Over the past thirty years, “The City on the Edge of Forever” has become not only the most famous Trek episode, it has also been a marketing and franchising bonanza for Paramount. From two hundred dollar acrylic light-boxes with three tiny celluloid frames of the show as illuminated insert, to two hundred dollar “crafted in fine pewter and Tesori® porcelain” desktop sculptures, to two hundred dollar posters sold on the shopping channels, “City” has become something of a cultural touchstone. Hell, it was even the punchline of a comic strip.

And during those thirty years of fame and glory proceeding from the initial airing of the segment on 13 April 1967, Gene Roddenberry continued to represent me in interviews and from the lecture platform, as an undisciplined, talented-but-for-the-most-part-unhireable writer who had written the story of Edith Keeler all wrong. If you need any proof that I tell it just as it is, take a look at this page from Cinefantastique magazine, March 1987. Check out that large pullquote at the top.

Twenty years after being asked repeatedly not to spread these untruths, Roddenberry was still bumrapping me. Here is a salient excerpt from the 20th anniversary retrospective interview, as conducted by Ben Herndon:

One of the persisting mysteries surrounding this episode concerns the expanded original version of the teleplay Harlan Ellison wrote as compared to the version that was filmed and broadcast with script changes penned by Roddenberry. [10]

Roddenberry himself explained why certain alterations were made in the original script. “I think Harlan’s a genius, but he’s not exactly the most disciplined writer in the world,” said Roddenberry.

“He had my Scotty dealing in interplanetary drugs and things like that! Also, he wrote it so it would have cost $200,000 more than I had to spend. He just wrote huge crowd scenes and all sorts of things. I tried to get him to change it and he wouldn’t, so I rewrote it.”

Yeah, and now you can see the original. It’s right here, just as I wrote it. And I defy you to find anyplace in the teleplay that remotely resembles Roddenberry’s endless assertion, “He had my Scotty dealing in interplanetary drugs and things like that!”

Also, kindly find me huge crowd scenes.

Are we talking the line of extras in the soup kitchen? Are we talking the chump-change it would cost to populate a street in New York City during the Depression? How about those vast space armadas I’m supposed to have cobbled up? Where the hell are they?