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Rating:  -
If you haven't read Harlan, this is not the place to start. Ellison put a lot into his teleplay, and there are surprising, literary aspects, primarily in asides and instructions for the director ( if, indeed, tv directors every took those seriously ). The "screenplay" is not first-class Ellison; for that, see his short story collections, or The Essential Ellison and many other anthologies of his great fiction. Aside from the screenplay, there is a long, rambling rant about the grave injustices Harlan suffered after writing the screenplay. The rant is funny and interesting for the details it reveals about the television industry. But I can't recommend this book to those who aren't big Ellison fans.
Rating:  -
This is not only the original script and a few of the re-writes, it is an epic essay on why Harlan Ellison is so angry with Star Trek. Seems that all the twisted stories told by Gene Roddenberry because they got a laugh or promoted the Star Trek mystique tended to have victims. Harlan was one of them, and he isn't gonna take it anymore.
Although he is justifiably upset, he sort of comes out firing an uzi in each hand when maybe wagging a finger would have done. I get it Harlan. I don't need to have 50 pages of the same thing over and over to get it!
But it's a good look into the Hollywood TV production business. And maybe into the area of fragile Hollywood egos. I am not sure that truth, justice, and purity can explain why Harlan is doing this. Clearly some of his own stories are exaggerated and become rhetoric. His is guilty in his own book of what he seems so upset about in others.
Despite all this, Ellison is a great writer and this book is well worth the read. Be forewarned that Ellison spares no expletives or insults for the likes of Gene Roddenberry, Gene Coon, Bill Shatner and others. In fact, it seems as if he can not say enough about them.
Rating: -
He does go on and on and on a bit, and you have to be careful not get bile on yourself as it gushes out of the book, but if you're hungry for behind-the-scenes ST info, whether truthful or not, it's enjoyable.
Rating:  -
I see that I ordered this book from Amazon nearly 10 years ago...so perhaps I should get around to my review. (No, it didn't take me that long to read the book.) As I recall, I bought it less out of interest in the original script (Star Trek hasn't appealed to me since my teens, aka the 1970s) than in order to have a complete version of Ellison's splenetic denunciation of "those amoeba-brained barbarians who butchered his masterpiece." I had read a brief excerpt of same in Harper's, nearly wet myself laughing (at Ellison's self-righteous ego, not from anything he wrote for intentional comic effect), and had to have the whole thing. And I did. But a little bit goes a long way, as the cliche states, and Mr. Ellison's screed tires before very long. (Thinking that a grown man, a professional writer, wrote these complaints is finally pretty sad.) At the very least, his original teleplay was obviously much too long for an actual aired episode of Trek, so it was going to have to be cut one way or another, so what was that baby crying about?
On the other hand, don't miss out on The Oscar, the 1966 bomb co-written by Ellison, which is MST3K-worthy. So bad it was referenced MORE THAN ONCE on SCTV, including an extended parody called The Nobel.
So, in conclusion, I love it when hack writers (Steven King, I mean you too) whine about how they're just not appreciated...but keep it to a three-page maximum, okay boys?
Rating: -
I loved this book. It gives us more insight into the original version of a great episode. I love Harlan Ellison, warts and all, however, my holding back from giving this book 5 stars is that there is no insight into the production process. Harlan feels that his script was wronged somehow. As pointed out in various reviews here on Amazon, if he didn't want changes made, he shouldn't have written it for a series.
Here is an idea Harlan... what with all the interest in fan films, and since you own the rights to the script lock, stock and barrel, why don't you get together a group of actors and crew, and make your version of "City..." yourself. Believe me, this would be a great thing, since there is no Star Trek fan film activity being done in LA except "Hidden Frontier."
Unless there is a WGA rule that prohibits this, maybe you should think about it. Walter Koenig and George Takei are working with the "New Voyages" group trying to get something they never got from Gene and Paramount; respect for their characters. Maybe you should think about it.
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