Star Trek and the City on the edge

[Barry]

 A Lesson in TV making:

I saw the 55 years of Star Trek, but I read the great book by Herb Solow, who was their executive producers and has said that he will not be in these things because he wrote his own book.  But I did learn somethings somethings, and here are three of them.
 
1.  The City on the Edge of Forever
We read often and see here how Roddenberry kept rewriting the script of Harlan Ellison and rewriting others. They don’t explain a major part of this.  G.R. needed scripts to go into production quickly, once the pilot was approved. Sets have to be made etc. G.R. went to several sci-fi writers, hoping to give Star Trek status.
 
But, as with almost all TV shows of that era, no one had seen Star Trek yet.  It was not on the air. The characters were not introduced, the actors were not all cast and the ones that were had not yet discovered their characters yet. It took Nimoy a three or four episode to “nail” Spock.  I read Ellison’s script and the graphic novel.  It was a great sci-fi script, but it was not Star Trek, the characters were NOT fleshed out.  It seemed like a two hour movie and was way over the $185,000 budget. Most of the scenes took place off the Enterprise and then sets had to be built.  The revised script $55,000 more than the budget and everyone seemed to fit.  Also, the original script had drug addition in it and I don’t know, at that time, if that would go through the censors.

But many TV shows must go through this process. That is, the show needs to produce and air a few epidsodes before new writer, nt the creators, can write scripts.
 
2.  The Russian:
Star Trek always promoted their villains.  In the original series, we were in a cold war.  So Star Trek had a Russian on board and fought the Klingons.  In The Next Generation, they had a Kligon aboard and fought the Ferengi and Borg.  In Deep Space Nine a Ferangi was part of the “staff. And in Voyoger a Borg joined the crew.
But Checkov was not in the first season. He was only brought about when George Takei had to continue working on a movie (I think it was The Longest Day) when it went six weeks over. Note that in season two they were never on board together.
 
3.  Shatner:
It was common, then, for actors to take a lower slaery and own part of the show. Shatner owns 5% of Star Tre.

[SRW1000]

I have a fun anecdote about Harlan Ellison and City on the Edge of Forever.  His hatred for what they did to his story was legendary.  

We attended a small convention in Madison, WI years ago.  As part of the charity auction, he offered a signed VHS copy of that episode, and said that it was the only time he had ever done such a thing.  We didn't bid on it, reasoning that it would be better off in the hands of an Ellison fan, and we would have been bidding more a speculator.

I don't recall what it sold for, but I'm sure that since his death the value has only increased.

It was pretty big of him to auction off something that rare, that he really hated, but was willing to do it for the benefit of a charity.

He also submitted a mystery item to the auction, described only as a unique hand-written item.  

The winner was presented with a book of crossword puzzles that he had completed.  

Scott