“Though Roddenberry says in his letter to you of 6/20/67 that ‘City’ came in at $257,000, there is no documentation in the archives to substantiate it. In the first year, according to the documents that do exist, no episode cost much more than $192,000. As you will see in Herb Solow’s memo that follows, the approved budget was $185,000.

“The only budget document I could find for the second year was Coon’s ‘Devil in the Dark,’ which ran a month before ‘City.’ Its projected cost, according to the documents, was $187,057; it came in at $192,863.

“Some examples of third year budgets: ‘All Our Yesterdays,’ projected cost: $182,282; final cost: $183,532. ‘The Lights of Zetar,’ projected cost: $168,000; final cost: $ 173,369. ‘That Which Survives,’ projected cost: $175,000 and that’s exactly what it came in at.

“You may also like to know that in the third year, when budgets were cut, Roddenberry approved a raise for himself on at least one script, from the standard $4500 everyone else was getting, to $5500.”

I think it’s reasonable to assume that “City” ran $66,000 over budget…not $6000 as I trumpeted in the limited edition. But you wanna know something? Who gives a shit?! I was a freelance writer, like hundreds of others who worked Star Trek and every other television series, and it wasn’t our job to board and budget the show! That was a job for Solow and Justman and Bernie Widin and the other staff members whose job it was to oversee such things. It was the responsibility of these “experts” to advise freelancers what the budget was, and ways in which it could be met if we went over the line. And, in truth, shows go over budget all the time, even scripts written by staff writers. It was, and is, a commonplace problem in the Industry, and not one that difficult to overcome case by case. If they wanted to.

And here’s the capper to Roddenberry’s bleats about the show going $66,000 over budget: it was the aired version, which The Great Bird of the Galaxy kept insisting was his, THAT WENT 66,000 FUCKING DOLLARS OVER BUDGET! Not my poor, miserable, inept, self-indulgent, extravagant first draft! If he couldn’t come up with a script for “City” that came in on budget—after putting all those other “better writers” like Carabatsos, Coon, Fontana and himself to the chore—then how could poor, miserable, inept, etcetera etcetera Ellison be expected to do it!

I mentioned all this to Alan Brennert, the award-winning writer I’ve cited many times in this book (and to whom this volume is dedicated), and he told me: