But even though I have reached peace with myself about the script, I continue to maintain the belief that art-by-committee is never great, or even good art. It is cobbled-up like Frankenstein’s monster, with bits and pieces from different minds.

The solitary creator, dreaming his or her dream, unaided, seems to me to be the only artist we can trust.

However, that’s a judgment you’ll have to make yourself. I’m permitting the script in its original version to be published here for the first time anywhere, because it has come to my attention that copies of the shooting script, the rewritten version, have sold hundreds of copies in high-priced mimeographed editions; and everywhere I go…to conventions, to colleges where I lecture, to autograph parties in bookstores when my books are published…invariably I’m asked, “Where can I get a copy of the original version of ‘City’?”

Till now, my answer has always been: nowhere.

James Blish attempted to turn it into a short story, using the best elements of both versions for the first Star Trek paperback. It didn’t really satisfy. Not even Jim, who admitted same, even though he did as good a job as he could trying to meld two disparate scripts into a coherent whole. But here it is, unedited, intact, just as I wrote it back in 1966.

Naturally, I hope you think it’s dyn-o-mite, but even if you still prefer the aired version (which shows up regularly on syndicated reruns of the Star Trek series all over the country), I have the personal satisfaction that all creators retain when they know they’ve brought a dream to life with what Balzac called “clean hands and composure.”

Now a few words about the form in which a teleplay is written, and then a few words about some elements of the plot that were pivotal in my writing the script the way I did.

Television terminology is more complex than that used for either radio plays or stage productions, naturally. A scenarist writes not only the plot, dialogue and sequences, he or she also writes the camera angles, the description of characters, the sets, sometimes—if it’s important—even the music for a certain mood.

When you see O.S. it means “offstage,” as when someone is speaking but isn’t on camera. POV means “point of view” and refers to that which the character in question sees, through his or her eyes. An ARRIFLEX shot is one made with a hand-held camera. The Arriflex, or “arri” as it’s usually called, used to be the basic hand-held implement for such work—useful in getting around quickly with that jerky, documentary feel that’s so important for scenes of rapid movement or personal combat—but these days they use a French-made camera, the Eclair. [6] When you see (beat), as in some character’s speech, it merely means taking-a-beat, a pause. A SMASH-CUT is a sharp, dramatic cut from one scene to another, and is scenarists’ mickeymouse, because a cut is a cut, and that’s the long and short of it, but a HARD CUT or a SMASH-CUT means that the action preceding and following the cut should be very slambang, the way they used to do it on Mission: Impossible or The Man from U.N.C.L.E. An ESTABLISHING SHOT is a full frame shot that is used to orient the viewer as to where the coming action will take place, a street, a ballroom, a vast plain with armies poised to battle. A LAP-DISSOLVE is a very slow dissolve in which one scene is superimposed over another for a few beats, one fading, the other coming in stronger, so we have a sense of passage of time.