In a letter to me from Roddenberry dated June 20, 1967, Gene wrote: “Next, never outside this office and particularly nowhere in S.F. or television circles have I ever mentioned that the script was anything but entirely yours.”

In the March 1987 issue of Video Review magazine, in a candid interview with Gene, we find the following, referring to “City”:

VR: That was a great episode.

RODDENBERRY: It was a fun episode to do.

VR: Who wrote that one?

RODDENBERRY: Well, it was a strange thing. Harlan Ellison wrote the first draft of it, but then he wouldn’t change it.

VR: That’s Harlan Ellison.

RODDENBERRY: Yeah. He had Scotty dealing drugs and it would have cost $200,000 more than I had to spend for an episode.

VR: That’s like E.T. wearing a coke spoon.

RODDENBERRY: When I called these things to Harlan’s attention, he said, “You’ve sold out, haven’t you?” I said, “No, I haven’t sold out. I only have $180,000 to spend on an episode.” So I rewrote the episode. And his original won a Writers Guild award, but my rewrite won the Nebula award for actually being filmed.

So much for Roddenberry never telling anyone outside the office that the script had been written by anyone but me.

(And though I deal with it elsewhere in this essay, let me point out that Gene didn’t do the rewrite, he only fiddled with it after it had been through three other hands. Let me also point out, yet again, for the nine millionth fucking time, that nowhere in my teleplay does Scotty even appear, much less deal drugs. Read the script, it’s here, in your hands; read it and see if Roddenberry wasn’t a glory-hog who had to invent idiot conversations about “selling out” so he could look like the Last Model of Rectitude in the Universe, who had to keep repeating the “Scotty sold drugs” delusion, who had to keep insisting how much over budget my show would have been…rather than admitting that the high-water mark of his claim to fame was conceived not by him, but by someone else.)

The evidence of Roddenberry’s duplicity and determination to convince the gullible that his giant brain had been capable of the originality and depth of passion that were the hallmarks of “City”—even those snatches of originality and passion that remained after everyone had a whack at it—exists in brief and clarity.

Elsewhere in this essay (if you’ve been paying attention) you read Roddenberry’s March 1987 Video Review interview, with its assertions that mine was a deeply flawed script, and that one of my dumbest goofs was having Scotty sell drugs.

Well, in the May 1987 Video Review—just two issues later—that same award-winning Alan Brennert I’ve mentioned before, wrote a letter. (See Video Review art.)

And on 25 March 1987 Brennert received a letter from Gene Roddenberry. (See Roddenberry letter.)