Harlan Ellison Screenplay - City on the Edge of Forever.

From some reason there seems to be a lot of praise for Ellison's original screenplay, and a lof of support for Ellions's 40 years quest to prove that Gene Roddenberry was a creep who destroyed his "perfect" screenplay. Sorry, I can't agree. After reading it, and comparing it to the final Teleplay, its obvious that Ellison's May 1966 draft, not only had to be revised, it had major, and I mean MAJOR problems. It'd be fair to say that even if Roddenberry had limited his revisions to getting Ellison's script shot under budget, it would NOT, I repeat NOT been the great Star Trek Episode we now know.

Ellison's May 1966 screenplay suffered from the following problems:

1. It wasn't "Star Trek" - I'll write later about this is more detail.
2. There's almost no humor. No "Stone knives and bearskins", no condesending Guardian, and no "mechanical rice picker".
3. The dialogue is terrible, in some cases awful. Almost all the "Best Quotes" you read on IMDB and elsewhere were written by other writers. The final episode has only two of Ellison's lines. 
4. The episode is beloved because its about Edith Keeler, Kirk, and the sacrifice he has to make. That's NOT what Ellison's screenplay is about. In Ellison's screenplay, Keeler doesn't have a line till the beginning- middle of Act III. In Act IV, she shares time with "Trooper" and the battle with Beckwith, the Enterprise Gangster/killer/drug Dealer. In the epilogue, Kirk is just as upset at the death of "Trooper" as he is with the death of "Keeler".
5. Ellison's screenplay is violent and has a nasty edge to it. There are two deaths in Roddenberry's script, Keeler and a tramp who accidently kills himself with McCoy's phaser. In Ellison's screenplay there are four deaths in addition to Keeler's. Beckwith kills Lt Lebeuqe (the drug addict), Trooper, and himself dies an agonizing death. In addition, several "Space Pirates" and Enterprise Landing party die in a hand-to-hand combat over the transporter room.
6. As stated, Ellison screenplay has a nasty edge to it: a sadistic drug dealer blackmailing a "junkie" for his "Fix". Spock yelling at LeBeque to "Shape up or Ship out", a hate-filled mob attacking Spock, a nasty street corner demagogue ranty about "furinners" a nasty boss trying to cheat Spock out of his wages, Beckwith kicking Spock in the stomach and running away, Beckwith knocking Spock to the ground and stealing his phaser, and Beckwith dropping a Garbage can on Spock and trying to kill Kirk with a phaser.
7. And if that's not enough, Spock sneers at "Earthlings", screams they are barbaric, and is so obnoxious, Kirk (seriously) remarks that "I should have left you for the mob". To cap all the nastiness off, Spock starts to carry around a phaser (stolen by Beckwith) so he can kill Keeler if Kirk "chickens out"!
8. Ellison's screenplay is actually a violence filled, nasty, action filled espisode. The romance and Edith Keeler are pushed to the background. There is no friendship displayed by Kirk-Spock. And they are out to bring back a Killer-Drug Dealer, not McCoy an old friend who was accidently injected with cordonzine.
9. The "Guardians of History" instead of being a snarky, funny, yet majestic thing we see in the final screenplay are - in Ellison's Screenplay - pompous 8 foot bores in robes, who drone on and on telling how time works.