And the winner for the longest, most obtuse title goes to…
Written by Harlan Ellison, Scott Tipton and David Tipton
Illustrated by J.K. Woodward
For the first time ever, a visual presentation of the much-discussed, unrevised, unadulterated version of Harlan Ellison’s award-winning Star Trek teleplay script, “The City on the Edge of Forever!” This Hugo- and Writer’s Guild of America Award-winning teleplay has been much discussed for decades but only here can you see the story as Mr. Ellison originally intended!
Sometimes a comic so oddly obscure comes along that you just have to talk about it. But first, a history lesson: if you are at all familiar with Star Trek, chances are you know of the episode ‘City On The Edge Of Forever’. Hell, even if you aren’t familiar with the show, chances are you’d recognise the episode. After being injected with an overdose of a life-saving drug, a demented McCoy travels back in time to America in 1930 and inadvertently causes the Nazis to win World War II. It was the episode that really pushed the boundaries of what Star Trek could be both technically (the episode really shows what a force of nature DeForest Kelley was) and in terms of storytelling. It juxtaposed the utopian future with one of the worst periods in American history and showed that we are only the only thing standing in the way from making the world a better place. It was everything Star Trek should be.
It was also, funnily enough, almost nothing like how it was originally written. The original teleplay was written by Harlan Ellison and only the broad strokes of his writing would remain in the aired episode. If you are unfamiliar with Ellison’s work, he is one of the greatest science fiction writers who ever lived. At least, I think so. Which is why it’s such a big deal that this series exists. You see, the episode that aired was rewritten by uncredited writers and was rather different than the teleplay that Ellison wrote. That teleplay only existed in the form of a printed book on the subject. Until now. IDW has at long last adapted Harlan Ellison’s original teleplay into a five-issue comic book series written by Scott and David Tipton and illustrated by J.K. Woodward. And for a first issue, it does not disappoint.
One of the first things you notice about this issue is how different it is from the episode, but how familiar it feels at the same time. Not only does the structure of the story here match the episode in the broad strokes, but lines of dialogue remain to give that welcoming sense of familiarity. The entire issue is permeated with the feeling that this is how it should always have been as Scott and David Tipton really capture the feeling of Ellison’s writing in their adaptation. While a lot of the technical writing, like how good the feel of the characters is and the interaction between the Guardians Of Forever and the greater theme of messing with time travel, was likely birthed by Ellison’s pen, that doesn’t mean that great pains haven’t been taken to make that script fit a comic format. It’s difficult to gauge the writing of a comic adaptation without sitting and peering over the source material to see what was changed, but the feeling you get from this issue is that the Tiptons have gone to great lengths to capture what Ellison’s script would have felt like had it been filmed.
That’s a feeling that crosses over into the artwork as well as J.K. Woodward has been noted for his painted artwork at IDW in bringing the world of the classic Star Trek to life. It certainly goes a long way in creating that feeling of familiarity with the work, even though it’s never been seen in this format before, like this is the format the story was always delivered in. It’s largely due to Woodward’s ability to recreate the likeness of the show and its actors in his painting that creates that world that just screams Star Trek unbound by the limitations of TV budgets in the 60s. That plays into the sequence that closes the issue as the landscape of the planet the crew lands on is much grander in scope and scale than any set the TV show could create at the time; as cool as the Guardians monument is in the show, the city itself feels directly taken from the mind of Ellison and put on the page. However, for all the art does to create that sense of unbounded familiarity, there’s a sense of lifelessness in the pages. It takes a very skilled painter to be able to recreate the hyper-kintic motion of cartoonism in comics and Woodward isn’t quite there yet. While the comic would not be the same without the recreation of the feeling of the show in the artwork, the static panels are a flaw you have to suffer through to enjoy that feeling.
All in all, this was a strange experiment, but one that paid off. For fans of the classic series, this is a must buy just as it is for fans of Ellison’s work. The writing of the adaptation is superbly subtle, letting the work speak for itself and only changing the form of the story and not it’s contents. Where it falls down is the art, but unless they could recruit Alex Ross the painted panels were always going to lack that sense of motion. Thankfully, what it lacks in motion is more than made up for in the recreation of that classic style that makes the hearts of people everywhere swell when they hear those fateful words: “Space. The Final Frontier.”
Final Verdict: 6.8 – A buy recommendation for anyone familiar with either the show or Ellison himself, but a browse for anyone else. This is a very niche comic, but it delivers where it counts.
