The Trouble With Tribbles Part 16

I mean, I wasn't in love with it. I still wanted to use fuzzies.

But, on the other hand, "tribbles" had possibilities...

"Tribbles," I said, trying to get used to the word. "Tribbles. Yeah, I guess so..."

Besides, Gene had said we would need a new t.i.tle. We couldn't use "A Fuzzy Thing Happened to Me..."

I considered it-and then inspiration did strike me! Yes, tribbles was perfect!

I could call the show: "You Think You've Got Tribbles-?"

Gene c.o.o.n hated it.

The t.i.tle, that is; not the name "tribbles." I turned in to him a list of eight possible alternate names, but I told him that I liked tribbles best. He scanned the list quickly and handed it back to me. "Okay," he said. "Tribbles it is."

Frankly, I felt pretty sure of that choice. The other seven names on the list were not even my runners-up; they were the .rst losers. I'd weighted it in favor of tribbles.

Then I told him my new t.i.tle. That's what he hated.

He raised an eyebrow at me and shook his head. "No. We won't call it that. We'll have to think of something else."

"All right," I said. But I was disappointed. Why call the creatures tribbles if you don't take advantage of at least one good pun?

Oh, yes. On the same day I turned in that list, July 17, I also turned in my "of.cial" .rst draft.

(According to my notes, Gene c.o.o.n didn't even read this version, just skimmed it and bought it. I can understand the reasoning here. All they had to pay me was Guild minimum- $2000 for the script; there was enough in my script to make it worth buying and they still had enough left in the writing budget to hire someone else later on for a rewrite. If necessary. On the other hand, had I been a big name pro, the script might have cost them twice as much.) Once again, Gene c.o.o.n and I went over the script. From this point on, it was a legal script a.s.signment. I'd shown enough ability on my .rst two drafts to warrant purchase of my script; but now, I had to turn in a .lmable version.

Just as the premise went through two versions, and the out-line through three, so would the script go through a series of metamorphoses and changes. Each time, it would get a little bit closer to what we wanted it to be. Like the sculptor who carves away everything that doesn't look like an elephant, we would trim away everything that didn't look like STAR TREK.

But if I thought it was going to get easier as I got closer to the .nal draft, I was wrong.

*I was impressed by that. If I had to pick ten science .ction writers as the all time best, Theodore Sturgeon would be three of them. Robert A. Heinlein would be another three. The other four would be Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.

*If somebody were smart, they could put together one h.e.l.l of a TV special just out of goodie reels-or even a whole TV series. Hmm...Except the actors' contracts wouldn't allow it. Pity.

*Bill Theiss, costume designer, worked on the principle of visual suspense: "Will she or won't she fall out of that costume?" The girls never did, of course, but you never gave up hoping...

*This was not an unreasonable request for me. Unfortunately, I had spoiled Gene c.o.o.n by being too fast. He knew if he asked for something by next week, I would be back with it the next morning. All I needed was time enough to get home to my typewriter.

*This was minimum script and story money in 1967; tops was $4500. These prices would be about $1000 higher now.

*I was beginning to pick up a pattern here. I suspect that somebody at the studio was priming my agent as carefully as he was priming me.

*Smith in the outline became Doggerty in the rough draft. By now I was changing the names of the subsidiary characters as often as my underwear.

*When I rewrote the scene, I merely changed Scotty's line to: "I cannot do it, Captain... They're into the heat exchangers. If I turn on the engines, the thermal emissions will roast them!" Apparently, this satis.ed Bob Justman because no more was ever said about the matter. Besides, the whole sequence of chasing after Cyrano had to be dropped; there wasn't time for it.

But this still wasn't the end of the joke. At the end of the season, a shot showed up in the goodie reel of a crewman shoveling coal into the Enterprise's engines as fast as he could. Hmm, must have been warp speed 10. The "crewman" was Gregg Peters, a.s.sociate Producer and Production Manager.

*I still feel this way about the final draft. Even though we solved the problem enough to please Bob Justman, Darvin still didn't hold up well during questioning.

*To which I still disagree. If I were programming that computer, it would learn some manners.

*Somewhere aboard the Enterprise must be a fanatical German of.cer, a high-spirited Israeli, a soft-speaking Hindu who quotes continually from the prophet, a couple of Amerinds and an Eskimo...

*Hm. There should have been a Chinese aboard too...

*This is from my version of the barroom scene. It wasn't used in the shooting script, though. A pity, because I thought it was better than the joke they did use, more subtle.

*ego-boosting, or ego-ma.s.sage. Praise.

*While George Takei was away, making The Green Berets, all of his parts went to Chekov, a fortunate break for Walter.

*Ande had a sense of humor that was deadly. She could say things that few other people could get away with. One afternoon, to a fellow who had reacted negatively to her being black, she smiled sweetly and said, "Hi. I'm Gene L.'s c.o.o.n."

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CHAPTER SEVEN.

"The City on the Edge of Forever"

If you're beginning to think that there is an awful lot of rewriting involved in the production of a television script, you're right. There is.

And I may be soundly thrashed by some of my more "artistic" colleagues in the Writers' Guild of America for saying this, but much of that rewriting is necessary.

It's not a matter of Art-this is television, forget the capital A-it's a matter of storytelling.

a.s.sume for the moment that William Shakespeare has been reincarnated as a television writer-yes, I know; my gorge becomes buoyant at the thought too, but a.s.sume it anyway-and he turns out a beautiful piece of work for whatever series has been lucky enough to hire him.

No matter what it is, they can't use it.

No matter how great it is, no matter how moving-it may be another Hamlet or Macbeth, it may be the single most important playwriting effort of the twentieth century-they can't use it. At least not in its original form. Not on series television.

This may be television's greatest failing-that it cannot cope with quality-but it is the unfortunate nature of the beast.

Television puts special restrictions on the writer-especially series television-restrictions that have absolutely nothing at all to do with storytelling or Art or relevancy. For instance: a story must be broken into an equal number of 14-minute segments, each ending with a major climax. The story has to be structured to allow for commercials.

If the show is a series, the script has to .t into the overall format. The style of it has to be the show's style, not the writer's. The characters have to be consistent with what has been portrayed before, and the story has to be consistent with the producer's concept of the show. No matter how good a story it is, it can't be used if it damages the series' format or continuity.

Additionally because of the time involved in television production-never enough-the process of a.n.a.lysis and correction has to be done hurriedly, and by committee: director, producer, executive producer, story editor, sometimes a rewrite man or two and frequently, the actors.

Admittedly, this is a lousy way to work. A committee is a notoriously inef.cient device. The only time a committee accomplishes anything of note is when there is a strong boss in charge, one who knows what he wants to accomplish and how to delegate the responsibility to those best able to handle it. Then the committee becomes a team.

Good television is produced by good teams.

-But, here's the rub. The freelance writer-that is, the average television writer-is not considered a member of the team. Not by fact, not by implication.

He is-as I said jokingly before-a prost.i.tute. He sells his ideas, his words, a framework for the committee to build upon. Excuse me, the team. He sells it and is never heard from again. He doesn't show up on the set and he isn't invited to the cast parties. He's just some .unky they hired to do some typing. In Hollywood, you know you're going to get screwed-the time to complain is when you're not enjoying it.

The writer should be a member of the team, should not only be allowed to be on the set when they shoot his script, should be required to be there. Most writers would jump at the chance. If there was something that had to be corrected or changed, certainly the man whose name is going to be on the credits should have the .rst say so in the matter.

No writer likes having his words changed, they come out of his head, they are part of his ident.i.ty. That's who he was when he wrote them. To change those words is to question the validity of that writer's self. So, if they have to be changed, isn't it his right .rst?

The good television writer is the one with a healthy awareness of the medium in which he is working. Most of all, he can think visually. And he demands as much from the medium as it is able to give-and more. If he can't do that, then he's not a good writer.

If the team is a good one, and if the writer understands what they want and how they work, then only a minimum of rewriting will be necessary, a line here, a word there, to .t the team's concept of the show. With a solidly established and comparatively simple format, like oh, say, Gunsmoke, the writer's only problem is keeping the relationships of the running characters correct as he tells his story. The background of the American West does not have to be explained-not to him, not to the audience-the writer knows exactly what he can or can't do.

With a more complex show, like STAR TREK, where the background changes every week, the writer is charged with the responsibility of inventing not just the story, but everything else that makes it believable: the characters, the planet, its history, the culture in which the characters are working, and even the physical laws of this part of the universe. The Enterprise did not come with a book of instructions. It had to be written as the concept of STAR TREK was developed.

Continuity was one of the biggest problems. If it is established that the phasers work one way, then the next week, they cannot be shown doing the opposite. Hence, one of the most important functions of the STAR TREK production team was to establish ground rules, to keep an overview of the whole season and keep everything working within the same general background. The Enterprise works in this fashion, the relationship of the characters is such and such, the concept of the show is this and not that.

The freelance writer who is writing only one episode cannot be expected to know the whole series. But the more he knows, the better he can work with the production team. If he knows the producer's concept of STAR TREK, he will not write a story that the producer can't use.

And if he doesn't know the producer's concept-well, then no matter how good a story it is, and no matter how good a writer he is, Shakespeare be d.a.m.ned-if it doesn't .t the series, it's going to have to be changed.

An example of this is an episode called, "The City on the Edge of Forever."

It was written by Harlan Ellison-who is a science .ction phenomenon.

Harlan Ellison is one of the nicest people you could meet-as long as you don't do it too often. He'll short out your brain circuits. He is funny and caustic and charming and aggressive and stylish and offensive and brilliant and opinionated and short. If he did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. He climbs ladders, pulls the ladders up after him and keeps climbing. He is Lilliput's answer to King Kong. He is Munchkinland's answer to G.o.dzilla. He is science .ction's answer to the world.

Harlan was one of the .rst writers to be hired to write for STAR TREK. He was also one of the best. But unfortunately, his script could not be produced as written.

According to Ellison, the network had been after Gene Roddenberry to keep the costs of the show down. Every time Ellison did a rewrite, the budget on his episode had been cut again, thus requiring another rewrite. (Harlan had made a deal with Roddenberry to do all of his own rewriting, rather than let anyone else touch his script.) "It was like a mad caucus race," says Ellison. "Every time I caught up with them, they were somewhere else."

Finally, a rewrite was done by one of the staff members; it was unsuitable too, but Harlan felt that he had been wronged: "I blew sky high. I went in there and literally threatened Roddenberry. I had been waiting in the secretary's anteroom and had gotten a rope and tied it in a hangman's noose and hung it over the water pipe, and when he came out I pointed to it and said, 'Tell me it's not true that somebody rewrote my words.'"

So. Once again, Harlan rewrote his script. Even though there was no money left in the budget to pay for the additional rewrite work, Harlan was willing to do the work gratis to protect his story. "They put me in the back room where the clothing designer, Bill Theiss, kept the spare costumes, there was a table back there, and I wrote on that script-rewrote, because they said they had to shoot it fast-I did four solid days' work, night and day, I slept on the .oor in that back of.ce, and wrote. In fact, the guards at Desilu used to come in at two in the morning with their guns drawn, they didn't know who the h.e.l.l was in there, and they would see me sitting there with my eyes like a couple of poached eggs and they'd think, 'Oh, it's just the kook again with the story.' And I rewrote that thing from stem to stern and pruned it down... By that time, of course, the budget had dropped again. Gene Roddenberry promised me that he would rewrite it himself, that there were only minor changes and he would make them himself."

And Roddenberry did rewrite it. And he made several extensive changes. Changes that he felt were necessary.

Roddenberry recognized that Harlan's script was one of the strongest stories that STAR TREK might ever .lm. It concerned Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy being catapulted back to the year 1930-where Kirk falls in love, but must allow the woman he loves to die in order for history to continue unchanged.

"Harlan's version was a great story," Roddenberry has said on innumerable occasions. "But it wasn't STAR TREK. He had one of our crewmen engaged in dope smuggling, the captain forsaking the ship, the crew in mutiny, and our characters acting like other people entirely. It had to be changed to .t into the series continuity."

Harlan Ellison did not like Gene Roddenberry's rewrite any more than he had liked any of the previous attempts to rewrite his script, but STAR TREK was Gene Roddenberry's show. The buck stopped at his desk and the decisions had to be made by him. Whether the decisions were correct or not, Roddenberry was the one who had to make them.

Whether or not his rewrite was the best possible story is neither here nor there-art can never be independent of the context in which it is presented-it was the best possible "City on the Edge of Forever" for Gene Roddenberry's STAR TREK.

As long as it says, "Produced by Gene Roddenberry" on the credits, the responsibility and the decisions are Gene Roddenberry's.

The situation was an unfortunate one. Both men felt very strongly about their respective versions of the script, but only one could be produced. The result was ill feelings. This was one of those slippery instances where both individuals were right. Later on, both versions of the story won awards.

Harlan's version won the Writers' Guild Award, and Gene Roddenberry's version won the-But we'll talk about that later.

By the way, budget restrictions turned out to be one of the least important factors in the production of the episode. "City on the Edge of Forever" was slated to cost $191,000. But Gene Roddenberry insisted on doing it right-before he was through, they had spent $262,000 to make it an episode they could all be proud of.

Apparently it was money well spent. "City on the Edge of Forever" is recognized as one of STAR TREK's best episodes. The story was undeniably the most important incident that had ever happened to Captain Kirk. It was a de.nitive show.