Harlan Ellison's Complaint
A meditation about what "human" characters do in stressed situations, prompted by a diatribe of Harlan Ellison's.
About ten years ago, Harlan Ellison wrote a book called City on the Edge of Forever, after the1967 Star Trek (OS) episode of the same name. In it, he detailed the writing process and especially the events which resulted in the script being radically altered from what he had originally created. Much of this book was very sour grapes, and some of the complaining very hard to stomach -- e.g., he hated the fact that apparently Gene Roddenberry had received so much credit for "fixing" a "flawed" script and making it "usable", when (in Ellison's view) the newer script was terrible, and he hated that so many people had made so much money in the long run on Trek when he (Ellison) was really responsible for saving the show, etc. Personally I always loved the broadcast version of the episode, and always credited Ellison with having written a brilliant script, and I expect that most viewers felt the same way -- so Ellison's gnashing of teeth really struck me as misplaced.
Still, I did agree that his original script was better, and I was struck by one significant complaint that has stuck with me ever since. In the original version Ellison wrote, Kirk, in love with Edith Keeler, is unable to bring himself to allow her death (even to save the world), but the world is saved, instead, by a stranger who accomplishes the same thing. In the broadcast version, Kirk musters the strength to prevent McCoy from saving Edith, thus saving the world but killing the woman he loves.
I found the broadcast version very moving, but I'd always had a hankering to write (myself) the other ending; I even wrote the beginning of a story called "The Day Kennedy Wasn't Shot", about a fellow who goes back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination and finds that he can't live with the world that results (i.e., his beloved isn't in it) so he goes back and restores the original timeline. This later evolved into another (also unfinished) story called "Karmic Joke Number Nine", about time travel as a form of therapy. Anyway, when I eventually (eight years after trying to write "Karmic Joke Number Nine") got around to reading Ellison's diatribe and his original script, I was impressed with how bitter he was about the revision that was imposed on him. He felt that a Kirk who couldn't allow the death of his beloved even to save the world was much more human than the duty-bound Kirk who eventually appeared in the broadcast version. Ellison doesn't like perfect people as characters.
Well, neither do I, if it comes to that. But I do have a taste for Heroic Sacrifice as a device, and so I wonder how I really feel about these two endings. More specifically, I wonder what I would have written in his place. It's not a completely idle question, because a number of HP FF writers toy with the question of whether Harry, Ginny, etc. would be able to permit the death of a loved one in order to win the war, and whether it's "fair" to make them try. Me, I've already come at that idea two different ways, both of which result in the death of either Harry alone or both Harry and Ginny.
Is Ellison's original Kirk more "human", therefore more believable? Or is he someone who just isn't able to set his own happiness as less important than the happiness of billions of others -- which arguably makes him not human, but just weak? (In the Christmas Engagement entry I'm writing, I have a line where Ginny tells Harry, "The war is more important than we are." Rick says to Ilsa, "The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.") I'm brooding about this.
...Incidentally, the Userpic is the exterior of our home renovation as it currently exists. Considering that the house was a ranch four months ago, it looks pretty good, right? If you could see the interior (essentially a blasted shell) you'd think differently...