his paper’s March 12, 1967, edition, he wrote:
Shatner seems to be a fast-paced actor, his train of thought sharp, his speech fast-flowing. He is eager to compare his opinions of certain Star Trek episodes with those of others, and his interest perks up noticeably when his knowledge of science-fiction is called upon. “This is not a device of the future,” began Shatner, pointing to a towel wrapped around one hand, its interiors crammed with ice cubes. “We were doing a fight sequence this morning and I think I sprained it. I’ll have it x-rayed later today to find out. Isn’t it marvelous the inventions man has today?”
Stage 10 – Bill McGovern slates a shot of the Guardian and the “rune stones” (Courtesy Gerald Gurian)
This day was meant to be the only one spent on Stage 9, with the sequences in the ship’s corridors and transporter room filmed, as well. But Pevney was unable to finish, now almost a full day behind.
Cast and crew were allowed to leave in time to make it home for the NBC premiere of “The Return of the Archons.”
Shatner, Nimoy, Nichols, and Doohan step in where McGovern had stood seconds later (Unaired film trim courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Day 6 began with catch-up work on Stage 9, finishing the leftover sequences from the day before, followed by a move to Stage 10 where building of the exterior planet set and the vortex had been completed.
… and having a good laugh after a jump through the vortex (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Fontana recalled, “Harlan [in his script] had talked about this city, with ‘rune’ stones tumbled in the foreground, and then there was this time gate, which he really didn’t describe very much. Matt Jefferies, who had great sensibilities, was out sick with the flu that particular week that it was to go into pre-production, and Rolland Brooks, who was the Art Department chair, took over to do that one. He had a couple martinis before dinner, before he read the script, and was confused about the description of ‘rune stones.’ He grabbed a dictionary and got to ‘ruin’ before he got to ‘rune,’ so there’s these pieces of broken columns and things like this lying about, which had nothing to do with what the script said. And, of course, the time portal looked like this lopsided donut. And Matt Jefferies walked onto the set and said, ‘What the hell is this?!’“ (64-1)
It was, nonetheless, an impressive set for a 1967 TV series.
Day 7. On Monday, work resumed on Stage 10, for the bulk of Act 1 on the planet set, with the hunt for McCoy, the encounter with the Guardian of Forever, and McCoy leaping through the time vortex.
On Day 8, Tuesday, February 14, Pevney continued working on the planet set. A cleaned-up McCoy returned from the past, along with Kirk and Spock, as the company filmed the last scene of the episode.
Pevney recalled, “Using ‘hell
’ in the last line was something of a problem. Kirk said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ and there were objections from the Network. Roddenberry had a meeting with them and said, ‘There is no other word which conveys the emotion of the moment.’ Of course, Bill [Shatner] fought for it, too. We all wanted it because it sounded so great. Finally, NBC said, ‘What the hell, leave it in.’” (141-1)
Pevney turned the company over to director Herschel Daugherty at midday, for a move back to Stage 9 and the start of filming for “Operation: Annihilate!” Stage 10, not needed in this final episode of season one, went dark.
Post-Production
Available for editing: February 15, 1967. Music score: March 24, 1967.
James Ballas and Edit Team #1 did the superb editing. The montage of historical events, as seen through the time portal, was mostly made up of clips from the Paramount film library. The shot of the Brooklyn Bridge was stock footage.
The score for this episode was almost all tracked music. One exception is the song heard playing when Kirk strolls along a New York City street with Edith. “Good Night, Sweetheart” was first released in 1931, one year after this event supposedly takes place. It became a No. 1 hit in America for Guy Lombardo.
Film Effects of Hollywood provided the opticals and animation, including transporter effects, Rodent’s disintegration, the impressive matte shots involving the time portal, and the equally impressive sequence when Kirk and Spock, and later McCoy, leap out of a brick wall in to 1930 New York City. Double-exposure techniques – a great challenge and expense in 1966 - were state-of-the-art for their time. Robert Justman, fretting over the costs, had written to Gene Roddenberry about it on December 20, 1966, forewarning:
I am a bit at a loss to know what to do with the “time vortex.” Certainly, if we intend to remain with the time vortex and the Optical Effects of various pieces of film MATTED into it, we must stage our sequences in such a way that we are not featuring the time vortex, except when we absolutely have to. Otherwise, we would be into the most complicated and expensive sequences we have ever attempted, believe it or not. STOCK FILM in color costs $10.00 per foot in ten-foot minimum cuts. Add to the cost of the STOCK FILM the cost of creating this composite effect, and the mind becomes boggled with the grandeur of it all. (RJ28-4)
The solution: buy Black & White stock film footage.
Composer Fred Steiner provided a partial score for this episode. This was the sixth episode assigned to him.
Taking seven-and-a-half days to film, the $245,316 spent to produce “City” made it the most-costly episode of the original series, a staggering $60,316 over the per-episode allowance. This equates to $1.7 million in 2013, with overage of $420,000. The first season deficit nearly doubled, reaching $134,823.
Release / Reaction
Premiere air date: 4/6/67. NBC repeat broadcast: 8/31/67.
NBC publicity photo transforming a glamorous British star into a domesticated American immigrant (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Joseph Pevney said, “Roddenberry was very happy with the end results of that.... He wrote me a letter which I’m very proud of -- I still have it -- congratulating me on my work and the extra special contributions he said I made to Star Trek.” (141-2)
RATINGS / Nielsen National report: Thursday, April 6, 1967:
ABC stayed on top this night, with NBC and Star Trek in second position. The underperforming movie on CBS: Branded, a western starring Richard Widmark.
On June 20, 1967, Roddenberry sent a letter to Harlan Ellison. In part, it read:
Although we have a disagreement over that re-write, every evidence is that the show was highly-successful both from the mass audience aspect necessary to maintaining a show on the air, and from the critical audience as well… Never outside this office and particularly nowhere in sf or television circles have I ever mentioned that the script was anything but entirely yours. I have heard from a number of sources that you have been less than faithful to your side of this arrangement. I am told you do not hesitate to accept full praise and responsibility for the show, [and] go out of your way to say or suggest that I treated you badly, was dishonest in my dealings with you, and showed a lack of efficiency in my tasks which only your superior writing overcame. I further understand that you have stated you intend to say or intimate something of the same at Westercon 20 and possibly at the World Science-Fiction Convention in New York. While you are entitled to any honest opinions of me personally or professionally, you must understand that I will not permit any lies or misinformation to be circulated. At the risk of turning our currently honest disagreement into something more serious, I will fight such a thing with every weapon at my disposal. I never like to hurt a man, but no man should feel he can back me into a corner where my reputation, and therefore my livelihood and [that of] my family, is imperiled. (GR28-7)
Ellison and Roddenberry continued to fight one another with “every weapon at [their] disposal.” Over the coming years, Roddenberry, feeling Ellison had broken the agreement to not speak in detail about the writing of the script, stepped forward and took credit for the version of the script that won a Hugo Award in 1968.
When interviewed by this author, Ellison said, “Roddenberry gave me very little choice. Every time he got in public, someone would ask him something and he would make up a lie. Or he would retell an older lie and then embellish it. I threatened him once that I would bust his nose so hard his great grandmother would bleed. He was not in awe of me by any means, at five foot five and he having the brawn of a dock-walloper. But he knew that I wasn’t afraid of him and I wasn’t afraid of anything that he could do. He knew he couldn’t buy me and he couldn’t scare me. Gene never missed an opportunity to retell the lies and engorge them, so that I’d look like a monster. I would go to a convention and draw in five to ten thousand people, and the fans, of course, not knowing any better and he being the Great Bird of the Galaxy, made it so I’d have to answer the same stupid questions about whether Gene Roddenberry saved my ass and on and on and on.” (58)
Roddenberry, one year before his death, said, “He [Ellison] turned in an episode which was a brilliant piece of work -- if there had been no Star Trek pattern to follow. But, by the time of this episode, we had laid down who our people were, who Scotty was, and who the Doc was, and so on. Harlan treated it as though I had assigned him to do just a science-fiction episode. And I told him that wasn’t satisfactory. So he futzed-around with a rewrite. But he just never solved the basic problem of why are we doing this series. Who is Kirk? Who is Spock? And so I rewrote it. Completely.” (145-2)
“Harlan never forgave us for rewriting him,” said Robert Justman, “and, out of spite, he submitted his original script to the Writers Guild, and he ended-up winning an award for this script that’s never been produced.” (94-4)
Star Trek had made a submission for the WGA award, as well -- the script for “The Return of the Archons.”
Justman recalled, “Coon, Roddenberry, and I were all in attendance at the awards dinner, and as Ellison walked away from the podium with his award in one hand and his script in the other, he shook them at us, smirking, as if to say, ‘There, that’ll show you.’ I looked at Gene, he looked at me and shrugged and said, ‘Well, that’s show biz.’ So we just laughed it off. I mean, if the [script] hadn’t been rewritten, the episode would never have been produced.” (94-4)
Herb Solow was also present at the ceremony. He remembered Ellison’s acceptance speech well. “Failing to mention Star Trek or even recognizing the two Genes or RJ, he quickly turned his attention to artistic integrity,” said Solow. “Harlan berated the studio executive ‘suits,’ and the Executive Producers and Producers of television series, for ‘interfering with the writing process.’ ... The writer-dominated audience rose to their feet, en masse, and hailed this living hero who had the guts to publicly speak out against them!... Surprisingly, Gene Roddenberry seemed amused. He turned to us and shrugged.” (161-3)
In 2013, Ellison said, “When I
went to the awards, Gene Coon nearly choked on his dinner. He was sitting right down in front of me when I said what I said about the rewriting. Of course, nothing I’ve ever done in my 79 years has not in some way impaired my progress. Whether I was working for Aaron Spelling, Darryl Zanuck, or Gene Roddenberry, I’m not afraid of anything, and that is a great flaw. It doesn’t mean you’re brave necessarily, it means you don’t know when to turn and run when the snake is rattling.” (58)
Mary Black recalled, “After all the awards had been given out and the awards area was shut down and people were just sort of milling, Harlan climbed over the tables that were between his table and our table – on top of the tables and over the table – to come over and yell, ‘We won, we won!’ to John.” (17a)
“It really rankled me, because he won the Writers Guild prize,” said Roddenberry. “And I made a complaint about that. I pointed out that...there are many excellent [first draft scripts] that could be submitted, but not fairly. Because it doesn’t follow the pattern of what you guaranteed to write. And, we had a huge fight and [Harlan] was as near a thing as I ever had as an enemy. He was a very proud writer. And the very fact that I had rewritten it really upset him. But it was obvious why I had to rewrite it: I had to put our people in.” (145-2)
As for the version that Roddenberry, Coon, and Fontana wrote, based on Ellison’s story and as directed by Joseph Pevney, winning the International Hugo Award as Best Science Fiction Presentation of 1967, it would be 25 years before another television program received this honor -- Star Trek: The Next Generation, for the episode “The Inner Light.”
Roddenberry always acknowledged “City” as one of his Top Ten favorite episodes from the original series. At the end of his life, for The Last Conversation, he picked it as his absolute favorite.
These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One Page 96
