How's Your Credit?
Harlan Ellison came up with the story about a drug dealing Enterprise crew member who is arrested and tried, but then escapes custody while on a planet where a time vortex allows him to change Earth history. Ellison wrote the story outline and the first draft script, along with two rewrites. This, along with his sci-fi pedigree -- which Gene Roddenberry so desperately wanted for Star Trek® -- got him the screen credit as the sole writer. But only a few lines of Ellison’s script made it into the filmed episode.
Steven Carabatsos, Star Trek®’s Story Editor at the time, took on the script next, changing many plot points. He
Leonard Nimoy, Harlan Ellison, William Shatner itched the drug dealing crewman and replaced him
with Dr. McCoy who, after an injury, had a bad reaction to an injection of adrenalin, prompting him to beam himself to the planet and disrupt all that once was.
D.C. Fontana then replaced Carabatsos as Story Editor. "I reported to work the first day," she said, "And walked right into a hornet's nest of trouble with The City on the Edge of Forever at the heart of it. Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon turned to me and said, 'You're it. You try a rewrite.' Talk about being tossed a live grenade!"
Fontana jettisoned the “adrenalin poisoning” and came up with the idea of an overdose of “cordrazine.” She also built up the romance between Kirk and Edith Keeler, and wrote the scenes where Spock constructs a “mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins.”
Producer Gene Coon did a couple drafts of the script, as well. Fontana said, "The little touches of humor tend more to be Coon's than anyone else's, [including his] immortal line about Spock getting his head caught in a rice picker."
Gene Roddenberry wrote the final draft, along with numerous page revisions. Among other changes, he came up with Edith Keeler’s speech about harnessing the energy of the atom and reaching for the stars.
So, no one person wrote The City on the Edge of Forever. It was Ellison’s original story, with plot changes by Carabatsos. But it was Coon, Fontana and Roddenberry who wrote the actual teleplay for this classic episode … and did so without credit.
Experience the battle over Star Trek’s greatest episode, reconstructed using memos from the producers, writers, and the network, along with recollections from the cast and production crew, previously unseen production documents and the Nielsen ratings. There’s only one place where you will get all of this … in These are the Voyages – TOS, Season One, by Marc Cushman, to be published by Jacobs/Brown Press in July 2013.
Steven Carabatsos, Star Trek®’s Story Editor at the time, took on the script next, changing many plot points. He
Leonard Nimoy, Harlan Ellison, William Shatner itched the drug dealing crewman and replaced him
with Dr. McCoy who, after an injury, had a bad reaction to an injection of adrenalin, prompting him to beam himself to the planet and disrupt all that once was.
D.C. Fontana then replaced Carabatsos as Story Editor. "I reported to work the first day," she said, "And walked right into a hornet's nest of trouble with The City on the Edge of Forever at the heart of it. Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon turned to me and said, 'You're it. You try a rewrite.' Talk about being tossed a live grenade!"
Fontana jettisoned the “adrenalin poisoning” and came up with the idea of an overdose of “cordrazine.” She also built up the romance between Kirk and Edith Keeler, and wrote the scenes where Spock constructs a “mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins.”
Producer Gene Coon did a couple drafts of the script, as well. Fontana said, "The little touches of humor tend more to be Coon's than anyone else's, [including his] immortal line about Spock getting his head caught in a rice picker."
Gene Roddenberry wrote the final draft, along with numerous page revisions. Among other changes, he came up with Edith Keeler’s speech about harnessing the energy of the atom and reaching for the stars.
So, no one person wrote The City on the Edge of Forever. It was Ellison’s original story, with plot changes by Carabatsos. But it was Coon, Fontana and Roddenberry who wrote the actual teleplay for this classic episode … and did so without credit.
Experience the battle over Star Trek’s greatest episode, reconstructed using memos from the producers, writers, and the network, along with recollections from the cast and production crew, previously unseen production documents and the Nielsen ratings. There’s only one place where you will get all of this … in These are the Voyages – TOS, Season One, by Marc Cushman, to be published by Jacobs/Brown Press in July 2013.
Watch for These are the Voyages — The True History of Star Trek: TOS, Seasons Two and Three, set for publication by Jacobs/Brown Press later in 2013.
