City On The Edge Of Forever #1 Preview
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The City on the Edge of Forever #1 comic is due out tomorrow, but readers can have a sneak peek today.
This issue is the first of a five part mini-series.
Star Trek: Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay will be written by Scott Tipton and David Tipton, with interior painted art by J.K. Woodward. Each issue of the series will feature a cover by Juan Ortiz, whose artistic interpretations of every episode of [the original series] were recently published in an oversize hardcover collection, Star Trek: The Art of Juan Ortiz. Variant covers will be provided by movie poster artist/Star Trek: Khan cover artist Paul Shipper.
The comic book mini-series will be overseen by Harlan Ellison.
Click on the thumbnails to see larger images. More preview pages can be round at the referring site.
About The Author
I really really hope that Harlan Ellison now finally stops complaining how bad his idea was treated. When I read about him complaining about City…, i always wonder if this man has achieved so little in his lfe that he never could let go this one-time Trek experience.
Back in the 60’s his story could not be turned into an episode – and that’s only because he didn’t care for the format he was writing for. Anyone wiritng for TV has to follow the guidelines, and H.E. didn’t do that. So it’s no wonder they couldn’t use his original idea. So, Mr. Ellison, can you now please please pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease LET IT GO?
A man who likes to bill himself as “Cordwainer Bird” will never let anything go.
The preview pages here put an exclamation point on just how unworkable Harlan’s script would have been on Trek as the show had developed. Actually seeing the drug-dealing angle in visual terms, wrapped up in the trappings of familiar settings and costumes, is just bizarre. The artwork’s great though.
What gets me about all of this is the one detail that’s marked this script for me; his naming two characters with a similar sounding name (Beckwith, La Beque)-that’s something that first-year scriptwriting class students are told not to do. It looks like Ellison just got caught up in himself as the great literary mastermind and couldn’t see that mistake, nor could he see that you have to follow the guidelines of a show and that you can also get re-written.
My hope is is that he can get past this and just live and let live (although I wished that he’d done that in 2009 when he sued CBS Studios and Paramount Pictures for monies he felt were owed him for the used of the Guardian Of Forever in any Star Trek show or movie.
Reading Ellison’s short stories over the past 40+ years as I have, his good stories are greatly outnumbered by his bad ones. He has occasionally brilliant ideas but needs an editor with a strong stomach and a good red pen.
He loves telling stories about being screwed, whether it’s by Gene Roddenberry or Irwin Allen. How many times has he told the story about jumping up on the table and pouncing on Adrian Samish, injuring the man with a Seaview miniature? Is that something to be proud of? Really? As you say, writing for TV means you have to follow the series guidelines! I had a friend who wrote a lot of scripts for films and TV in the 60s-70s, and if he went off on his own tangent, he didn’t get the job, so he followed the series guidelines and sold 3 scripts in a row.