[ExI] Harlan Ellison, one of science fiction’s most controversial authors, has died

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> 



 

 

>…I did some searching on this and found that Ellison wrote the Star Trek episode “City of the Edge of Forever” which is by far my favorite episode of the original series.  I don’t like the things he did, but I will cheerfully acknowledge his brilliance…spike

 

 

At a party this evening, we viewed City on the Edge of Forever.  I read up on some of the circumstances behind that episode.  Ellison’s script called for runes.  There was a misunderstanding.  The set people thought he wanted ruins.  So they built a set with ruins.  But by the time the error was discovered, they already had blown their budget, so they patched the script to (sorta) accommodate ruins, which made no sense, there in the presence of a godlike machine or being (both and neither) but hey, runes, ruins, whatevs, right?

 

So that was an odd flaw in an otherwise interesting story.  Being a time-traveler script, it was filled with all the logical paradoxes characteristic of the genre.  Ellison was really pissed about the set people building ruins instead of runes, and disowned the script.  He and Roddenberry got into a huge blowup over it because Roddenberry needed to stay on budget and Ellison thought (correctly) that the story made not a damn bit of sense with these stupid cheesy ruins where there should be runes.  I clearly see both sides now.

 

If we have any hardcore Star Trek original series gurus still among us, please: in that scene where Bones first appears (after Kirk and Spock were already down there) he comes upon a hobo who was stealing a bottle of milk.  McCoy is stoned on a huge overdose of cordrazine and conks out.  The hobo takes the doctor’s transporter and beams himself to… somewhere.  They don’t tell us where.  Do they have a later episode where they discover they need to take the hobo back to 1930 in order to not mess up the 23rd century?

 

spike

 

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