geektrek

I’d like to talk to you about two very different personalities. Two men who share some common ground, good and bad, and how they reacted as human beings. It is a good example of the many differences in the interpretation of the word, “Character”.

David Gerrold and Harlan Ellison are two men well known to the world of Star Trek. they have the distinction of having written what are considered the two best episodes of the classic Star Trek series - Gerrold authoring “The trouble with tribbles”, Ellison - “City on the edge of Forever”.  Some 40 years have past since these men did their work, and their work is still lauded today. An auspicious achievement for any writer, indeed.

Both men have spoken, and written extensively on their Trek experiences, both in a decidedly different tone.

While Ellison’s episode is acknowledged across the board as the best Classic Trek episode ever made, Ellison himself has approached his relationship to the episode and to Trek itself with vitriol and disdain. In a ’70’s TV interview, on the Tom snyder show, that featured cast members of Trek, Ellison was entirely derisive of Trek, referring to it as a, ” A cop show in space”. It would seem the source of his ire is the fact that his episode was changed to better suit the needs of the show. Much of Ellison’s original episode ideas were abandoned in favor of a more streamlined plot, one that better suited a weekly series. For a man who has been a professional writer his entire life, this should not at all come as a surprise. Things are changed in everyone’s teleplays to better suit the medium, or even the show, they are writing for. It is a fact of life, one that Ellison chose to ignore in favor of an embittered, 40 year long campaign, railing against Trek and even Gene Roddenberry as he went. And for what? Changing his original episode script into what is now, to this day, considered the best episode of Star Trek.

David Gerrold started out as a fan of Trek. At the age of 19, he began submitting ideas to Trek’s producers, and they luckily found his ideas suitable to the program. His first ever outing as an accreditted TV writer was the classic, “the Trouble with Tribbles”, next in line to the throne of greatest Trek episodes. He wrote a sequel for the animated series in the ’70’s, and also published a book about Star Trek, the last chapters of which are an instruction manual for how fans can bug Paramount Pictures to bring Trek back. Gerrold loved Star Trek.

But there is something similar in Gerrold and Ellison’s bios as writers for the beloved show. In 1985, Paramount approached Gene Roddenberry, proposing he create a new Trek series for TV, a sequel series that could be anything he wanted. Therein lay a problem - Roddenberry didn’t want anything futher to do with Trek. He didn’t even consider his own animated series part of the Trek canon, the first Trek feature film was thought to be over bearing bore, Paramount took the reigns of the film franchise out of his hands…

So Roddenberry was being offered a lot of money to do something he wasn’t interested in doing - So he didn’t. He called up two old friends, and had them do it for him. The first people hired to lead the creative team for the new Trek series were Dorothy Fontana, series story editor on the original show, and David Gerrold.

Here’s where things get murky. I’m going to familiarize you with some rules from WGA, the Writer’s Guild of america, the union that protects the rights and monies of writers in the film and TV business. According to the WGA, in order to be accreditted with the creation of a TV series, the writer must A) compose the pilot episode B) Write the series overview C) Compose the Writer’s Bible - the guide by which future writers will learn the ins and outs of the show in order to maintain arcs, continuity and technical terms.

Roddenberry didn’t do any of those things. DC Fontana and David Gerrold did. If you’ve never heard it before, you need to sit down…

“Star Trek: The Next Generation” was created by Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold…Not Gene Roddenberry.

Apparently his name was tacked on in order to ensure the aura of legitimacy around this new, possibly tenuous Trek. It was a rubber stamp of approval from the Great Bird himself, and had little to do with any actual contribution on his part.  His contribution were actually some of the things that somewhat sabotaged the show early on. Gerrold had created the character of Dr Crusher’s child originally as a girl, and was going to be forthright about the possibilty that the girl was in fact Picard’s own child via a tryst with the doctor. Roddenberry axed the notion quickly, insisting the child be changed to a boy, a boy wonderkind who was better at the jobs of all the fleet officers aboard Enterpise-D, and here’s where things go off the rails, insisting that the boy be called by his own middle name - Wesley. That’s right - Wesley Crusher is Gene Roddenberry’s own personal “Mary Sue” character in the Trek universe.

When writers were submitting story ideas to be the proposed scripts for the first season of “Next Gen”, David Gerrold submitted a proposal for a script to be called “Blood and Fire”, a story that was to stand as Trek’s metaphor for the horrific on-set of the AIDS virus, something that, in the 80’s, was very topical. This episode was to feature two openly gay crew members, something Gerrold felt fit right in with a universe that first introduced us to racially harmonious crews. Why not sexually diverse crews? It is Star Trek, after all…

Both the powers at Paramount, and Roddenberry himself, fearfully balked at the notions put forward in Gerrold’s episode, a reaction that Gerrold was stunned by. Was this not THE progressive platform to metaphorically explore the woes of our times? Gerrold was so disappointed by the rejection of the episode, or the mere notion that a character on a program that takes place in the far flung future could be gay, and accepted, that he left the staff of “Next Gen”.

From here we start to see my original point about the two men, the two writers, I started out with. Of Gerrold and Ellison, whom do you think was more wronged? Who do you think has more reason to cry to the hills. Clearly, it is David Gerrold. But David Gerrold has maintained relative silence about his disappointing exit from Trek, and more so about the fact that he is indeed the co-creator of the beloved program that people have for decades attributed to someone else, the very person who chose to reject the progressive notions that he himself initiated all those years ago.

While a lauded science fiction icon like Harlan Ellison rants and bitches, threatening to sue anyone who even looks at him funny, all the while dashing his brilliant creators reputation in favor of that of a raving, attention seeking lunatic, David Gerrold has approached the vast wrongs done to him by the Trek franchise with a quiet dignity. Only recently have all of the information regarding the goings-on on the Paramount lot circa 85-87 come to light. Ellison, however, has been berating Star Trek, for the horrific crime of editing his words, since the 1960’s. He has chosen to speak out against Trek at every given opportunity.

While I do agree, Harlan Ellison is the creator of the Guardian of Forever, and the man should be paid for its various uses throughout the past few decades, I do not agree that creating a piece of classic televised fiction gives you the right to continually ride that fame for the purpose of berating the platform by which you originally attained your greatest fame. People forgive as they grow old, a lesson Ellison has yet to learn, and he’s nearly 80.

The difference can be summed up in one word: Class

David Gerrold has been a class act for decades, silently enduring the pain of learning that something he loved was merely part of a larger, corporate agenda. While Ellison has made a first class buffoon of himself every chance he could get, never accepting that to write for large corporation entails catering to their oft-times production savvy whims.

To Gerrold, I say this - Perhaps enough time has passed that we can all hear your story, and not be too heart broken about the safe, money machine Trek had become.

To Ellison, I say this - Dude, shut the fuck up. No seriously, shut the fuck up,man. And just freakin’ die already so we can see the Guardian on-screen again. ( Kidding…well, not really.)

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