From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos
From Address: dxmm@albury.nospam.net.au
Subject: Re: IDW Does Harlan Ellison

On 15/07/2014 12:30 PM, A Friend wrote:
> In article , Jim G.
>  wrote:
>
>> A classic revisited, just as Harlan envisioned it...
>>
>> The City that Never Sleeps or Goes Away: Harlan Ellison and Star Trek,
>> Again
>>
>> http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/07/the-city-that-never-sleeps-o
-goes-away-harla
>> n-ellison-and-star-trek-again
>> or http://preview.tinyurl.com/l4sppdm
>>
>> QUOTE
>> Adapted for the comics by IDWrCUs primary Trek writers Scott and David
>> Tipton, and with beautiful art by J.K. Woodward (who did slick work on
>> the Doctor Who/TNG crossover a few years ago) everything about this
>> release is totally legit. In the debut issue of this limited run (there
>> will be five in all) IDW Trek editor Chris Ryall writes fondly about how
>> this venture was his idea, and one that took some convincing of
>> everybody to go along with. In his words, over time rCRnosrC# turned into
>> rCRhmmmms.rC#
>> END QUOTE
>>
>> Okay, so how long until Ellison sues IDW over something about this?
>
>
> I read the original script about 35 years ago, and I don't remember
> anything about a Bizarro World Enterprise.
>
> The article asks the question, "And yet, now nearly 50 years later,
> with numerous Treks behind us, the question still nags: would EllisonrCOs
> original script for rCLThe City on the Edge of Forever,rCY have been better
> than what ended up on screen?"  I don't think so.  The story is not
> about Beckwith, it's about Kirk and Edith Keeler, and Kirk's duty to
> history and the future.  The story didn't require Beckwith or anybody
> like Beckwith.  Accidentally overdosing McCoy gets things rolling quite
> nicely.
>
> Ellison's ending -- with Beckwith stuck in a time loop getting
> annihilated every few seconds inside a nova -- is beyond melodramatic.
> In the show as seen, Kirk's final line, "Let's get the hell out of
> here," is powerful, especially in a day when saying "hell" on U.S. tv
> was a very rare thing indeed.
>
> BTW the really confusing thing about City is just how history was
> changed.  Everybody thinks McCoy saved Edith from getting run over by
> that truck, and that wasn't the case.  The creepy little guy at the
> rescue mission (his name in Ellison's script is Rodent) eventually
> rapes and murders Edith.  He doesn't do so in the changed history
> because he fiddled with McCoy's phaser and disintegrated himself.  The
> significance of this was purposefully obscured, but that's why the
> phaser scene is in there.  What's also not explained is why Kirk and
> Spock simply didn't take Edith with them into the future, which would
> have effectively "killed" her in 1930.  Neither story ever explains why
> Edith's death was necessary.
>
> Also, Clark Gable didn't make a movie until 1931.
>
Hasn't the Edith Keeler story line been mentioned here as a possible ST 
13 re-do storyline??

Daniel

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