Posted on 02/25/2019 2:44:22 PM PST by BenLurkin
Trek nerds know what went down, at least in its rough outlines, and Marc Cushman gives all the sordid details in the first volume of his essential tome, These Are the Voyages. Ellison, already a respected writer of SF stories and screenplays for series like The Outer Limits, was commissioned by Roddenberry in 1966 to write an episode for the first season of his new space series. The treatment Ellison delivered contained the brilliant premise we all know and love—Kirk travels into the past and falls in love with an idealistic peace activist whom he must then allow to die … but it was also totally unfilmable as written, at least to fit within a single hour of network TV. Also, it contained dark elements that were way out of character with what Roddenberry envisioned for his still-unaired utopian show.
Ellison’s version opens with a drug deal. The ship’s navigator, hopelessly addicted to an alien narcotic called the Jewels of Sound, purchases some of the stuff from a shady officer named Beckwith. We fade to the bridge, where the navigator, now high as a kite, nearly destroys the ship and is relieved by an angry Mr. Spock. When the navigator, below decks, announces to Beckwith he’s going to go straight and turn the dealer in, Beckwith murders him. There follows a court martial that finds Beckwith guilty, and Kirk and Spock lead a landing party down to a desolate planet to execute Beckwith by firing squad. Their immediate punitive plans are interrupted when they spot an ancient city high in the distant mountains. Because Star Fleet protocols prohibit executing criminals on inhabited worlds, they need to investigate this city before executing Beckwith, a “creature not even worth calling a man.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thenightshirt.com ...
Alien narcotics would probably be phenomenal.
The Red Rock O we scored in the 80’s was fantastic! And tasty!
One thing I never understood, is when McCoy changed history, and Starfleet as we know it never existed, the Enterprise never existed, etc. then Kirk and Spock and the landing party would never have been on that planet with the time portal. So they wouldn’t have been in a position to go back in time themselves to change history back to what it should have been.
Maybe I’m missing something. Of course, based on that idea I just noted, then there’s no storyline for the episode.
It was always my understanding that Kirk went back and stayed becoming a police officer first then the founding partner of a prestigious Boston law firm before contracting Mad Cow Disease and dying.
It was the field effect of being in close proximity to the Guardian. Since that was the device manipulating time, the whole planet was basically a paradox.
At least, that’s how I understood it.
Dr. Who had a serial about narcotics and an addicted navigator.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_of_Eden
It’s a favorite from the Baker era.
Had I known that a large piece of liver could make us see into the past, I might have eaten more of it.
Time travel gives me a headache!
“...when McCoy changed history, and Starfleet as we know it never existed, the Enterprise never existed...Kirk and Spock...would never have been on that planet with the time portal. So they wouldn’t have been in a position to go back in time themselves to change history back to what it should have been.
Maybe I’m missing something.... [Dilbert San Diego, post 4]
The author of the web essay does touch on this, just past half way through his own text.
Paradoxes are an inescapable but central feature of time-travel stories, even before one attempts to address the moral implications.
Mostly, they are ignored, except when they aren’t - in the latter case, the story can become more confusing than ever. The early Doctor Who plots ignored them but the latter-day re-imagining (?) that began with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor tackled some head-on, causing many of us fans to become more lost than we were.
Star Trek TV episodes and film plots usually used a light treatment, that leaned heavily on Gene Rodenberry’s goofy utopian outlook, or romantic/sentimental mush.
There aren’t any truly final, fully satisfying answers; some fans find it all endlessly fascinating and go about the motions of endless debate that can’t resolve the muddle. Others find it annoying, sometimes to the point where they can no longer summon that “suspension of disbelief” necessary to enjoyment of the show.
Many forum members have a strong sense of “should have been.” It leads us to deplore the messy and murky nature of reality, and strive to impose what we think is proper orderliness on situations. Sometimes this results in success and progress. Sometimes it only causes us to become yet more frustrated.
That problem is common in time travel scenarios. In Michael Crichton's novel "Timeline," one group of scientists travels back to the year 1357, where they (of course) get into trouble. A second group of scientists is sent back to rescue them. I thought, "Why not just send the second group to arrive just before the first group arrived?" The second group could warn the first group, and they could both return to the present immediately, avoiding the trouble. Unfortunately, that way the storyline both occurred and did not occur.
I suspect that time travel, if it is possible, requires a multiverse.
#4 Time stood still on the planet by the time portal.
So how do you go about getting the earth back exactly where it was in the universe 500 years ago in time?
I'm thinking that's pretty much hard to do.
Quantum entanglement has been demonstrated over hundreds of miles. That also sounds pretty hard to do, but it happens.
https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-quantum-entangled-photons-between-earth-and-space
I think time travel stories should be classified as fantasy, not fiction, but maybe I am wrong. The real world is a very strange place.
Great article on the famous Star Trek episode, ‘City on the Edge of Forever’ and the original Harlan Ellison treatment.
It wouldn’t be Star Trek without plot holes.
Yes I guess we just have to accept plot holes.
Somebody made me laugh once, saying how is it, that everyone on all these other planets speak English.
Not before pimping Priceline.
They had a universal translator for that.
Probably from Google.
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