Star Trek: The Original Series - Bantam Episodes - 004 - Journey to Babel by James Blish

Author:James Blish [Blish, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Media Tie-In, Fantasy, Star Trek Fiction, Science Fiction; American
ISBN: 9780553123111
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 1975-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

AFTERWORD

As the reader will now see, this story constituted the original pilot film for “Star Trek,” and was shown as such at the 24th World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, Septem-ber 1—5, 1966. Between the selling of the series and the actual television broadcast of “The Menagerie,” the whole con-cept of the cast changed radically. Number One was moved one step down in the chain of command, becoming Uhura, while her ostensible lack of emotion and computer-like mind were transferred to Spock; Yeoman Colt became Yeoman Rand; Boyce became McCoy; Tyler became Sulu. The net effect was to make the new officers more interracial than before. The notion that the highly trained crew would ever be risked in ordinary hand-to-hand infantry combat was dropped.

Most important, perhaps, was that in the pilot film, Pike had wound up with a potentially explosive situation with two of his crewwomen which would be too complex to maintain through a long-term series of episodes. He had to be replaced, and the whole story turned into relatively ancient history; and thus was born Captain Kirk, and the framing story I have left out. All these stages are visible in the scripts I had to work from, which are heavily revised in various handwritings (and in which Pike confusingly appears from time to time as “Captain Spring” and “Captain Winter”).

The only alternative would have been to reshoot the original “Menagerie” with the new cast, which would have been not only expensive, but would have produced all kinds of un-wanted complexities in succeeding stories. Mr. Roddenberry obviously decided to let it stand as something that had happened way-back-when, and frame it as such. I think this was wise and I have followed his lead in this adaptation.

Ordinarily, writers should not inflict their technical problems on readers, who have every right to demand that such problems be solved before the story is published. But I sometimes get letters from “Star Trek” fans who castigate me for changing even one or two words in scripts they have memorized, or even have on tape. In this case, as in that of “The City on the Edge of Forever” (STAR TREK TWO), there were conflicts that couldn’t be resolved by slavishly following the final text and ignoring how it had evolved. In both cases, I had to make my own judgment of what would best serve the authors’ intents.

—J. B.

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