Post by Dorothy J HeydtPost by Don KuenzPost by Joseph NebusPost by Dorothy J HeydtExcept that by the time Roddenberry had rewritten it, she wasn't
preaching the Gospel any longer, and the revised script was
acceotabke to the network, and Harlan had a fit. I was at
Westercon XXI, where he got up and complained bitterly about how
Roddenberry had *ruined* his story.
To be fair to Roddenberry, Ellison will give one the same
complaints about any production, including _Avatar_ and the episode
where 99 marries Maxwell Smart.
This misunderstanding is my fault. Whenever _City_ gets mentioned most
people think of the Roddenberry TOS episode. They seldom think about
Ellison's original treatment.
I've *read* Ellison's original treatment. There were two things
wrong with it: (a) it completely misunderstood the three core
characters, "the triangle," whose interactions were the basis of
every good ST plot; and (b) there were things like drug use that
would not ever have flown on 1960s television.
As I said upthread, television was the wrong medium for Harlan.
Post by Don KuenzIMHO _City_ epitomizes Star Trek. It seems that Ellison's original
treatment spoke too much brutal truth to power.
That's another way of saying it would never have flown on 1960s
television, which as I also said upthread, was run by a bunch of
guys in suits in New York, who wanted to play to the lowest
common denominator because they would buy more of the
advertisers' products.
Way back in the high and palmy days of USENET, (2003, actually),
John Eldredge told the tale of a lecture delivered by the manager
of a local network affiliate.
Post by Don Kuenz... I asked him, in a
question-and-answer session at a public lecture, what his network
considered an average viewer to be. His answer was, "We consider
the average viewer to be a blue-collar worker in his 30's or 40's,
with an eighth-grade education, an IQ of about 80, and no desire to
watch anything that would make him need to think."
And he was probably right. The average American viewer was not
ready for the work of Harlan Ellison, and probably still isn't.
Post by Don KuenzIt plain talked more
dramatically than Fighting-Quaker Butler.
Who?
You know best about TOS, having wrote the bible on it. You also know
your Ellison. Two hundred proof is far too strong for most.
In the recently released graphic novel "Star Trek, Harlan Ellison's The
City on the Edge of Forever, The Original Teleplay" Ellison at long last
gets to tell his story *his* way. When you bring up "the triangle" it
makes me curious....
McCoy appears in a sum total of two panels in the graphic novel. He
attends to the medical needs of a red shirt injured by Beckwith. He says
nothing in either panel. This may very well reveal the brutal truth as
to Ellison's opinion of what the McCoy character is good for.
Although Roddenberry harps about drugs, Ellison's ire seems focused on
the original "Trooper" character that Roddenberry left on the cutting
room floor. In the original treatment the legless "Trooper" sits atop a
small platform on wheels and uses his hands on pavement for movement.
He's a charity case who sells apples and pencils in the street.
Trooper's a veteran who was wounded in WWI. He probably camped out with
the Bonus Army. [1]
The "Fighting Quaker," Smedley Butler [2] did indeed lend his support to
the Bonus Army. Butler also wrote a book titled "War is a Racket."
The big bugaboo with the Bonus Army is that it makes Uncle Sam look bad.
It makes Uncle Sam look like a guy who sends people off to war, promises
them a bonus, and then welshes on his promise. It's only natural for
suits with a stake in the status quo to just leave all of that cognitive
dissonance on the cutting room floor.
Note.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_army
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
Thank you,
--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU
"And truth severe, by fairy fiction drest." - Thomas Gray.