The Trouble With Tribbles Part 2

But, as for learning about writing-?

Zero. Big fat round nothing. The instructor was even more inexperienced than us. We felt sorry for him. He was unable to teach us a thing.

The only thing we learned was that it's too easy to get into print. And that taught us a healthy disrespect for the printed page. We ended up being skeptical of everything we read, as well as most of what we heard. We turned into a cla.s.sroom full of pre-p.u.b.escent iconoclasts-in fact, thinking back on it now, I don't think any instructor would have been able to cope with us; we had a collection of insanities, psychoses and fetishes that would have made the Camarilto State Home for the Bewildered proud to number us among its inmates. (Example: that cla.s.s has since produced at least one Jesuit priest and two admitted felons, not to mention the speed freak who did end up in a rubber room.) What we didn't learn-and should have-was a sense of responsibility toward the printed page. If you're going to put words on paper, they ought to be not just the prettiest ones you can think of, but the ideas behind them ought to be well thought out too. You should consider who you're writing for and what you want to tell them-and most of all, how you want them to react to it.

But, like I said: Zero.

Big fat round nothing. That's what we learned.

So-onward to college. Look both ways and cross the street to Los Angeles Valley Junior College, a two-year establishment, notable for two facts only: .rst, there is no such place as Los Angeles Valley-it was the San Fernando Valley, but it was a Los Angeles College-ahem, Junior College. And second, it's a cheap place to pile up a lot of prerequisite courses before going on to the more expensive universities.

I don't know how other people feel about college, but to me, it's overrated. College gives you living experience in an environment where you have to be responsible for yourself-but very little more than that. If you learn anything, you've done it yourself.

Two years of Art and Journalism at the aforementioned Inst.i.tute of Higher Learning taught me two things. I didn't want to be an artist. I didn't want to be a journalist.

What I wanted to do was create.

Let me digress for a moment from all this autobiographical bulls.h.i.t.

There are only three kinds of jobs in the world. (Four, if you count G.o.dhood, but that may fall into the category of Services anyway.) They are: Producer, Serviceman, and Salesman. In that order of respectability.

Most people are either Servicemen or Salesmen. Servicemen are people like mailmen, telephone operators, truck drivers, tax accountants, secretaries, stock brokers, computer programmers, farm laborers, and so on; people who are performing jobs of continuing need; i.e. they are performing a service. Salesmen are advertising executives, cosmetic clerks, insurance men, and anyone else who takes money from your wallet in return for tangible value. (If the value is intangible, he's a con man.) People who sell.

But Producers are special people. Not TV producers-I mean Producers in the true sense of the word to produce. I mean artists, writers, .lmmakers, rock singers, architects and inventors. People who are bringing something into existence that did not exist before. These are special people because these are the only people in the world who are creating wealth. Everybody else is either performing the service of bringing that wealth to the consumer, or making a living selling it to him.

And wealth is c.u.mulative. Every bit produced is added to what has come before. As more and more wealth is produced, the human race becomes richer and richer-in ideas, and in the applied fruits of those ideas; culturally, technologically, industrially, and especially in that immeasurable something called "the quality of life."

And that's what I wanted to do-produce. Create. Bring something new into existence.

I wanted to write. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to act and direct.

And in that, I was only in compet.i.tion with the entire city of Hollywood. And most of the surrounding suburbs.

In southern California (there must be something in the air), everybody wants to write, make movies, act and direct. In fact, the greatest deals in town are being consummated on the unemployment line. (I know, I've set up a few myself.) But we were talking about schools-if I had to pick just one school, just one cla.s.s, just one instructor who taught me the most, it would be a very easy choice. There isn't anyone else who even comes close.

Irwin R. Blacker.

Beginning and Advanced Screenwriting.

The University of Southern California.

I mean, that's it. Right there, in one big package, all wrapped up in pretty paper and with bright red bows attached. And your name on it. It's all there in that man's head, and he's waiting to give it to you. If you can get into his cla.s.s, he'll lay it out for you like a banquet before a barbarian, more information than you are ever likely to know how to handle.

You are going to .nd bits and pieces of writing wisdom and lore scattered throughout the pages of this book, nuggets of gold that you can take to your heart and cherish. But lest you think that they have sprung from my head fully grown, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, let me put you straight, right here and now-I am only repeating the lessons that I learned at my Master's knee. These are precious bits of carefully garnered knowledge that have been handed down through generations of writers ever since Aristotle .rst wrote his Poetics.* I repeat them because they're worth knowing. They work for me, and a lot of other people too. And I want you to know where they come from. Irwin R. Blacker. And that other fellow-The Big A, Aristotle.

Oh-Blacker doesn't really teach writing. He teaches a.n.a.lysis. n.o.body can teach you how to write-either you've got a piece of it or you haven't. But you can teach a.n.a.lysis-and that's what Irwin R. Blacker does better than anybody else.

He could even teach a dolt like me to understand the importance to drama of such seemingly disparate elements as Plot, Dialogue, Theme, Characterization, Spectacle and Music. Actually, those are Aristotle's six criteria necessary to drama, but their truth is such that even today's new-wave stories, widescreen spectaculars, screaming rock operas and hyperthyroid television commercials are still bound to the conditions imposed by those six basic elements.

Once you've learned to understand those criteria and recognized their importance to the success of a dramatic work, you've gained an all-important skill. a.s.suming you know how to use it properly, you can then examine just about any script presented you and spot its fatal .aws, if it has any. And if you have even the slightest degree of objectivity, you should be able to examine your own scripts and spot your own .aws.

And if you can do that, then it's only one short step to knowing what's needed to correct them.

But that's the hard part- There is a plateau of professionalism that every writer who is going to make it must rise above-there's a level beyond which the amateurishness disappears from his thought and sentence structure and he begins to display a sense of competence and skill in his approach to his material that will eventually win him the all-important compliment, the check. Once that plateau is pa.s.sed, nearly every time that writer sits down at his machine, he will produce readable constructions of words.

The "unknown" is the person who will achieve and surpa.s.s that level of professionalism. The amateur is the one who will never come near.

The tools of a.n.a.lysis and understanding will not make it possible for an amateur to pa.s.s that plateau, not at all- but if a person does have it in him to get there, then those tools will get him there quicker. The more familiar with them he becomes, the more con.dence and skill he will have in his craft.

Hence, the reason why I praise Mr. Irwin R. Blacker so highly. He made it possible for me to be ready when opportunity presented itself so coyly at my door.

Opportunity never uses a bludgeon when it comes calling; it never knocks with a battering ram. At best, it scratches lightly at the window pane, like a moth momentarily confused, then it .utters elusively away-and it's up to you to be there at that window listening for it, armed with net and .eld gla.s.ses, ready to drop everything and go chasing helter-skelter after it.

You can chase a lot of those little bugs that look like opportunities before you .nally catch one that really is-but when you do catch it, you'd better know how to mount it and pin it Otherwise you might as well save yourself the trouble.

So-I thank Mr. Irwin R. Blacker here and now for the tools that he gave me.

I am muchly appreciative.

*The .rst known a.n.a.lysis of the component elements of drama. An invaluable source book for writers, critics and students. Try to .nd it in the original Greek.

CHAPTER TWO.

"Tomorrow Was Yesterday"

When STAR TREK telecast its .rst episode, I spotted two .aws right away. One was a scienti.c error, the other a characterization mistake.

The scienti.c error-a landing party "beamed" down to the planet, via a teleportation device called a "transporter." They materialized in thin air. I saw that and my immediate reaction was, "I don't believe it. You need a receiving booth for long distance teleportation."

The characterization mistake-there was this fellow named Spock. He was supposed to be an alien, which I thought was a good idea; but when they said he was without emotions, I .inched. "Oh, h.e.l.l-without emotions, he's going to be a thoroughly unlikable character. He might as well be a grumpy robot."

Okay. Mea culpa. I wasn't thinking according to the thoughts of Chairman Roddenberry. I was wrong.

On both counts. First, the transporter-from a scienti.c point of view, what right did I have to say that a teleportation device needed a receiving booth? How the h.e.l.l did I know? Besides, and more importantly, the transporter made it possible to get the heroes of the show down onto the planet as quickly as possible and into the action of the story. Remember, we only have one hour of television time. We can't waste it on repet.i.tious landings and takeoffs. The important thing is the story. Besides, it's easier to believe in a transporter beam than in a s.p.a.ceship that has to be built to cope with every possible kind of planetary condition in the universe so it can land on them at will-and also have the unlimited power it would need to take off again, especially against unknown higher gravities. No, the transporter beam makes a lot more sense.

Oh, the Enterprise could have used its shuttlecraft as landing boats-but that still requires the versatility and power of the above. And it's still too time consuming. From a writing point of view, from a television point of view-and yes, even from a science-.ction point of view, Gene Roddenberry knew what he was doing.

Now, the second mistake. Mr. Spock. Boy, was I wrong about Mr. Spock!

How was I to know that he would turn out to be one of the series' most popular characters? (I would have said the most popular, but I have this sneaking admiration for Captain Kirk.) What I hadn't realized was that the other characters on the Enterprise did have emotions-they would react to Mr. Spock's implacability, and the resultant interaction between them would make for some fascinating viewing. Besides, a character without emotions was a challenge for every scriptwriter who approached the show; they couldn't resist Mr. Spock.

But at that time, September of 1966, as a fan I had serious reservations about STAR TREK.* I liked what I had seen, but I wanted them to realize their full potential. I didn't want them to fall into the same trap of fantasy and pseudo-science .ction that had claimed-oh, say...Lost in s.p.a.ce.

Lost in s.p.a.ce was a thoroughly offensive program. It probably did more to damage the reputation of science .ction as a serious literary movement than all the B-movies about giant insects ever made-because Lost in s.p.a.ce was one full-color hour of trash reaching into millions of homes, regularly, once a week, for .ve achingly long years. The number of people that show must have touched-never mind, I'm getting nauseous just thinking about it.

With rare exception, the whole att.i.tude of television network executives toward science .ction seemed to be that it was a convenient way to tell monster stories and wish fantasies, something to be treated with all the respect of roller games, or wrestling. Gene Roddenberry had offered CBS a chance to buy STAR TREK-but their reaction had been, "But we already have a science .ction series-we have Lost in s.p.a.ce." So much for CBS.

You see why I had doubts? There were too many minds in Hollywood that could not see the difference between a Lost in s.p.a.ce and a STAR TREK. (Please note that I use two different typefaces.) In an era which had produced such achievements as Gilligan's Island, Green Acres, and The Flying Nun, the only safe statement to make about American television was that it could not be underestimated.

Starting in 1965 sometime, I had begun pecking out outlines for submission to the various TV shows, dreadful things like "My Life Is My Own" for Dr. Kildare, and "The Saga of Swifty Morgan" for Bonanza. Whether these outlines showed any glimmer at all of my still-embryonic abilities with words and ideas is a moot point. They were of deservedly ill repute, showing a degree of amateurishness that makes me cringe to look at them today and think that I ever submitted them for serious consideration. The nicest thing that can be said about them is that they provided valuable learning experience-especially in how to cope with rejection.

Fortunately, either my ego or my determination, I'm not sure which, wouldn't let me quit. I kept pecking away-and in 1966 I met my .rst love. An IBM Selectric Typewriter. Such Beauty! Such Grace! Such a Joy to Behold! And it typed nice too.

The only reason I mention that fact is that the IBM Selectric was such a superior machine to the ten-year-old Smith-Corona portable it had replaced that my output zoomed up from six pages per eight hours of sweating to thirty pages-and no sweat at all!

Imagine that! A machine that could produce .ve times as much s.h.i.t. Just what the world needed. More important though, the Selectric's ef.ciency made it possible for me to get my ideas down onto the paper with a minimum of physical effort. The typewriter had ceased to be an obstacle between me and the paper.

I tried to explain this once to a (would-be) playwright who still wrote his ma.n.u.scripts longhand (I shudder to think of it), but he couldn't cope with the idea that an ef.cient typewriter is a valuable working tool.

Oh, well-try to explain your .rst love to someone else, they just won't understand.

Where were we? Oh, yes-the mechanics of submitting an outline to a television show. How do you do it?

First of all, you need an agent. Then let him worry about it. That's his job.

In fact, without an agent, you can't even get in the door. They won't read your ma.n.u.script at all.

Now, this may look like the agent-represented writers have an unfair edge over the unrepresented ones, but that's exactly the way it is. The unrepresented writer hasn't got a chance.

Look at it from a TV producer's point of view. He needs thirty good scripts. He needs them now. He hasn't got time to run a writing cla.s.s, he hasn't got time to deal with unprofessionals and hopefuls on the off chance that one of them just might come up with something usable, he hasn't got time even to read their submissions to see if there's something in them worth stealing.*

He knows an agented writer is more likely to be professional. A man he can deal with. A man who will understand what is required of him and will turn out beautiful, non-offensive stories that can be .lmed within the limits of the budget.

Now, I will tell you how I got my agent.

I called the Writers' Guild of America. They sent me a list of agents who were signatory to the Artists and Managers' Basic Agreement. Then I sat down at the telephone, and starting with the As, called each one and asked if they were interested in representing new talent.

I had an agent before I'd made my .fth call.

Listen, if you try the same thing, start with the Zs. Please. And let me know what happens.

Most agents will say no. And the ones that will say yes aren't any too reputable. After all, how good can an agent be if he's willing to take on an unknown or amateur? Some may ask to read your material .rst.

But it's a chance you both have to take.

Some agents are m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts. They help new talent get started. So it was in this case. I now had someone to submit my ma.n.u.scripts for me. They would at least be read.

This agent, a man whose name started with A, gave me one really dumb-but very pro.table-piece of advice. It went something like this: "Watch the new shows in September, and if you can come up with an idea, submit it very fast. Sometimes if a show is in trouble, they'll junk a bad episode in favor of a better script."

Don't you believe it. The odds are better in Russian roulette. The only person who's going to win a gamble like that is somebody the producer knows and can depend on-say, like last year's Oscar winner for the best original screenplay.

But it sounded good at the time, and that was one of the reasons I was watching STAR TREK that .rst Thursday night when "The Incredible Salt Vampire" was on.

And I liked what I saw. It suggested so much. But it wasn't enough. And I had fears that they wouldn't be able to do it right. "Oh, no-" I said. "I hope they're not planning to turn this into a different-monster-every-week kind of series. The potential of this show is so much more." And then I said: "Well, if you want something done right..."

So I went to my typewriter and started typing.

By Monday afternoon, I had produced a sixty-page outline for a two-part episode, ent.i.tled, "Tomorrow Was Yesterday."*

"Tomorrow Was Yesterday" dealt with the discovery by the Enterprise of a giant "universe" or "generation" ship-that is, a slower-than-light s.p.a.ceship that would take generations to reach its destination because they lacked the power to traverse the vast distances between the stars any faster. The Voyager was a colony ship that had been launched from Earth hundreds of years previously, but only now were Federation ships catching up to it, the Enterprise being the .rst.

Unfortunately, after hundreds of years, the people inside had forgotten that they were aboard a s.p.a.ceship-instead they believed their enclosed world to be the totality of existence. Part of the reason for this stemmed from a mutiny in their long forgotten past, a mutiny that had left the Voyager's population divided into two armed camps. The elite were descendants of the well educated, and they had a high standard of living in their part of the ship. The downtrodden oppressed were descendants of the mutineers.

Now, the Voyager was a giant sphere, or cylinder. Arti.cial gravity was provided by spinning the ship to create centrifugal force; therefore, from a shipside point of view, down was outward, up was toward the center. The upper levels in the center of the ship were where the control room was located-also where the elite "lightmen" lived. They had maintained themselves in very posh living quarters.

The lower levels, that is, those just inside the hull of the ship, had been intended as maintenance levels. They were unlit, and generally unlivable. There were miles of maintenance tunnels and the lower level men, believed to be "demons" by the lightmen, lived a nomadic existence, hiding in the darkness from the periodic raids from above. And raiding back, too.

The lightmen, of course, considered themselves the chosen people of their universe because it was their sacred duty to protect the control room. The demons, however, were the only ones who had access to the ship's eight nuclear power plants which were located at the poles of the spinning sphere.

Naturally, neither group knew the truth of the whole situation, and they were locked into a con.ict which would prevent them from ever .nding out. And because neither lightmen nor demons could conceive of another s.p.a.ceship, each a.s.sumed that the men of the Enterprise were spies from the other levels, thus complicating Kirk's problem and making lots of possibilities for action and suspense, especially on the darkened lower levels.

Kirk's problem was simple: reestablish amity between the two camps, convince them that they were really on a s.p.a.ceship, gain access to the control room, reactivate the nuclear propulsion units (which had been shut down in the mutiny) and change the course of the ship before it was too late to keep it from being drawn into a nearby star. And just to complicate it a little bit, the population of the generation ship was several thousand-just enough beyond the capacity of the Enterprise to make evacuation impractical.

The .rst hour of this proposed two-parter involved Kirk and Spock and a.s.sorted crewmembers getting chased and beaten up by both sides, and in the process, discovering the nature of the situation. In the second hour, Kirk solved the problem-and in a way that I thought especially symbolic, as well as visual.

Making friends with the dwellers of the "lower" or outer levels, via McCoy's medical help to the children (the lower levels had higher gravity and higher pressure than the levels above, as well as being generally uncomfortable), Kirk proposed that they reactivate the nuclear power plants to provide heat and light on the maintenance levels. The lower-men had been opposed to doing this because that would have given the dwellers of the upper levels the visual advantage they needed to come down and wipe them out. If the light was turned back on, the lower-men would lose their protection. But that would have been okay with them-all Kirk had to do was give them some phasers...

Kirk didn't like that idea at all.

Finally, Spock got an idea from observing a character named Specks, a librarian who wore gla.s.ses only as a historical badge of of.ce. Scotty was ordered to fabricate .ltered lenses for everyone to wear, and when the power plants were reactivated, they turned all the interior lighting so bright that no one could stand it. Everybody without gla.s.ses was effectively blinded as long as the lights were so bright. (I thought we might suggest this by over-exposing the .lm slightly and showing the control room raiding party as dark silhouettes in stark contrast.) In any case, Kirk and a group of men swiftly went up and took over control of the Voyager (it's all starting to come back to me now) and were able to change its course just in time-and also to begin the .rst steps toward ending the generations-long war between the two sides. A nice additional touch was that in order to accomplish this, the respective leaders of each side, older men with a stake in preserving the status quo, had to be removed (not killed, just removed) from power in order to let younger and saner heads prevail.

I was kind of proud of that story.* I had been trying to tell as meaningful and relevant a story as I could, a science .ction story that would also be appropriate for the limitations of television, and one that would utilize the characters and format of STAR TREK in what I hoped would be its maximum potential.

I had written it as a two-parter for two reasons. First, it would have meant more money for me if they had bought it-and second, it would have meant a greater spread of money in the budget for sets, costumes and actors. The budget for one episode wouldn't have been enough; I hoped the budget for two would be, thus making it possible to tell a story of wider scope.

I was wrong. Again.

STAR TREK rejected it. With one of the finest rejection letters it has ever been my pleasure to receive.

It is the only rejection letter I have ever pasted in my sc.r.a.pbook: October 3, 1966 Dear Mr. A-: Herb Solow forwarded to me the outline ent.i.tled "TO-MORROW WAS YESTERDAY" by David Gerrold.

Mr. Gerrold's outline was by no means inadequate. It is, as a matter of fact, very adequate. Unquestionably your young man can write. He has a good imagination and a good sense of structure. Unfortunately, his ideas of what is possible in television are somewhat grandiose. This is a fault which is found in the majority of vastly more experienced writers, so don't say I am picking on Mr. Gerrold. I am not. I am impressed by him. However, to .lm the two-part story outlined here would probably cost $6-700,000, in other words, the special effects, the sets, set decorations and so on are far too elaborate for television. What he has written is a good motion picture treatment for ideally a $2-3,000,000 picture.

However, because I am so impressed with his imagination and his ability, I would be delighted to meet with him and tell him more of our speci.c needs, this despite the fact that at the moment we are not buying scripts from anyone.

I am enclosing the outline. Thank you for letting me see it.

Sincerely yours, Gene c.o.o.n Producer STAR TREK.

cc: H. Solow G. Roddenberry