Re: FWIW: ST Enterprise Cancelled

From: Andre Lieven (dg411_at_FreeNet.Carleton.CA)
Date: 02/05/05 

Date: 5 Feb 2005 17:41:08 GMT

OM (om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_research_facility.org) writes:
> On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 23:27:08 -0600, Pat Flannery <flanner@daktel.com>
> wrote:
>
>>Okay... here's one for you...since it didn't cost too much to film, and
>>since the characters were apparently acting in, rather than out of,
>>charecter...why didn't they just film it the way Harlan wanted them to?
>
> ...There were several things Harlie whined about regarding the
> changes:
>
> 1) Harlie originally had the Guardian of Forever being a light effect
> between two Greek columns leftover from some Desilu warehouse. His
> arguement was that by using two set pieces already paid for, Desilu
> could afford to have an elephant dressed as a wooly mammoth charge
> through the Guardian while they were playing with it.

Huh ? Where in any version of Ellison's script is this ?
 
> 2) Harlie was eternally pissed about having his two drug-smuggling
> crewmen, Beckwith and LeBeqque - no, really, that's what the Midget
> with a Mouth named them - dropped totally and having McCoy be the one
> who goes back in time.

And yet, when told to change that, he did rewrite it, so that McCoy
is the cause of the passage back in time.

> The way his story played out, the two get
> busted by Spock and a team of redshirts,

Wrong: LeBeque tells Beckwith that hes not going to keep doing
Beckwith's bidding, Beckwith kills him with a heavy block of jade
( Scene 7 ), and then Beckwith flees to the Transporter Room, where
he leaves the chief dazed, and beams down.

> only one of them gets away
> and beams down to the planet. Kirk leads a landing party down to
> search for the doper, finds the Guardian, and while they're playing
> with it Beckwith jumps through the Guardian to escape. Events unfold
> in the episode pretty much as they did after Gene's tweakings, only we
> discover that the reason time gets fucked up is that not only did
> Beckwith save Keeler, he winds up telling her about WWII,

Wrong. Beckwith never meets Keeler, until he actually tries to
save her from the oncoming truck, in Scenes 97-107

> which
> galvanizes her into the Peace Movement, which in turn causes global
> society to stagnate and collapse because WWII brought the world out of
> the Great Depression, etc, etc. Kirk allows Keelter to die,

Wrong. Kirk's gonna let her live, and Spock is the one ready to have
her die, as the timestream demands that she does.

> the
> Guardian retrieves everyone to the present, and time is restored to
> it's normal course. However - and rest assured Kirk will be having one
> hell of a talk with the Chief of Security over these two clods - the
> guards let Beckwith get away again, and he jumps into the Guardian
> once more. But the Guardian is a fair judge of character, and sticks
> Beckwith in a temporal loop where he's eternally dumped into the heart
> of a sun, where he's deep fried, restored and sent back in again, over
> and over again.

Correct.
 
> ...The big hole in this is that, according to *both* Genes, as well as
> Bob Justman, Starfleet training and pre-Academy screening, as well as
> standard security procedures would have prevented the dope from being
> smuggled on board, much less having two crewmen pulling the smuggling
> op on a Starfleet vessel. Gene's rules stated that *** wouldn't
> happen.

Indeed, just like R's rules demanded that the TNG people all be happy,
erfect people, which kinda makes drama not likely...

> But Harlie, ever the person to ignore script guidelines, wrote
> them in anyway, and went off on a tear when it was found that he'd
> been rewritten.

When he had been told that he would be allowed to do the re-writes,
sure.
 
> 3) Furthermore, Harlie whined about being pressured to write the
> script in far too short a timeframe. According to Desilu bookkeeping
> records, as well as the personal notes and records of Gene
> Roddenberry, Herb Solow and Bob Justman, where most writers got six to
> eight weeks to submit a final draft, Li'l Harlie took *32* weeks to
> turn in what wound up being only a half-assed attempt at a final
> script. It got sent back to him some 5 or 6 times before he submitted
> the script that he sent in for the Hugo.

Ellison explains this, by explaining how the teevee writing business
was back then. You had to hustle to writer cattle calls, pitch ideas
to many shows, in the hope of getting enough gigs to cover that
year's expenses. So, loads of shows started with late scripts, due
to that being the business.
 
> 4) Finally, what's Harlie's most infamous complaint is that he was
> rewritten without first option of doing the job himself. The problem
> there was that a) Gene was on a shooting deadline, b) Harlie couldn't
> be reached before said deadline - and quite a number of Desilu
> switchboard logs show numerous attempts by both Genes and Gene's
> secretary, Susan Sackett , having the switchboard operator place
> person-to-person calls to Harlan, all of which were unsuccessful - and
> c) besides, Harlan was notoriously slow, and most likely could/would
> not deliver by deadline, and had proven it repeatedly with this
> particular script in its myriad forms.

Then, how are there so many versions of the script, all by Ellison in the
UCLA archives ?
 
>>There doesn't seem to be any problem with it, so why didn't they just go
>>for it? If you're writing for a episodic television series, then the
>>producers of the series have the right to tell you what you will and
>>will not do with their continuing characters and overall storyline, as
>>they are the ones who have to live with how their characters and overall
>>feel of the show get modified in any particular episode, and how that
>>will affect future episodes of the series.
>
> ...Which is why so many of the TOS 3rd Season eps fall flat. Fred
> Frieberger failed to keep a tight reign on characterization as Gene
> Roddenberry did, which allowed for Spock's flirting with Droxine and
> his jam session with Adam (*).

Yet, R's own offered pilot script for " The Omega Glory " was shot
that season...
 
> (*) There is a theory that Adam was descended from the lead singer of
> The Good Old Boys, a country band whose career and Winnebago
> headquarters were demolished by ones Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues.
>
>>If they had it all to do over again, I doubt there would ever be an
>>Organian Treaty, as it screwed the whole Federation/Klingon rivalry up
>>royally...in fact, that's why they were very careful to tell the writers
>>for STTNG just what they could and couldn't do so as not to paint
>>themselves into a corner like that again.
>
> ...Actually, had TOS made it to a fourth season, Gene had signed
> William Campbell to a half-season contract to reappear as Koloth,
> where the Organian Treaty would be explored, pursued, and eventually
> gotten rid of, but not until we'd had several episodes of Kirk and
> Koloth placed into situations where one had to save the other if only
> to make sure that nobody else killed the other before they got the
> chance.

That would have been kewl.
 
>>You have an anthology series like Twilight Zone, and you can have far
>>more room to do what you want, but when you come to a series like Star
>>Trek, then you should realize that they, not you, have the final say in
>>how things should be done. You can run your car in the race- provided
>>you are going the direction everybody else is, and don't start pouring
>>nails on the track.
>
> ...And even then writing for an anthology series doesn't guarantee a
> free hand. "Demon with a Glass Hand" originally never took place in a
> 10-story building, but in several buildings all across town. Harlie
> fought the change to the 10-story building until it was explained that
> a) it was cheaper and b) either it's in the 10-story building or you
> can take your script and shove it.

Ellison sat down with Justman, and they worked out the cost and shooting
issue.

>>Okay, you prove to me that he's a nice guy. This ax can swing both ways.
>
> ...I've yet to see one iota of proof that Harlie's anything but a
> jerk.

Read Peter David's afterward.
 
>>Tearing somebody's reputation apart (and I know full well that
>>Roddenberry wasn't a saint by any standard) after there is no way he can
>>defend himself is a low thing; particularly when you do it around thirty
>>years after the presumed crime, rather than when your opponent can't
>>speak for himself in regards to your criticisms. Using terms like
>>"Great Pretender" "El Supremo" and "an outright naked liar" is pretty
>>rough by any standards, and the sort of language I'd expect from the
>>likes of Bill O'Reilly more than someone who considers himself a
>>thoughtful author.
>
> ...Actually, it made me think of a certain former Lockmart janitor
> with delusions of SRB conspiracies.
>
>>You're right...I won't spit on Harlan if I ever meet him...I'll wait
>>till he's been dead for five years, and then pee on his grave.
>
> ...You'll have to stand in line behind me first, Pat. The dwarf's so
> small that there'll be not enough room for two people to piss on his
> grave without the arc streams crossing and causing more damage to the
> pissers than the pissed upon.
>
> "Papa Smurf! Where do Baby Smurfs come from?"
>
> "Why, the Stork brings them, Clueless Smurf!"
>
> "But how do you explain Harlie Smurf?"
>
> "Oh, that was the week that the Stork was on vacation, and Beaky
> Buzzard was filling in for him..."

Ah, more hate: How nice.

<sarcasm mode off>

Andre 

--
" I'm a man... But, I can change... If I have to... I guess. "
                                    The Man Prayer, Red Green.